Chapter One

Elle

I am of the firm belief that life is a series of events designed to make you hope for death.

How else to explain my situation there on that hell known as a school bus. A bus on its way to the first day of Junior year.

For most people my age, Junior year is one of those rare moments of hope and happiness. Not yet the pressures of preparing to leave home. No cliff fast approaching. Yet, no longer a despised member of society. Neither sophomore nor dreaded freshman. No, Junior year was to be that perfect time.

But of course, as I said earlier, life is not like that. At least not mine.

You see, I was cursed. Cursed by a burden known as Jimmy, my little brother.

Yes, I know, normally, a brother is not a curse, even a little brother. But then you don’t know Jimmy, nor my situation.

Jimmy was only thirteen years old. Not a major issue in and of itself. But Jimmy was also going to be a Senior in my school. Yes, that is right, a year ahead of me.

Do the math. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I bet you came up with the same answer as me. My much younger brother would be ahead of me in school. It didn’t make sense, the universe is not designed to work that way. But then, Jimmy wasn’t a part of our universe. The normal verse, I call it. No Jimmy was unique, Jimmy was special. And he had absolutely no idea what he was in for.

But then, when it came to reality, Jimmy could be blind or just willfully ignorant, I could never decide.

The thing that made it even worse was that it wasn’t his idea. If he’d have had his way, He’d already be up at Stanford, He’d had a standing invitation for the last two years. Yes, he was that smart. One of those freaks of nature the universe blessed.

Of course, his blessing ended up being my curse.

No, it wasn’t Jimmy’s fault. That could be laid at my mother’s feet. She who must be obeyed at all times. The all knowing, all powerful woman who ran our lives.

A boy who had never been to school. - Not unless you count that one time he visited MIT - A boy home-schooled by my mother and my Nana. The local schools had taken one look at his test scores and ran for the hills. He’d terrified them. They didn’t know how to even approach a problem like Jimmy.

A walking geek about two feet short of our current seniors and as big around as a corn stalk during a drought.

And she was throwing him into the high school deep end. Not even as a freshman, where he might have been able to hide and avoid what was coming his way. Nope, she was throwing him into the senior class.

I knew these kids. They’d spent twelve years honing their talent of ruining any and all that were different. It was their mission in life. They had reached the top of the pecking order. Their goal was to impart pain and shame on any that were not like them. Wasn’t that the whole point of being a senior?

And Jimmy was as different as they came.

In fact, he suffered from all three diseases. He was short. A geek with a ninth degree black belt in computers. And a young man with the social understanding of a footstool.

But had she listened to me? My mother. Um, no. Of course not. She had simply said that the school would make sure everything went just fine.

I tried not to laugh in her face, I really tried, but I failed miserably and barked out a laugh so loud it made Rufus, our Siamese cat jump in his sleep.

“Mom,” I tried again, “Please, you don’t understand. They are going to eat him alive. He doesn’t have a clue.”

“Well, he needs to learn,” she said, “And it is better here at a high school than off at university.”

“Mom, if you think high school is better than college you are sorely mistaken. There, at least they are pretending to be adults. Here, they aren’t even trying. It is the jungle, eat or be eaten.”

“Oh, Elle, don’t be so dramatic.”

“Mother, listen to me. Am I normally overly dramatic? You have no idea.”

“Oh, I remember what high school was like. It wasn’t that long ago, we even had books instead of clay tablets.”

“Mom, you were both the class Valedictorian and the Prom Queen. Of course, high school was easy and fun. You’d had twelve years to intimidate every student you ever met. No one would think of bringing any rain to your world. It won’t be like that for Jimmy.”

She just gave me that mom smile of hers. The one that drove me up the wall. The one that said I was being a silly little girl and I should leave these things to the grown-ups.

Of course, I’d never told her about the whole sixth-grade disaster, or about Justine Beckham and her gaggle of followers and the girl's bathroom. Nope, some secrets I would keep to my grave. All I know for sure is that my mother had never been bullied. She was just too clueless.

All I could do was shake my head and walk away, leaving her to her work. As a major lawyer for one of California’s leading environmental non-profit groups, she was always bringing work home. She’d spend half the night going over things while her son was busy scouring the net for some kind of intellectual challenge and her daughter was twiddling her thumbs alone in her room, desperately trying to figure out how to navigate through this screwed up world.

Making it even worse, I couldn’t exactly complain. After all, she was doing the good work saving the planet. Although, there are times I wish the damn desert salamanders would just disappear off the face of the earth.

I know, that makes me a terrible person, but I made sure to keep such thoughts to myself, I’m not an idiot. Not in Jimmy’s league, but not an idiot.

Glancing over at him, I had to shake my head. The boy was clueless. He didn’t even know enough not to sit next to me on the bus. It made him look weak and me uncool.

He had his head buried in a textbook. I don’t know why he bothered, he’d had them all memorized half-way through the summer. In addition to being a curse, he was a constant reminder of how unfair life was. I had to work my butt off just to keep my grades up enough to hope to get into a mediocre college. Jimmy remembered everything. What is more, he could see the relationship between everything all in that weird brain of his.

It’s like a web,” he told me once. “I just have to find the right string and pull to find the answer.”

Yeah, a web. Me? it was like a congealed mass of goo. I couldn’t find the answer to most questions without digging through a pile of junk.

Suddenly, a thought popped into my head that made me want to kick myself for not thinking about it earlier. This whole school bus fiasco could be avoided if I had a car and drove us to school each day. Why hadn’t I been working on Mom all summer? Sometimes, I really could be a dolt. If I’d played my cards right with my mom, I might have been able to finagle a sweet ride out of the deal. Instead, I’d spent the summer worrying and fretting, instead of using it to my advantage.

When the big yellow monster stopped in front of the school, I reached out and held Jimmy back for a second.

“Let them go first. There’s no rush,” I said

Jimmy looked back up at me with an excited look that let me know he was actually looking forward to school. Like I said, the boy had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Finally, we exited the bus and made our way inside.

Ah, the sweet smell of floor wax, fresh paint, and a thousand teenagers. A unique blend of hope and angst that is high school.

We wove our way through the throng of new students. Everyone smiling and yelling at long lost friends. People talking about the summer, the hopes and dreams for the future year. In other words, teenage people being teenage people.

It seemed no one knew where they were going, and yet, the crowd moved along at a pace just slow enough to make sure we weren’t going to get there in time.

“Come on,” I said as I pulled at Jimmy’s shoulder. The boy was a minnow in a school of tuna. The size difference alone was remarkable, but the blank, unknowing stare on his face sealed the deal.

Making sure I had a good grip, I snaked our way through the crowd until I got him to his first class, English Lit. I know, a totally useless class for him, but Mom had insisted. After all. He wasn’t there to learn, he was there to grow.

I pulled us to a stop and turned to face him.

“Are you ready for this?”

He laughed, “Elle, don’t worry, I’ve already read all the books. What’s the big deal?”

I shook my head, he thought I was talking about the classwork. Oh, how stupid could you be?

“I’ll meet you here after class and walk you to your next one.”

He frowned for a moment. “You don’t have to do that. I know where it is, just around the corner and two doors down.”

“It doesn’t matter, humor me, okay?”

He laughed and nodded, “Okay, Elle, if it makes you feel better.”

My heart ached as I watched him step into his classroom. At that moment, I hated my mom for making him go through this. I hated her even more for making me go through it.

Grinding my teeth, I turned to hurry to my class when I ran smack dab into a solid mountain of hard chest.

My nose, followed by my entire face, smashed into some guy. Some very large, male type guy.

Bouncing back, I looked up, and up, into a pair of silvery blue eyes that sort of stopped my world for just a moment. The eyes belonged to a very tall young man with massive shoulders, black hair that kissed his ears and a small scar on his chin. He was dressed in jeans and a green army jacket that looked so wrong for a Bay Area high school.

“Um, I’m sorry …” I mumbled as I fought to get my reality back on track.

He looked down at me for a very long second, then his lips twitched in a smirk that made me angry. I don’t know why, it just pissed me off. Maybe because the smirk made him look enticing, almost desirable. So me, being the cool, calm person I am, I overreacted.

“You’re in my way,” I said as if that was all that ever needed to be said.

The smirk grew just a little, “Go around,”

My anger jumped up about fifty degrees. I seriously thought of bumping into him as I passed but realized immediately that I’d only hurt myself. It would be like running into a brick wall out of spite, not smart, and the wall never got hurt.

Instead, I tried to play it cool. I did the whole hair flip over the shoulder thing. Shot him the evil stare my mom had passed down to me, and then walked around him.

I’d gone only a few steps when I glanced back over my shoulder.

The smirky, silvery blue-eyed boy was looking at me and for some reason, I felt pretty sure he’d been checking me out from the rear. A small smile of appreciation creased his lips.

I swallowed hard and turned away. No way was I going to let some troglodyte upset my day. But of course, I thought about little else through the rest of class. In fact, I even stopped worrying about Jimmy for a short period of time and focused on worrying about me and the way that appreciative smile had made my stomach turn inside out.

.o0o.

Nate

All I could do was stare as she walked away. That angry scowl was sexy as hell. The butt was pretty great also.

Get a grip, I told myself. It’s the first day of a new school. The last thing you needed to do was piss off some guy by making a move on his girl. And a girl like that had to have a dozen guys lined up in the boyfriend queue.

It was going to be different this time, I promised myself. No fights. No expulsions. And if I was lucky, no suspensions. I was going to keep my mouth shut and head down. Get through this year and I’d never have to step inside one of these dungeons ever again.

Sighing, I entered my English Lit class. The quick glances were all too familiar. I could see it behind their eyes; Who’s the new guy? Where’d he come from? He looks like a Neanderthal on a bad day.

I let the negativity wash past me. I’d learned long ago to ignore them. They were just future bad memories.

Taking a seat in the far back corner, I stared forward and ignored the questioning looks.

“Mr. Clark?” the teacher asked me. A small, balding man of about forty who looked like he spent his weekends reading books in front of a fire. Probably fancy, ancient books about gothic castles, and desperate virgins.

“Yes,” I answered.

The teacher smiled that welcoming grin they taught them. The one that tried to reassure us that everything was going to be great and he was going to be my friend.

“Welcome to Cooper High School,”

I only nodded. The last thing I was doing was swapping a bunch of small talk with a teacher.

“I’m Mr. Anderson. If you have any questions, let me know.”

Yeah, like that was going to happen. Not in this lifetime. Instead, I nodded and turned to look across the room. From the corner of my eye, I saw the helpful grin drop as he got the message. We were not going to be friends and he had not discovered his next project.

As I examined the room, the little kid the pretty girl had been talking to, caught my attention. My first reaction was to wonder if I was in the right room.

“What is he doing here?” the bottle blond in the front asked as she pointed at the kid. I placed her right away, a cheerleader wanna-be. The kind of girl that wrapped boys around her finger. Used them up and tossed them away like last weeks trash.

“This is James Watson …” the teacher began.

“Jimmy,” the boy corrected.

“Why is a freshman in our class?” a pretty boy in a green and white letterman jacket, sitting next to bottle blond, asked with a folded brow. If I had to bet, I’d say starting quarterback and general jerk.

All I could do was shake my head. Pretty boy was not afraid of showing how much of an idiot he could be. A dangerous mix, popularity, and stupidity. A recipe for drama.

“I’m a senior,” the little kid responded with a touch of dismissiveness. Obviously, he had seen the stupidity around him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the sense to keep his mouth shut and let the teacher handle it.

All I could do was shake my head. Someone had screwed up. The kid didn’t belong here. Not with this group.

Sighing internally, I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. The kid was on his own. He’d learn fast or fade away.

Either way, not my problem.