1/26/2025 0 Comments Chapter 2The hallway outside her closed door began to buzz with activity at 12:50. Doors opened and closed, female voices shouting greets echoed against the concrete. One voice came louder and more clearly than the others. “Just a sec’ — I need to grab my books.” The lock on the door clicked, and the girl from the pictures on the other side of the room came in. Becca jumped to her feet. “Ana?” “Oh!” The girl paused only a moment before rushing forward with one hand outstretched. “You must be Rebecca. Mrs. F said you’d be coming today.” Becca shook her hand. “It’s Becca.” “Becca.” The girl smiled. She was pretty, with dark skin and long straight hair so black it shone blue when the sun struck it. Her teeth were slightly crooked, like they’d resented being straightened out with braces and were rebelling against their freshly-perfect alignment. Her parka and faux-fur boots were a matching shade of lavender. “You’ll be in time for our welcome-back dance!” The fear of a preppy roommate was creeping up on her again — Becca had never met anyone who matched her parka with her faux-fur boots who wasn’t deeply, exhaustingly outgoing. Ana dropped her hand and turned toward her own desk, switching a thick gray textbook for a smaller white one from a sky-blue messenger bag. “Are you starting classes today?” “Mm-hm.” Finished fiddling with her books, Ana turned back around to smile brightly again. “What do you have?” “Uh.” Becca dug through the envelope, more to break eye contact with Ana than because she needed to find the class schedule. “Math with Gary Longhorn.” “That’s on my way to IP. C’mon, I’ll take you.” Becca didn’t want to be shepherded around the school grounds like she couldn’t figure out how to make it on her own, but it would be rude to refuse Ana’s offer, and this girl was going to be her roommate: if there was anyone she ought to make friends with, it would be here. So Becca smiled and grabbed her coat and schedule. She hadn’t bothered to take off her boots. “Okay.” Ana opened the door. Becca sucked in a deep breath as thought preparing to plunge underwater and stepped out of the room to brave the hallway. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. No one was smoking or unrolling toilet paper down the hall, and much of the bustle she’d heard a minute before had died down. Only one other girl was lingering in the hall, and when she caught Becca’s eye, she smiled and headed down the steps without saying anything. Ana led the way out of the dorm and across the snow-covered green. “So, where are you from?” “Just outside Kansas City.” “What’s it like?” “I dunno.” She wasn’t trying to be flippant, but Ana’s friendliness was a lot. People didn’t talk to her, ever. She’d made a life making sure of that. “Flat?” Ana giggled. “I’ve never been out west. I mean, I grew up in San Diego, which is about as far west as you can go, but I mean Out West.” She pronounced the words like they were capitalized. “You know, Big Sky Country.” Becca grimaced. “Kansas City isn’t exactly Big Sky Country.” She didn’t seem to hear the correction. “I’m going to travel someday. You know, see the world.” She paused and pointed to the building on the left, the same one that held Mrs. F’s office, cream-colored brick and a gleaming metal roof. “You’ll go in that door, and it’s the first room on the right. What do you have after math?” “Um.” Becca fumbled a moment with her schedule. “English with Alicia Allyson.” “Me, too! It’s just down the hall from math, so I’ll meet you there after class?” “Okay.” “Great!” Ana hurried off toward the library building, and Becca went inside, trying very hard to not let her next couple of breaths come out like a sigh. It was the friendliness, she decided. She wasn’t used to people being so cheerful and helpful and talkative. She went into the first classroom as Ana directed. It was a small square room, whiteboard to the left, three short rows of student desks to the right, and a teacher desk straight ahead. All but one of those student desks were already full, and the man sitting at the teacher desk was looking down at his scattered mess of papers and didn’t look up as Becca approached. She cleared her throat and pulled out the first of her permission slip things from her envelope. “Mr. Longhorn?” “Oh,” he said, startled out of his papers. He was an older man with a thin gray ring of hair around the back of his head and a pair of serial-killer glasses pushed up on his bald spot. “And you are...?” “Rebecca Toll. I’m new.” A stupid thing to say, but she couldn’t think of anything else. “Oh, right, right. Selma did say ... right, right. Um...” He glanced around his desk, frowning, then found a textbook and scribbled his signature on her permission slip, then stood up and projected over the hum in the room. “Okay, everyone, pipe down. Break’s over, and we’ve got things to learn. Phone away, Miss Jamison.” He had a droning, inflectionless voice that made Becca despair of the possibility of paying attention in his class. “We have a new student today.” He bumped her shoulder and nudged her toward the whiteboard front of the room. “Rebecca, would you like to introduce yourself?” Every eye in the classroom turned to her. Her cheeks got warm; she bit the inside of her lip and warned herself to stay calm. This room did have lights, long fluorescent tubes that flickered in time with her heartbeat. “No, thanks,” she said as politely as possible. A few people snickered. One girl — maybe Miss Jamison — was typing furiously on her phone. “Let me rephrase,” Mr. Longhorn said. “Rebecca, introduce yourself to the class.” “Becca. Um.” She didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes; she stared down at her textbook instead. It was thick and gray with a small insert illustration of the quadractic formula and a couple of triangles in the center. “Hi.” “Go on. Where’re you from? How do you like it here?” Maybe she’d never been to a school small enough for everyone to care about a new student, or maybe Mr. Longhorn just liked being awful. Either way, Becca hoped this wasn’t going to be normal. “It’s okay here. Some of the teachers are a little pushy.” Another, slightly louder, snicker, this one mostly from a boy in the third row who sat next to the only unoccupied desk in the room. The girl on her phone was stilly typing madly as though reporting on Becca’s introduction. “Alright, alright. Go find your seat.” Mr. Longhorn nudged her shoulder again toward the back of the room. Becca slipped between the desks to the empty one in the last row, doing her best to ignore the fact that she could feel every eye in the room still watching her, two dozen pinpricks poking against her skin. She set her book and envelope down and started to sit, but the chair scraped backward, and she had to fumble after it to keep from falling on her ass. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a foot slipping back under the desk of the boy next to her, like he’d had it out a moment before. She sat. A tiny electric shock sparked against her back. She jumped, but at least everyone had turned to pay attention to Mr. Longhorn and didn’t see her startle. Becca opened her book to page 124 as instructed and tried to settle into the rhythm of Mr. Longhorn’s recapping of where they’d ended the fall semester, but the lights were flickering again, more visibly than before, and with increasing speed. It was distracting. “So who can tell me — Mr. Conway!” Mr. Longhorn spun from the whiteboard to face the classroom. The lights were very nearly flashing now, like one of the bulbs was swiftly dying. The boy sitting next to Becca looked up. “Yes?” “Do you have something you wish to share with the class?” “No, sir.” “Then perhaps you would stop disrupting the lesson?” “Oh.” The boy glanced up at the lights as though he hadn’t noticed them, and they went back to a more normal fluorescent tube flicker. “I’m sorry.” He folded his hands and set them carefully on his desk. “Please continue.” Mr. Longhorn breathed out through his nose like he didn’t believe the boy’s apology but turned back to the whiteboard and continued to write out the equation he was talking about. The moment the teacher’s back was turned, another shock, this time to her finger, made Becca jump again. She glanced at the boy; he grinned wickedly and winked back at her. Becca clenched her jaw against the frustration that bubbled up her throat. She couldn’t let anyone under her skin like that, she couldn’t afford it. She faced the whiteboard, determined to ignore both that wink and the annoyance that came with it. She could do this. She could pay attention to her teacher. But Mr. Longhorn’s droning was the sort of noise that feel into the background, especially when the boy beside her started kicking his chair with the back of one foot, a constant but irregular motion that kept pulling at her attention. If he would just fall into a rhythm, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but he refused to do even that. She dropped her head, pulled her hair over her shoulder to block out her peripheral vision, but then she swore she could hear it, a fainting ticking sound as his sneaker connected with the metal leg. “—From there you can solve for y—” Tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tap-tap. Was he tapping his toes now? Becca ground her teeth together and told herself to relax. “—Which gives you y equals x over 2—” Tap-tap-tick. Tick. Tap-tap. After several minutes, she couldn’t stand it any longer. If he didn’t stop, she wasn’t sure she could hold onto that slippery control she had on her temper, and she could go off on him and everyone else in the classroom, and she couldn’t do that, not in her first class on her first day. Not ever, but especially not so immediately. She glared sideways at the boy, but he had his head down, apparently concentrating on his textbook, and didn’t look at her. “Could you please,” she hissed through her teeth when it became clear he wasn’t going to notice her on his won, “stop doing that?” He looked up. “Doing what?” Becca shot a meaningful look at his swinging leg. The leg stilled. “Is that bothering you?” He sounded surprised, as though he didn’t realize he’d been doing it. She forced herself to release the tension in her jaw and whisper rather than hiss at him. “Yes. Thank you.” He set his chin in one propped-up hand and looked at her for a long moment. He was cute, about her own age, with slightly overgrown brown hair that poked out of his head at several different angles and a grin that lit up his entire face. But then his foot started tapping again even as he was looking at her, and the waning dislike immediately flared up, stronger now than it had been before. He was doing it on purpose. He tapped his toes against the hard tile floor loudly enough that she could see a couple of people in the row ahead twitch their heads toward the sound, and when Becca glared at him, he only grinned back. Her jaw had tightened again, and the pencil she held almost cracked in her fingers. She put her other hand over her eyes to block out the sight of him and spent the rest of the hour grinding her teeth and telling herself to calm down, it’s not worth it, he’s being annoying just because he can be, calm down, calm down! The class dragged like each moment was made of honey; it was only an hour, but it felt like six, before Mr. Longhorn stepped away from the whiteboard and dismissed the class. Becca was on her feet, grabbing her things and out the door almost before anyone else had stood up. Ana was waiting for her in the hallway like she said she’d be and smiled when Becca came barreling out of the room. “That good, huh?” she asked, leading the way down the hall and further into the building. Becca tried to relax the muscles around her jaw, but her answer still came out through tightly-clenched teeth. “Ugh, the boy next to me would not stop kicking his chair.” Ana giggled. “Ah. That’d be Philip.” “You know him?” “Yeah, he’s my friend Blaire’s boyfriend.” Her smile turned sympathetic. “He’s great, really, but not so good at sitting still and paying attention, especially around a lot of lights.” “Lights?” “They make him weird. The electricity, you know.” Unusual behavioral disorders. Becca knew what that meant in her case, of course, but what about the rest of the students? Presumably everyone at this school was here because their families didn’t know what to do with them. Ana seemed normal enough — friendly, cheerful, well-adjusted — but Becca had only just met her. Maybe she had some secret dark side, an underbelly she didn’t walk around exposing. What was it? It would be rude to consider asking. Becca stuffed the thought down as far as it would go and followed Ana into another classroom for another hour of her first day. English and study hall passed without incident, and overall, Becca thought her first day had gone rather well — certainly better than her first day at Hawk, the last place she’d been kicked out of, where three of the other residents had tried to beat her up. That hadn’t ended well for anyone involve: Becca had broken two noses and blackened three eyes and ended up confined to her room for two days following the incident.
One annoying kid in math wasn’t as bad as that. Ana met her again in the hallway as Becca left study hall — an hour she’d mostly spent skimming her textbooks figuring out what she’d missed from the previous semester. “All done?” Ana asked as if she expected Becca to have more classes than she did. Maybe she just expected Becca to have extracurriculars already scheduled. “For today,” Becca answered. “Do you have any homework?” “Already finished.” Ana beamed. “Perfect. I’ve got a meeting for the welcome-back party now if you wanna come. My friends Katie and Blaire will be there. I’ll introduce you.” All Becca really wanted to do was bury her face in her pillow, but Ana had been so nice and looked so eager she couldn’t find it in her to refuse. “Sure.” She did her best to make her voice sound excited. “Sounds great.” Ana led the way from the cream-colored building she called Morrell across the green to the student center. “Pretty much if it’s a class or you need Mrs. F, you’ll go to Morrell. If it’s an extracurricular, it’s in the student center, and if you need the gym, library, or cafeteria, you go to Howe. McCray is the dorm, of course. Anyone can get into any building until lights-out at 11:00, then you need your key card to get anywhere, and it’ll deny you access to the wrong side of the dorm or the class building.” Becca scanned the campus from where she was, halfway between Morrell and the student center, Billings Hall. It was all pretty simple — four buildings set around a large central green, all of them visibly distinct from each other in a way that made the whole space look cobbled together over four different ideas of what buildings should look like. “Carry your key card with you,” Ana was saying. “It sucks to have to track down security at midnight because your study group when late, and you didn’t grab it before going.” She opened the front door of the student center and stepped into a large circular room with a towering carved ceiling and warm polished hardwood floors. “This is the Round Room,” she said, holding her arms out wide. “Most of the parties happen here. The welcome-back party is on Saturday night right here. You definitely have to come to that.” Becca smiled noncommittally and changed the subject. “This place is nice.” “It was the chapel for the hospital that used to be here. Mrs. F took out the pews when she bought it, and now it’s the Academy’s party room. You can still get up to the bell tower. I mean,” she added with a demure grin, “we’re not allowed in the bell tower, but if you want to get up there, you don’t even have to break through any locked doors.” Becca couldn’t help the grin that tugged at her own lips in response. “You naughty thing.” “It really was just the once.” They took one of the halls that sprouted off the side of the main room and turned into a smaller alcove with a table and several padded chairs. There was already someone at the table, a girl in a wheelchair who was typing madly into her phone. She looked vaguely familiar, and Becca guessed she had a class with her. “Becca, this is my friend Katie Jamison. Katie, my new roommate Becca. I invited her along because I thought she could use some friends on her her first day.” Katie nodded without looking up from her phone. “Blaire’s on her way — her IP ran long today.” Ana sat and gestured for Becca to do the same. “I thought she got out of IP before break.” “Yeah, well, you know how Mrs. F can be. Total control freak, right? Like, Blaire needs IP the least of anyone.” “Damn straight.” Another girl — Becca guessed this was Blaire — come into the alcove, stomping a little to knock snow off her boots and unwinding a bright yellow scarf from around her neck. “I was all set to advance out of it, then Mrs. F got all, ‘How else are you going to function in polite society?’ as if I don’t already.” Hat and coat followed the scarf, loosing a thin, pretty girl with lips and nails the same bloody red color as her hair. She dropped her outerwear onto the table and sat down with a sigh. “Then I had to go find this one—” she jerked her thumb toward another person hesitating in the entrance to the alcove and apparently more interested in the snow melting on the ground than whatever the girl was saying “—because he got written up again for screwing around in math. Like, seriously? You can’t go one day without getting in trouble?” She slumped back into her seat, and her eyes fell on Becca. “Oh.” She straightened and smiled. “Hi. Sorry about that, it’s been a long day. I’m Blaire.” She stuck out her hand to shake. Becca took her hand and bobbed it once. Blaire’s bright blue eyes clouded over as they touched, and a frown line formed between her eyebrows. Becca dropped her hand as soon as she thought she could without being rude. “Becca.” “Yeah, the new girl. Philip was saying you showed up today.” Becca glanced at the person in the entrance, who looked up at her with a grin and a wink that she’d only seen once but recognized right away. It was the annoying boy from math. Philip. Ana had said he was Blaire’s boyfriend. Becca looked away from him again but could already feel her blood pressure rising. How could a boy she’d barely spoken to make her so annoyed so fast? “How’s your first day been?” Blaire asked. She wouldn’t look at him. She’d pretend he wasn’t even there. “Alright. I only had two classes and study hall today, so it was pretty easy.” “Good. And, hey, if you need anything, we’re the people to talk to. Ana’s student body president and totally Mrs. F’s favorite — whether she’ll admit it or not,” Blaire added when Ana opened her mouth as though to protest. “Truth,” Katie agreed. She hadn’t yet looked away from her rapidly-typing thumbs. Philip came into the alcove and sat down beside Blaire — but, no, Becca wasn’t looking at him, was going to pretend he was there or risk losing her too-slippery control on her temper. She focused on Blaire instead. “Thanks. For being so nice, I mean. It’s not usually the reception I get at a new place.” Blaire smiled wide. Her teeth looked unusually white against the richness of her lipstick. “Call us your welcoming committee.” “Yeah. Welcome to the orphanage,” Philip added. Blaire whirled around to face him. “Ohmigod, Philip, stop calling it that. You are not an orphan. No one here is!” “Well, I am, but don’t let that ruin your point.” Becca was trying to engage, to tease and be friendly, but her words pulled Blaire up short, spun her back around to stare like Becca had announced she was from Mars. “You are?” “Yeah.” Becca cleared her throat, uncomfortable now. “My parents died when I was eight.” Blaire pressed a hand to her lips and spoke through her fingers. “Oh. My. God. Becca, I am so sorry. I ... I didn’t know.” “Of course you didn’t. I didn’t tell you.” But the pause, the sudden thick silence that fell across the table, stretched beyond a simple ask for forgiveness. Blaire’s eyes went down to the table, though the expression in them had gone soft and distant like she wasn’t seeing the table at all. Then, before Becca had the chance to wonder if Blaire was alright, she spun around again and glared daggers at Philip. “What the hell?” He jerked back as if her glare was actually a daggers. “I didn’t do anything.” Blaire glared a moment longer, then looked back at Becca and laid one hand on her arm. “Forgive me?” Should she pat the other girl’s hand or something? She did, slowly, with just her fingertips, and hoped that was good enough. “Yeah, of course.” “What happened to them?” Ana asked, her voice quieter than Becca had yet heard it. Was no one else confused by this exchange? She was trying to engage in the banter, not turn the entire conversation into let’s-learn-Becca’s-deepest-secrets hour. But she thought Ana, at least, was trying to be sensitive, and they might as well know. She shrugged, aiming for casual. “They were killed in an accident.” “What, like a car crash?” Katie asked, her eyes still on her phone. “Yeah, my brother was in one of those about two years ago. He was all bruised up for, like, two weeks. It was crazy.” She looked up suddenly, and her eyes went straight to Philip. “Could you leave, for, like, two minutes so I can finish this?” “Just put the phone away,” Blaire ordered. “We need to talk about the welcome-back party anyway.” Katie frowned, but she slid her phone into her pocket. “Right.” Ana sat up straighter, ready to bring this meeting to its intended purpose. “Were you able to get help with the decorating?” “Mark said he would help,” Katie said, “but he’s such a pain—” “Hey.” Becca sensed more than heard Philip’s whisper. She planted both elbows on the table and refused to look at him. “Hey.” This one she could hear, though it never interrupted the flow of Katie’s words. The chair he was sitting in slid over an inch, squeaking softly over the wood. “Hey, new girl.” “What about a winter theme?” Becca said into a lull in the conversation. “It’s a bit on-the-nose, but I bet that room would look amazing all done up in lights and sparkles.” Something stung on her forearm; she scratched at the place but didn’t look over. “Ooh, and we could all come wearing Christmas sweaters,” Ana added. “We could have an ugly sweater contest.” “You know what I’d really like?” Blaire said. “Something classy. I’d love to see this one in a tux.” Philip grinned. “You know it. I clean up real nice.” He started to lean toward her as though aiming to kiss her cheek, but Blaire shoved his head back with one hand. “Knock it off. I’m trying to talk.” Philip leaned back. Ana and Katie giggled a little, then the three girls went back to talking decorations. Becca didn’t mean to look — she was ignoring Philip, after all — but she caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye before she could turn her full attention back to the other girls. He had slumped with the rejection: there was a curve to his shoulders and spine that hadn’t been there before. “Winter Wonderland,” Ana said, repeating something Becca hadn’t heard. “I love it. I’ll ask Mrs. F tomorrow if we can get some twinkle lights, and them maybe we can all make a bunch of paper snowflakes?” “I have some glitter from an old art project,” Katie said. They were in the alcove for almost an hour. It wasn’t until the meeting ended and Ana was leading Becca back to the dorm through the gathering dusk that Becca realized Philip hadn’t spoken again in that whole hour.
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AuthorI'm M. B. Robbins. I write YA/NA fantasy, with a particular love for fairy tale retellings. You can check out my books here. ArchivesCategories |
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© COPYRIGHT 2025. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.