Ghost Hand (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 1, The New Guy

Five minutes into my Calc test, I glanced up and caught the new guy staring.

He sat across the aisle from me, his eyes locked on my glowy, see-through right hand and the pencil that hovered between my fingers, never quite touching them.

I slowly set my pencil on my desk.                        

His eyes tracked my movements, still staring.

I raised my fingers and wiggled them at him in a cheesy little wave. Normally, that was enough to make people turn away and try not to notice my ghost hand. But not this guy. Instead, he looked up, straight into my eyes with this way-too-intense gaze.

God, what was his problem? So I had PSS of the right hand. Psyche Sans Soma was a rare birth defect, but most people had at least heard of it. The internet had loads of stuff about PSS, and Sixty Minutes had done a whole segment on it for Christ's sake. Besides, hadn't anyone taught him that staring was rude?

I curled my hand into a fist and flipped him off, glaring at him through my own finger.

He raised his eyebrows and finally looked away, but I didn't miss the smirk that played across his lips as he did.

Why were the hot ones always such cocky, self-absorbed douche bags?

Unfortunately, there was no denying he was good-looking. He had black hair, brown eyes, dark skin; not a tan but the kind that comes with your DNA. And he definitely had a nice body.

He glanced up from his test, caught me checking him out, and smirked even wider than before.

I felt the blush rise to my face and picked up my pencil, pretending to focus on the test, but after reading the next question four times, I still didn't know what it said. What kind of a jerk comes into a new town and a new school, and spends the first day of his Calc class trying to make someone else feel like a freak? He was the noob; not me. He was the mid-semester transfer no one knew anything about except that he was from a school up near Chicago. And what was his name anyway? Seemed liked it began with a J. Or maybe an M.

At least he'd finally turned his attention away from me, his pencil scratching out answers the way mine should have been. He didn't even have to take the test. Since it was his first day, Mr. Giannopoulos had given him permission to opt out, but New Guy had said, "That's fine. I'll take it." Very studious of him. And annoying. Who takes a test when they don't have to?

"Twenty minutes remaining," Mr. G droned from his desk. Great. The test was twenty problems long, and I was only on number five.

The clock on the wall behind Mr. G ticked louder and louder as I scribbled down answers.

On question seven, my pencil tip snapped, the tiny mouse turd of lead rolling down the incline of my desk and dropping into my lap. I dug out another pencil from the coffin-shaped leather backpack at my feet, and that's when I noticed that my ghost hand felt warm, which was weird. PSS wasn't temperature sensitive. I'd held my hand over an open flame and stuck it in a bucket of ice, both times on a dare, and never felt a thing.

I rolled the new pencil between my warm ghost fingers. Weird or not, I had a test to finish.

"Ten minutes left," Mr. G said when I'd only just answered question eight.

Passion Wainwright, who sat in front of me, got up from her desk and turned in her test. She was done already? Then again, Passion was the best student in the entire senior class. She pretty much had to be because she was the local pastor's daughter. Her parents had named her after The Passion of Christ, this Easter play her church did every year in which Passion always played the Virgin Mary. The part actually fit her pretty well, because despite being blonde and skinny and beautiful, guys did not pursue Passion Wainwright. She wore turtlenecks, long-sleeved shirts, and long pants, even when it was warm, as if her wardrobe were some kind of "Do Not Enter" sign. She had a permanent parental waiver against changing for gym class because showing skin and wearing vintage nineties gym shorts was against her religion or something. Most days, I just felt sorry for her. Except when she turned in her Calc test with ten minutes to spare.