Page 2 of September Lessons
Everyone in that hallway looked like a baby.
Carrie grabbed the same binder she had used for the rest of her high school career and followed half the seniors into a room at the end of the hall. Mrs. Cooper’s Math Room was illuminated with neon-colored paper cut into the shapes of numbers and letters commonly found in algebra.What is this? Kindergarten?Carrie stood by the door while everyone else sat with their friends or did logic-gymnastics to get out of sitting next to that one kid who embarrassed them eight years ago. Carrie would sit wherever there was room once the dust settled.
So happened that was three rows back, between a boy with tremendous acne he seemed to give no shits about…
And a girl with hair as dark as a goth’s soul.
Hello there.The girl said something to her friend in front of her before flipping open a fresh notebook and scribbling something at the top of the first page. Her fluid movements held the grace of a dancer who didn’t want to forget her daily practice. The soft flutter of her eyelashes highlighted the cheekbones and the curls hanging like dainty spirals from her head. Her makeup was noticeable, but not garish. A little blush. A touch of eyeliner. A subtle hue on her lips that would probably keep her fromtoomuch trouble with authorities. Not like Carrie, who either went bare-faced or overdid it so much that her own mother called her a Jezebel.
Lesbian Jezebel, here I come… ahem, assuming she’s almost eighteen…Yeah, dating got more complicated when you were one year over the age of majority and all of your classmates were still seventeen.
“Hey,” Carrie said, folding her arms over her binder and flashing her neighbor a smile. “I’m Carrie. I’m new here. Anything… uh… you can tell me about the old lady up there?”
She was met with a curious gaze that neither judged her nor sized her up. “New girl, huh?” They were soon drowned out by Mrs. Cooper flipping over her attendance sheet and calling out everyone’s names. Instead of taking the opportunity to learn who she now went to school with, Carrie continued to stare at her neighbor like she was the perfect princess of one’s dreams. “Cool. Math first period is gonna suck, though.”
“Christina Rath!” called Mrs. Cooper.
The girl jerked upright. “Present!” She bent back over her notebook and scribbled something in the margin. Carrie continued to stare at her out of the corner of a blurring eye.
“…Carrie! Carrie Sage!”
Half the class looked in her direction. Caught daydreaming, Carrie sat up and looked the old woman at the front of the room in the eye. “Present,” she dryly said, before flipping open her binder and double-checking the existence of her calculator.
Mrs. Cooper moved on to the next person on the alphabetical list. Meanwhile, someone poked Carrie between the shoulder blades.
She whipped her head around, elbow falling over the back of her chair. Was this it? Was when the hazing began?
To be fair, though, the girl looking back at Carrie didn’t appear to be someone capable of hazing. At least not physical hazing. Straw-colored hair drooped past a long face dotted with two big, brown eyes. A brown and white plaid shirt clung to a wiry frame that did nothing for the girl’s figure, not that Carrie cared about that. She may have been no Christina, but she wasn’t Quasimodo, either.
“You’re wasting your time,” the stranger said.
Mrs. Cooper picked up a white board marker and squeaked her name at the front of the room.“Call me Mrs. Coop for all I care, but please do not call me Patricia. Out there in the real world, you will need to pay respect to your elders!”Carrie knew she should leave a good impression at her very first class at a new school on the other side of the country, but she was too intrigued by what the girl behind her had said.
“Wasting my time, huh?”
The girl gestured her head to Christina, who continued to scribble in her brand-new math notebook. “She’s straight.”
In all of her life, Carrie Sage had never been found out so quickly. Granted, this was Paradise Valley, where everyone was assumed gay until proven otherwise, butwow.
“Carrie? Leigh-Ann?”Mrs. Cooper peered over the heads of the students sitting in the front row. Busted again. “Can I have your attention, please? I know we’re all very excited on your first day of senior year, but we have some administrative things to take care of before we can go over this semester’s syllabus. I really hope you are all ready to learn Algebra II! You’ll need it if you want to get into college.”
Carrie shot the girl behind her one more look before turning to the front of the room. Mrs. Cooper gave her the kind of warning glare that made it clear there was no room for troublemakers in her class.
Everywhere I go, I’m a troublemaker.Oh, well. At least Carrie knew how to roll with it. All she cared about was staying in school long enough this time to actually finish.
Assumingthisschool didn’t have an issue with her being gay!
Chapter 2
LEIGH-ANN
Wednesday was always sandwich day at Clark High.Every week like clockwork.Didn’t change simply because Leigh-Ann’s first day of school was on a Wednesday that year. Only freshmen had to attend the preliminary first day right after Labor Day, which meant they got chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, a roll, and whatever canned fruit the lunch ladies doled out that day.I always hope for pears. The peaches are way too sweet.
Sandwich day, though…
She didn’t miss the days of the premade sandwiches they served when she was in elementary school. Since coming to Clark High, though, kids got basic sandwiches they could add condiments and vegetables to themselves, which meant condiment-averse Leigh-Ann finally ate her whole damn sandwich. She still had nightmares of being a kid and getting scolded by the lunch lady because she didn’t finish her mustard and mayo infused sandwich.
Her first back at Clark High – turkey with lettuce and tomato, no mayo – came with a whole apple and a small bag of off-brand potato chips. All around her, kids popped open their sack lunches or chowed down from their cafeteria trays. There were no off-campus lunches at Clark High, and why would there be? Even if kids with cars were allowed to leave campus for forty-five minutes, there was nowhere to go. No McDonalds. No Dairy Queen. Not a Subway for fifteen miles. The teachers who lived nearby never bothered to go home for lunch. Occasionally, someone like Ms. Tichenor the English teacher came into the cafeteria to eat with the students, but most of the teachers kept to their classrooms or the teacher’s room.
