Elizabeth looked up, briefly wondering where
she was. The hand on her shoulder made her flinch, and caused her pulse
to quicken. She tensed, then noticed the chemistry lab, and allowed
herself to relax.
"What’s wrong with you today, Elle? You’ve been spacing out the whole class,
even more than usual I mean."
"Nothing,
Katie," she snapped. "What is it we’re supposed to be doing here?"
Katie proceeded to explain the experiment to
Elle - again - and they started to work through it. Just before adding
the final chemicals, Mrs. Walker called Katie up to her desk.
"I can do
this," Elizabeth thought to
herself, quickly glancing over the instruction sheet again for what she
had to do next. Add 50mL of water to the mix, heat, and we’re set. Then I can get out of here.
Elle didn’t go to classes much
normally, and especially not chemistry. It was too confusing, and she
didn’t care what the teachers
thought of her. The only thing chemistry was good for as far as she was
concerned was being able to swipe some chemicals to sell, or better
yet, to make something to get high with. Unfortunately, since she
rarely made it to class, she’d
never learned the rules about how to combine the different chemicals
safely; and since Katie always did the work, she didn’t care.
Katie... Elle shook her head slightly,
thinking about her only friend. Well, as close to a friend as she had
anyways. They’d known each other
since 4th grade, and had been in at least one class together ever
since. Katie was the only person Elle trusted since her mother had
died, and even she didn’t know
about the older girl’s life at
home. Talk about a strange pair, though. The two girls were almost
total opposites, in every way. Where Elle was tall and skinny, Katie
was short and, if not quite fat, then definitely well rounded. Katie
had all the curves, while Elle barely had any. And Katie was one of the
smartest girls in the school -- and had been since 4th grade. She was
among the top 5 students in her class - and had a fighting chance at
graduating valedictorian, if she wanted it. Elle on the other hand
would be lucky to graduate at all. Once again she had to wonder what
the shorter girl saw in her. She hadn’t
ever been especially nice to Katie, but it hadn’t scared her off like it did most
everyone else in the school.
All these thoughts ran through Elle’s head as she filled the pyrex
measuring cup with 50mL of water and set the beaker of acid up on the
bunsen burner, turning the gas on and adjusting it to a light flame.
She let it heat for a moment, and then began pouring the water into the
beaker of acid. Immediately it started to bubble and boil over. "Oh shit."
Elle muttered, as the chemical reaction started in earnest. She stood
at the lab table, just staring down at the beaker as the reaction got
more and more energetic. Just then Mrs. Walker glanced up from her desk
and saw what was happening, jumping to her feet and rushing across the
room, pushing students out of her way as she ran.
"Elizabeth,
GET BACK! NOW! MOVE!" The teacher
shouted, reaching the lab table and pushing her aside, grabbing for the
beaker. She held it in one hand, as far in front of her as she could,
as she rushed to the fume hood. She made it to the hood barely a second
before the mixture flashed over in a large puff of steam and smoke. The
whole class was standing, staring at Elle in shock.
"Elizabeth
Miller..." Mrs. Walker started, "at my desk, NOW! The rest of you, go
back to your work."
"I should
have known you wouldn’t be paying
attention again, Ms. Miller. Do you realize you could’ve killed yourself, or even all of us,
if the chemicals were just a little bit different? That’s twice already this term that you’ve done something like this, and it’s barely even 3 months in. One more
mistake like this and I’ll have to
drop you from the class and fail you. For now though, you’re heading to the deans office; I don’t want you destroying anything else in
here today. Get going," the teacher
said, handing her a hall pass to the office.
She grabbed her bag and walked out of the
classroom, barely stopping to cast a look at Katie over her shoulder on
her way out the door, trying to ignore the snickers of her classmates. "Here we go again," she thought, heading towards the deans
office where she seemed to spend so much of her time.
"Excuse
me, where do you think you’re going?"
Elle looked up, startled, to see a teacher
standing in front of her, looking dour.
"Ahh,
Miss Miller, I should have known... Going to the deans office again I
imagine?"
The tall girl felt her face flush red, and
began to feel hot. What right did this teacher have to harass her? She
had a damned hall pass, it wasn’t
any of this old bitch’s business
where she was going...
"Well, go
ahead, get moving... I’m sure the
dean doesn’t have all day." The old woman said, walking off down
the hall.
Elle just seethed. She headed off down the
hall to the office, but her eyes flashed with anger. That was the last
thing she needed today, a run in with yet another damned teacher, she
thought, turning to open the door to the cramped office suite where all
four deans plus security had their offices.
"Oops,
excuse me."
She glared at the kid who had just ran into
her, knocking her books to the ground. Obviously, he hadn't been
watching where he was walking. It was the last straw. Elle towered over
him by at least four inches, and he looked skinny as a twig. She didn’t recognize the boy.
"Excuse
you? There’s no excuse for you,
asshole! Don’t you know how to open
your eyes when you walk?!?" Elle was nearly shouting now, and the boy
was shaking in fear. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him
towards her, whispering in his ear, "If you ever run into me or touch
me again, kid, I'll break you in half! You understand?" She growled at
him, putting just enough pressure on his neck to make him squirm
"Y...Ye...yes... I... I understand." The boy
tried to force the words out but had trouble as he was shaking so
badly. He was obviously terrified at the sight of this girl.
Elle just chuckled, her eyes shining with
laughter. She let go of the boy’s
collar suddenly, watching him collapse to the ground and scurry around
gathering her textbooks for her.
"Have a nice day," Elle chuckled to him with a
glint in her eye as she turned to open the door to the cramped office
suite where the deans were . She took a deep breath and thought to
herself "here we go again," as she pulled open the door and walked in
to the secretaries outer office. The women groaned when they saw her.
"You again, Elizabeth? You might as well go
right back, Dean Smith is waiting for you,"
said Mrs. Thomas, one of the secretaries in the office.
Elle just grunted and trudged back down
the short hallway into her deans office, a place where she’d already spent a major chunk of her
highschool career. It was, oddly enough, one of the very few places she
felt anything resembling safe. At least Dr. Smith had never hurt her
when she hadn’t deserved it. She
walked in to his office with an uncaring expression on her face, and a
look even more than her usual numbness in her eyes. Nothing he could do
today would faze her.
"Elizabeth...
Again in Chemistry? You have got to start paying more attention, you
could have seriously injured yourself this time..." Dr. Smith started to say, motioning
the student to a seat in front of his cluttered desk while he finished
writing on an official-looking form at the top of a pile. When he
finally glanced up his words died in his throat, and he did a
double-take. Something in the way the girl was looking made every hair
on the back of the experienced educator’s
neck stand on end. In almost 30 years of teaching he’d only rarely gotten such a feeling,
and he’d learned long ago to pay
attention when he did.
"Elizabeth, are you
alright?" He asked, with genuine
concern in his voice.
Very slowly, almost like she didn’t have the energy to care, Elle turned
her head and looked at her dean, not meeting his eyes, while her legs
started to tremble.
"I’m fine, Dr. Smith. I just wasn’t paying attention and I guess I
screwed up the experiment. What else is new, right?" she said, willing herself to stop
shaking and feeling every beat of her pulse in her forehead. "So what is it this time, another
Saturday detention?" A cold sweat
broke out on the back of Elle’s
neck as she heard herself saying this, realizing how unhappy Randy
would be if she had to ask him to take her to school at 8am Saturday
morning. "Oh well," she thought. "I can always just blow it off, it wouldn’t be the first time..."
She was saved from having to worry further
about that when the balding man shook his head.
"No, not
this time... I think you learned your lesson already for this mistake.
I don’t see any reason to put you
in detention... No doubt holding that beaker in your hands got the
message across stronger than a detention will," he said, looking at her with concern. "Seriously, Elizabeth, are you okay from
that? It had to be quite a shock... Do you want me to send you to the
nurse, or the counselor?"
"Really,
I told you Dean Smith, I’m fine. It’s nothing."
"Very
well," he said, shaking his head
slightly. "I certainly can’t send you back to chemistry now. You
can go to study hall for the rest of this
period and then to your next class, or you can stay and help out around
the office until then. I could use some extra help running notes this
period, but whichever you want to do is fine.
Elle glanced down thoughtfully, trying to
decide which option would give her the best likelihood of being able to
sneak off and have a cigarette, if not something stronger; when she
looked up Dr. Smith was looking at her expectantly. "I guess I’ll
help out around the office, sir."
She said softly.
"Great. I’ll have one of the other volunteers
come back and show you how everything works, and then you can help get
the attendance sheets collected. If there’s
time afterwards I may have you deliver a few notes for me. If you need
to go to the nurse just let me know and I’ll
give you a pass." He pressed a
button on his telephone and Mrs. Thomas’s
voice came across the intercom.
"Yes,
sir? Do you need something?"
"If you
could send Jeff back please, Mrs. Thomas, I would appreciate it. I need
him to show Miss Miller around the office, she’s going to be volunteering this period.
I thought she could help collect the attendance sheets, and then
possibly run some notes for me.
"Very
well, he’s on his way back." The secretary said, just a moment
before the speakerphone shut off with a soft ‘click’.
A second later there was a quiet knock from the doorway.
"Come on in Jeff," Dr. Smith called out
through the doorway. "I need you
to show Miss Miller around the office, and get her started on running
the attendance sheets. She’s
volunteering with us today."
Elle glanced at the new boy out of the corner
of her eyes and quickly sized him up. "Damn," she thought, "this guy is scrawny." His brown hair sat atop his head in an
almost-but-not-quite completely unruly mass. His hair hung down nearly
to his eyebrows, and it was clear he didn’t
do much to take care of it. She wouldn’t
have been surprised if it hadn’t
seen shampoo in the better part of 3 days. He was tall and skinny, and
she would have been shocked if he’d
had the muscles to lift her backpack. The most striking thing, though,
were his glasses. Not just that he wore them - which was bad enough in
Elle’s book - but the frames that
he wore were even more frightening. Nothing like the thin, wire frames
that were so fashionable these days. These were thick, brown plastic
frames - frames that would seem more at home on an army recruit than a
high school student. And in case that wasn’t
bad enough, these glasses were THICK. It seems the days of the cracks
about kids wearing Coke bottles for glasses weren’t quite dead after all. Elle had never
seen a true glass bottle of the cola, but that didn’t matter. She’d heard they existed, and she’d heard "friends" make the references before, when they’d see geeks with lenses so thick you
could probably see Mars with them. His entire appearance just screamed "Geek"
to anyone that bothered to look -- "Not
that many people would bother,"
Elle thought to herself.
Elizabeth was in a lot of pain from last night
still, not to mention more than a little bit shaken up from the
incident in chemistry, and that fact was obvious as she got up to leave
Dr. Smith’s office. She stumbled as
she stood up, her right leg deciding it didn't feel like supporting her
very much. As her knee buckled under she collapsed, heading right into
the sharp corner of the large wooden desk. Time slowed to a crawl as
she scrambled to grab on to the arms of the chair -- to grab anything
to stop her from falling, but it was to late. Her pain was throwing off
her reaction time, and her momentum was throwing off her balance. She
saw the corner of the desk coming up quickly, and briefly wondered if
this might not be for the best anyways... maybe she could finally
escape everything...
Just as that thought crossed her mind she felt
herself pulled back by two scrawny hands on her shoulders. And she
flinched. Hard. And just as fast the hands were gone, and she was
sitting back in the chair again, shaking. She blinked and looked
around, trying to figure out what had happened. That’s when she noticed Jeff standing there
behind her, looking flushed and out of breath, his hands shaking almost
as badly as her own were. She only glanced at him for a moment, but in
that moment their eyes connected. She shivered, on top of her shaking.
There was something about his eyes... Something she couldn’t quite get a finger on, but it
resonated with her. Just for the briefest of moments the expression in
her own eyes softened. And then it was over, and the cold, hard stare
was back, and she was pulling herself back together.
"What happened,
Elizabeth? Are you okay?" Dr. Smith
asked quickly, looking worried.
"I’m fine."
She snapped, looking up at the dean. "I
must have stood up wrong and tripped. I’m
perfectly fine, I just need a minute to let it rest and I’ll be out of your hair." She replied, with not a little bit of
venom in her voice. She continued, before he had a chance to respond, "I don’t
need the nurse or anything, I’m
just fine."
Dr. Smith just looked at her and shook his
head slightly in wonder. He would never understand this girl, he
thought to himself. "Are you okay,
Jeff?" He said, looking at the
other student in the room, who had stopped shaking now but who still
looked a bit pale. "That was quick
work, thank you," he continued.
Jeff just nodded at the man, not quite
trusting his voice yet. He swallowed once, and then again, before
opening his mouth to speak. "I’m fine sir, I was just surprised, that
was all," he replied, looking
nervous.
"Are you
both sure you’re up to working this
period?" The dean asked, looking at
Jeff and then Elizabeth.
Jeff just nodded and looked over at Elizabeth.
"Yeah, I’m fine,"
she said to her dean. "Might as
well get this over with," she
continued to herself, under her breath, too quietly for Dr. Smith to
hear, but it was just loud enough for Jeff to have made out the words.
He glanced down at her, with an unreadable
look in his eyes. "Are you ready
to go?" He asked, his voice a
mixture of harshness and quiet concern.
She looked up at him, trying to come up with a
smart retort, but before she could think of anything to say he opened
his mouth again.
"Do you
think you can walk this time, or would you prefer I carry you?" He asked deadpan, with just the
slightest hint of humor in his voice. The way he said it pulled Elle up
short. She just glared back at him. Then she thought of this scrawny
weakling carrying her, and that was enough to make her collapse into a
fit of laughter. She laughed so hard it hurt, and the fit continued
long enough that Dr. Smith started looking at her like she was losing
her mind. Elle shook her head. "No,
I think I can walk this time... and I don’t
think you could lift me up to save your soul."
"Was that
a challenge?"
Elle chuckled and blinked. "Not hardly,"
was all she said, getting out of the seat and cautiously putting weight
on her leg. She started heading for the door, limping slightly on her
right leg, leaving Jeff behind her in the office. He followed her
through the door into the outer office and stopped.
"Have you ever worked in the office here
before?"
Elizabeth just stared at him, shaking her head and
not saying a word. She still didn't entirely trust her voice.
"Okay, the first thing we need to do is collect the
attendance cards from the classrooms, and run them down to the
attendance office." He said. "Once that's done, we may need to run
confirmation slips back to a few of the teachers, but usually not...
Generally there isn't a whole lot to do after the attendance is done --
it's a good chance to get homework done. But then again, I'm betting
that's not a major concern to you, huh?"
"How'd you ever guess?" She snapped back, turning to
head out into the main hallway.
"We may want to stick together for this. You don't
have a hall pass, and the teachers don't know you at all, so I'm not
sure they'll give you the sheets..."
Elle nodded in agreement, pulling open the office
door and heading out into the main hall. "Where do you usually start?
"Usually I start upstairs on the other side, that
way I can work my way back towards the office... not to mention take a
break in the cafe for a few minutes if I get tired of walking." Jeff
grinned lopsidedly and started walking towards cafeteria and
fieldhouse. Looking over at Elle he saw her limping. "Do you want some help?" He asked, concern in his eyes. "You can lean on me if you need to.
Would you rather take the elevator than the stairs?"
"No, I’m
fine," she replied shortly, barely
even looking up. She walked through the double doors into the
cafeteria, with barely a glance at the teacher who was sitting in a
chair in the middle of the hall, watching for people cutting classes or
trying to sneak into the cafe.
If Elle would have noticed her, she would have realized that Ms.
Michalski’s eyes went wide seeing
Jeff walking with her. She’d known
Jeff since he transferred in to this school -- he went this way every
day when he collected attendance sheets, and she was his homeroom
teacher to boot, and she’d never
seen him walking with a girl. Or even talking to one for that matter,
outside of answering questions during class. She’d tried to get him to consider doing
some tutoring, because he was one of the brightest students she’d seen come through the school in
years, but he was just too shy. Talk about the definition of a
wallflower. He was so obviously uncomfortable around most of his
classmates that it hurt to watch. It wasn’t
that he was hopeless, he wasn’t. He
was just shy, and worse than that in high school, he was smart. And so
he was an outcast. Not many friends in general, no close friends to
speak of. One of the students that teachers loved. He did his work,
asked good questions, and didn’t
cause trouble -- didn’t make waves.
Basically, he just existed.
But boy, she thought, glancing again at the two
of them walking down the hallway, he knows how to pick them. That
girl is more than a handful.
They walked around the cafeteria to the other side
of the building in silence before either of them said anything.
"So, is the rumor true about chemistry?" Jeff asked, as they walked towards the
staircase. "Did you actually
almost blow up the school?"
Elle shrugged and shook her slightly. "Not quite. I don’t think I could have blown up the
school with the chemicals we had in there. I wasn’t paying enough attention, I guess, and
must have done something wrong. The next thing I know, Mrs. Walker is
running up and pushing me out of the way, and then grabbing the beaker
and throwing it under the fume hood. It didn’t
really explode, not like a bomb or anything... It just went up in a big
flash of steam or smoke or whatever. Then she started yelling at me and
sent me to the deans’ office. Not
much to tell, really."
Jeff shook his head and chuckled quietly. "Ouch. That can’t be good for your grade."
Elle just stared at him for a moment. "Do you really think I care that much
about my grade?"
"Ehh...
Good point..." Jeff mumbled, as
they continued collecting the attendance sheets from the various
classrooms. Occasionally he would stop to exchange a few words with
some of the teachers, but mainly it was just the boring routine. Knock
on the door. Get handed the attendance sheets -- green and white
scan-tron forms, with the name of the class and teacher on the top, and
a list of student’s names down the
right side, followed by three columns of bubbles. Present. Tardy.
Absent. Every form exactly the same, all the bubbles filled in neatly
in pen or pencil.
"Borrr-rring," Elle thought, but at least she didn’t have to think about it. Instead, she
was thinking about anything but. She made a bit of small talk with
Jeff, but for the most part, she was silent. She could tell he was
trying to be nice, but she wasn’t
interested. She didn’t want to
talk, not really, not at the moment. First she started replaying the
incident in chemistry in her mind, but the pciture changed all of a
sudden. In a flash, it wasn’t
almost causing an explosion in the chemistry lab that she was
remembering, but last night’s
torment at home. Then it was the deans office. She saw herself falling
towards the desk - and felt Jeff pull her back, again. She felt his
hands on her shoulder and arm. Felt the pain when he touched the
tender, bruised flesh on her shoulders. And then she was back to last
night again.
She couldn’t
have known it of course, but while these thoughts were running through
her mind, Jeff was getting more and more concerned. He could tell there
was something wrong - very wrong, at least in his mind. He was trying
to be nice at least, and even though they had almost nothing in common,
he figured she normally would have been polite enough to at least
pretend to care. Or to tell him to go fuck off. Or something. Instead,
she was just standing there. For the past two or three minutes they’d been standing in the hallway at the
top of the stairs. They were sort of talking, and then all of a sudden
she went silent, and now she was just standing there, looking white as
a sheet. And then he looked in her eyes, and something inside him
screamed. What it was he couldn’t
know, but something turned to ice. There was something in those eyes...
it wasn’t like looking into the
eyes of a high schooler. It was like... well... there was no way to
explain it. Like looking through a window into hell itself. He didn’t -- couldn’t
-- know what it was, not consciously at least, but something deep in
his soul must have had some idea, because it turned to ice. He
shivered, worse than he had even when he caught her from falling in the
deans office, when he was terrified she’d
break him in half for touching her. Then he remembered it; the look in
her eyes as she was falling, and the look when he grabbed her to catch
her.
And then she felt it again. She flinched again at
the sharp jolt of pain when the hand touched her skin, but this time
that wasn’t all she felt. This time
she felt anchored somehow. It wasn’t
the shock of pain that pulled her back to the present, it was the
feeling that she was somehow grounded all of a sudden. She blinked and
shook her head, and was back in the hallway on the second floor of the
school, with Jeff’s hand on her
shoulder, cold as ice. Elle looked at him, and saw that look in
his eyes again. She still couldn’t
figure it out, but this time it wasn’t
quite as scary to her. She shivered.
"Come on, come
with me." Jeff said, in a tone of
voice that didn’t leave any room
for debate, as he started heading down the stairs, one hand on the
railing and the other on Elle’s
shoulder. They walked out into the hallway outside the west cafe, and
kept walking until they were in the small enclosed courtyard, almost
deserted at this time of the year. It was cold but not unbearable, and
at this moment Elle wasn’t likely
to notice the temperature. Jeff moved his hand and motioned her towards
the table, pulling out a chair. After a few moments of his not making
any move to sit down, Elle realized that he was holding out the chair
for her. She blinked and sat down, staring at him all the while, a
small shiver running through her. She remembered the story she’d heard about one of the previous
senior classes, putting the principal’s
car in the middle of the courtyard one day -- a courtyard that was
totally inaccessible to the outside. The only way to get the car in (or
out) was to take the mirrors off and bring it through the school
hallways. The thought made her smile a little, and Jeff looked at her
strangely.
"Elizabeth," he started to say, before she cut him
off.
"Shh. Let’s just sit here a few minutes." She said, resting her head on her hand
and shaking slightly from the cold. Jeff stood up and put his jacket
around her shoulders. It wasn’t
much, but it was something... and the gesture of it warmed her more
than the fabric ever could.