Page 18 of The Big Easy & Other Lies
“Warning bell,” Bran said. “You have one minute. Do you know where you’re supposed to go?”
Rhett glanced down at the schedule in his hand. “Calculus,” he said. “Angelique was going to show me where the class is, but some teacher called her off to talk to her.”
“Cam will show you. Mrs. Hebert!” Bran called.
“Yes, Branford?” she asked without looking up from the stack of papers in her hand.
“We got a new student. Can Camille take him to calculus?”
Mrs. Hebert glanced up at Bran’s announcement. “You must be Rhett Hawker,” she said. “Welcome to LaSalle. Take him on over, Miss Landry.”
I nodded, way too mortified over Bran’s transparency to do anything else. I stood and faced Rhett. “It’s this way,” I said, waving toward the door. I stepped around him to take the lead at the same time that he sidestepped to let me pass, but we went the same direction and I bumped into his chest, ricocheting back.
He reached out to grab my shoulders and steady me. The heat from his fingers burned straight through my cotton T-shirt. Bran laughed. “You really knocked Cam off her feet.”
“Shut up, Bran,” I said. If I were any of the other three hundred girls at LaSalle, I would have done something flirty, like reach up and put my hands on Rhett’s chest while cracking a joke, or batting my lashes. But I was me, and so I froze and stared at his neck. A tiny pause settled while he waited for something, and then he lifted his hands.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. He stepped aside, and I concentrated on getting out of the classroom without making eye contact with any of the kids staring at us.
Mr. Herring’s room wasn’t that far away, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hurry up and deliver Rhett to calculus and end the awkwardness, or if I wanted to dawdle and pray for something to say. I settled for my fallback strategy—I punted. “Mr. Herring is down there,” I said, gesturing to the end of the hallway. “Hook a right and he’s the first door you’ll come to.”
Rhett’s gaze followed my pointing finger and his brow furrowed. “Will your teacher be mad at you if you walk me all the way down?”
“No.”
“Then walk me all the way down,” he said with a smile and an invitation in his eyes.
I jerked into motion, and Rhett fell in beside me. I kept my eyes near his feet. He wore classic Adidas with his dark jeans and a green vintage T-shirt, plain, because dress code didn’t allow for any words on our clothes except for school spirit gear.
He cleared his throat. “Last chance to tip me off before I’m in the wild. You sure there’s nothing I have to know in my last two minutes of freedom?”
I glanced up and shrugged. “Welcome to the jungle. Watch for snakes, I guess.”
He smiled, but it looked nervous. And endearing. “The truth comes out. You admit LaSalle isn’t the utopia you described last night.”
“I didn’t say that!” I protested.
“No, but most kids would rip on their school to sound cool. Since you didn’t, I had to assume you thought it was awesome.”
I stopped walking, not wanting to pass any open classroom doors and be seen chatting up the new kid. That would only attract unwanted attention from people hitting me up with questions about him later. “I said LaSalle is okay. It doesn’t suck, it’s not nirvana. It just is. A lot of kids like it. At least the ones who don’t leave and go somewhere else. If their parents let them leave, anyway. Most of them want LaSalle on their kids’ college applications.”
“You’re still here. Would your parents let you leave if you wanted to?”
I shrugged. “I never asked.” I didn’t like getting into the whole orphan situation. It was way less interesting than it sounded on the surface. Plus, sometimes discussing dead parents made people fidgety. “I can’t really sum up LaSalle in a minute, but I’ll say this. It’s more good than bad. I think you’ll like it.”
He gave me a slight nod and the tension around his eyes eased a bit.
I wanted to reach out and touch his hand, to reassure him even more. Instead, I stopped at the hall he needed and pointed to the first door on the left. “That’s Mr. Herring’s room. I don’t have him this year, but he was a good geometry teacher. He’s strict but it keeps people in check so it’s not too crazy-making.” I hesitated, wanting to see his full smile again. “You’re going to be okay.” The words sounded weak, not encouraging like I meant them to. I turned to leave but Rhett caught the sleeve of my shirt.
A door opened and Lily Couvillion emerged from World History with a morning attendance sheet in her hands. She saw Rhett and her eyebrows shot up, clearly fascinated. His hand drifted back to his side and twitched.
“Hey, Cam,” she said, stopping when she reached us.
“Hey,” I said, and offered nothing else. It was rude not to make introductions, but Lily Couvillion had a big mouth, and I wasn’t about to willingly give her a single syllable for her next campus-wide gossip campaign.
She glanced at the schedule still in Rhett’s hand. “You must be new here. I’m Lily.”
