Page 4 of Going the Distance
Chapter 2
I quickly remembered why the first day of school was so bad: hordes of students around us were clamoring to get to their homeroom to grab seats for their friends before all the good ones were gone, and the freshmen stood in tiny groups, blocking the corridors, looking lost and overwhelmed—even a little sick, in some cases.
It was weird not to spot Noah’s head somewhere, cutting a path through them all.
Lee’s shoulder bumped against mine, and I locked my fingers around his wrist so we didn’t get separated.
I looked over my shoulder. “I’ve lost the others.”
“They know their way.” Lee paused for a moment, and someone barreled into me from behind before cursing at us and moving around. Lee tugged me down the nearest corridor, taking a detour to our homeroom class. Any other day, this way would take twice as long, but today at least we avoided being trampled.
Mr.Shane, our senior-year homeroom tutor, was an English lit teacher, so his classroom was covered in posters of the books his classes would be studying, and A4 photos of authors like John Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Mr.Shane himself looked like the stereotypical fresh-out-of-grad-school teacher: he wore thin-framed glasses, his tie was slightly askew, and his shirt was only tucked in at the front. And he didn’t have that hard look on his face that some of the older teachers did, when they were sick of teaching the same syllabus for twenty years straight. He smiled at us individually as we came into the room.
Rachel and Lisa had clearly arrived only moments before, since they were just putting their purses down on desks near the window. Lee made a beeline for the desk next to his girlfriend, Rachel, and kissed her on the cheek. I looked at the desk on his other side, but it was already taken.
“Elle! Sit by me!” Lisa chirped when I hesitated, gesturing at the desk next to her, in front of Lee. She’d been dating our friend Cam for a few months and had become part of our group ever since. “Did you guys meet Levi yet? I was over at Cam’s for dinner just after he’d moved in, so we went to say hi together. He was kind of shy, I think, but he seems cool. And I’dkillfor eyelashes like his! And his hair—it’s justsocurly. I’m in love with it.”
I smiled in reply and she turned to resume her conversation with Rachel. Lee had pulled his chair closer to Rachel’s, looking at her with a gooey expression, and I tried not to feeltoostung that he’d picked a desk beside her over one next to me. I was still getting used to the new dynamic that Lee going out with Rachel had created. I hadn’t really noticed it until our time at the beach house this summer, and now Noah wasn’t around to help soften the blow of Lee choosing his girlfriend over me.
Once almost all the desks were filled, Mr.Shane started with the typical first-day-back speech—how he hoped we all had a good summer, but now we had a “really big year ahead” and how important this year was for each of us, and that some of us would need to “knuckle down and work hard.”
He was about halfway through this spiel when there was a knock at the door, and the school secretary stepped inside with a polite smile.
“Sorry to interrupt…You have a new student in your homeroom, and I thought I’d show him up here. My fault he’s late—there was some paperwork that needed to be checked.”
I turned to look at Lee, who raised an eyebrow at me. Our heads swiveled to look at the new student, though I had a feeling I already knew who it was.
And I was right. Levi timidly stepped in from behind the secretary, and his mouth twitched, like he wasn’t sure if he should smile or try to look cool. He was still wearing his sunglasses on top of his head, and where they pushed all the hair back from his face I realized how long his face was. And his chin was sort of pointy, but not in a ferrety way. Actually, seeing him from a distance, he looked taller than he was. A few of the girls across the room started to whisper to each other.
His shirt was free of creases, but only tucked in on one side, and his sweater was slung over his shoulder, underneath the strap of his backpack. It was like he was trying to make his uniform sloppy to be cool, but he still looked pretty clean-cut.
“Well, welcome. Come on in, find a seat. What’s your name?”
“Levi Monroe.”
When Levi spotted Lee and me, his face brightened. Before he could zigzag between the desks to the empty one in front of me, he tripped, arms pinwheeling, alarm taking over his face. He grabbed at a nearby desk for balance, only to bring that crashing down with him.
Someone coughed, trying to cover a laugh, and then Lee and I burst into giggles. One guy moved to give Levi a hand up, another one righting the desk he’d knocked over. Even Mr.Shane was laughing, though he was trying not to.
Levi, without so much as a blush, tossed his head back and dropped his shoulder, turning gravely to the class. “Let it never be said that I don’t know how to make an entrance.” He bowed, and Lee whooped behind me, more people laughing as Levi made it to the seat in front of me—this time without falling over his own feet.
He swung the chair sideways so he could see us and the teacher.
“Hey again,” he said tentatively. I could understand why Cam hadn’t wanted to be stuck with the new kid, but I felt sorry for the poor sap. It couldn’t be easy, moving in your senior year. I smiled to put him at ease.
“It’s…Ella, right?”
“Elle,” I corrected him. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “And that’s—”
“Lee, I remember. Yeah.” He looked at Lisa. “We met the other day, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Lisa.”
He nodded. “Lisa. Got it.”
“And this is Rachel,” Lisa said, gesturing behind her. “Lee’s girlfriend.”
