Page 15 of Reaching Avery
“It’s okay,” he said in a softer tone… one that did something weird to my chest. I held the books tighter against me—right on the spot that had felt funny. “Do you like Port Haven so far?”
I looked at him and forgot how to speak for a second. His eyes were like a sapphire blue that also had small specks of gray in them. His square jaw and full bottom lip caught my focus before I met his eyes again.
“Huh?”
Maverick smiled and repeated his question.
“Um, yeah. It’s okay,” I answered, shifting my weight to my other foot. “Does it always have such a fishy smell, though?”
He laughed. “You get used to it after a while. And it’s only so bad now because we’re right by the shore.” His gaze darted to the clock before he turned back to me. “Class is about to start. See you later.”
Then, he walked to his desk. I stared after him a moment before doing the same.
Mr. Jones entered the room, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. “Good morning, class. I hope you’re all doing well.” He sat the cup on his desk and looked up at us before grinning. “I take your lack of enthusiasm as you’d rather still be in bed than hearing me talk.” That earned him some chuckles. “I’m going to hand these out and then take attendance while you look over them.”
When he put one on my desk, I grabbed it, noticing the paper was still warm. Fresh out of the copying machine. It had a list of words—names, dates, and events—and at the bottom, there was a section that said ‘essay questions.’
“This will be your study guide,” Mr. Jones said, back at the front of the room. “Before we start a new set of chapters, I will give you one of these. As we go through the material, you can fill-in the information on theidentifyterms and the essay questions. For your exam, I’ll choose ten of the twenty terms, as well as two of the five essay questions.” He smiled at the lift of mood in the room.
I mean, he was seriously giving us all the questions that would be on the exam? Really?
“I know a lot of you think it sounds too easy,” he said. “But I guarantee it’ll be harder than you think. I’ll expect more from your answers and not just a simple sentence or two. On the terms, you’ll need to know: what or who it is, the historical significance of said person or thing, and any major key points that happened around them.”
It still didn’t sound too bad to me, and I scanned over the terms, already knowing a few of them.
We were starting off learning about the events leading up to the Civil War—the American one, not the one from the Marvel universe. But, yeah, it’d be pretty freaking awesome to talk about Captain America in class. Or have him teach it.
Mr. Jones turned on the Smart Board and brought up a PowerPoint presentation. The lights were dimmed a little so everyone could see the board, and then he started lecturing. And thank God he actually knew how to use PowerPoint. It made learning more engaging.
I opened my notebook and took notes on the lecture, shoving the thoughts of bullies and all other troubles aside.
After class, I gathered my things and started leaving the room. Maverick and I got to the door at the same time, and on instinct, I stepped back to let him go first. He didn’t move at first, and I looked up. His blue eyes were staring into mine. Something odd passed between us, but I didn’t know what that something was.
And then he left.
I’d grabbed my biology book earlier when I’d gone to my locker, so I was able to go straight to my next class. Maverick had that class with me, but he wasn’t in the room yet when I walked in.
Not that it mattered if he was. It wasn’t like I was into the guy or anything. He was just… interesting. And he was the only person at school besides my teachers who seemed to know I even existed, other than the few guys who’d occasionally pushed me in the hall and the one who’d tripped me that day in class.
When he came into view, I immediately looked away, but not before I saw his curious blue-eyed gaze focus on me. In that split second, my heart had thumped harder, but I wasn’t sure why.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him go to his seat, and I relaxed.
I was in my favorite spot right beside the window, and I looked outside. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and from my desk, I could see part of the water from the nearby shore. It glistened under the sun’s rays, but I knew even with the warm day, that water was still freaking cold.
I shivered as I looked at it; from the thought of the cold water on my skin, but also because it freaked me out.
Massive bodies of water were nightmarish to me, and when I imagined all the hidden things beneath the surface, lurking in the depths, that fear only increased. I couldn’t even watch movies or TV shows where people went scuba diving or shipwreck diving because it amped up my anxiety.
Mrs. Brown stood from her desk once the bell rang, and she went to the whiteboard to write that day’s assignment. We were going to be learning the phases of cell division, and then next week, she said we’d be getting into groups to look at slides under a microscope.
“Keep in mind,” she said, “the person I pair you with will be your partner for all group projects from now until the end of the school year. Since this is an advanced placement course, I will be pushing each of you a bit more than the usual class.”
I loved the hands-on learning, but not when it involved group partners. As she began calling out names and assigning partners, I slunk down in to my seat. I didn’t know anyone, and I knew the person who got paired with me would probably be disappointed in some way because I was the unpopular, new kid.
Well… one person saw me. Maverick. For some reason, I expected to be partnered with him.
But then I had to remind myself that this was real life and not a teenaged romance novel.
