I was lost in my little fantasy when the last bell rang and I heard a sharp rapping. Mr. Woodall was a short, balding man who liked to bang a large pointer on the blackboard to get our attention before he pulled down his chart of the periodic table and started poking at that instead.
“Okay!” he yelled. “Quiet! Quiet!”
He called for it every day but the more he did, the more reluctant students seemed to be to comply. I’d noticed most of the teachers at the academy treated us like little kids—or maybe more like prisoners. We were fed and told where to go and what to do and how to do it like we were clearly too incompetent to think of it ourselves. We hadn’t managed to make it out of high school with a diploma so that clearly meant we were idiots.
There was a lot of grumbling and shuffling as the class took their seats. There were no desks, just tables seating two people at a time, and I’d been at a table all by myself since day one. I wasn’t a leper or anything—there were quite a few empty tables. It was a big room, meant for much larger classes. The biggest classes were the night ones anyway, because a lot of the students worked during the day.
“First of all,” he started, still loud because it hadn’t grown sufficiently quiet. “I want you all to know I am not happy with the results of your first pop quiz.”
Well what did he expect? A pop quiz the very first week?
“It appears far too many of you haven’t been paying attention in class.”
“I hear he never passes anybody,” a girl at the table next to me said in a low voice to her friend. Inwardly, I sighed, seriously reconsidering this whole completing school business. I clearly wasn’t cut out for it, especially when it came to covalent and noncovalent bonds.
“So from now on, I’m done with the distractions.” He slapped his pointer on a table up front, making all of us jump and the girl at that table actually let out a little yelp. “No talking. No Walkmans, Miss Wagner. Hand it over. And no gum, Mr. Sanchez. Spit it out.”
Walkman collected and gum thrown into an offered garbage can, Mr. Woodall stalked back up to the front of the classroom, yanking down the periodic table and proceeding to abuse it with his pointer, slapping poor helium like it had done something horribly wrong.
“I want eyes up here and ears open.” Bam. Bam. Bam. Now it was iron getting spanked. At least he had what he wanted—everyone in the room paralyzed, staring at him. I don’t think anyone but me noticed the guy who walked into the room through the open hallway door.
“Pay attention. No more distractions. Do you understand me?” Bam. Bam. Bam. Mr. Woodall continued to attack plutonium for emphasis. “No. More. Distractions!”
“Geez, what did that periodic table ever do to you?”
The guy who had slipped into the room unnoticed broke into Mr. Woodall’s monologue, making the whole class titter nervously with laughter. I’d been frozen in my chair since he entered, knowing instantly who he was. Aimee hadn’t been kidding. Wendy wasn’t exaggerating. He looked just like a younger version of Tyler Vincent standing there with his hands in his pockets, dragging his jeans with that studded belt—it did sort of remind me of diamonds—down his slim hips. His black t-shirt had the red and silver Dead Kennedys logo on it.
Mr. Woodall swung around, brandishing his pointer like a sword. “Excuse me?”
“Here.” He held out a pink slip of paper I recognized as a note from the office, looking more amused than threatened by the teacher’s Mr. Miyagi stance with his wooden staff.
Mr. Woodall snatched the note, quickly scanning it. “Well, Mr. Diamond, kindly find yourself a seat so I may resume my class.”
I watched it happen in slow motion. The girls at the table next to me who I hadn’t said more than a few words to were whispering together, giggling and watching Dale Diamond. Everyone was watching Dale Diamond. His presence drew the eye like his namesake, something so stunning and multifaceted and beautiful it was hard to look away. I looked too, my knees up against the edge of the desk, propping my notebook open. I hid behind it and watched him scanning the room, looking for a seat.
I saw his gaze, a quick pause at a couple empty tables, one next to Holly Larson, a girl I’d talked to in my history class who had given a baby up for adoption, but you’d never know it from looking at her. She was tall and stunningly beautiful, the cheerleader type, one of those girls you expect to stay a virgin and keep her football boyfriend at bay at least until college. Holly brightened when she saw him looking at her, straightening in her seat, even leaning over and putting her hand suggestively on the chair beside her, making it look deliberate and casual all at the same time.
The girls next to me acted like we were all still in grade school and I glanced over at the two of them, faces so heavy with make-up it was more like war paint, hair teased up fashionably high, Spandex leggings skin-tight, shirts casually ripped to the correct Flashdance proportions, gold dangling from their ears and bangles clinking on their wrists as they put their heads together like co-conspirators, clearly trying to figure out a way to lure the new guy into their trap.
I watched his gaze skip over the Flashdance twins but he was heading straight for them, threading his way slowly, easily, through the maze of tables like a big cat surveying his territory, looking for the best rock to sun himself on while everyone watched him with baited breath. I felt myself sinking in my chair, trying to make myself invisible behind my notebook, keeping only one eye on him, part of me hoping he wouldn’t see me, part of me hoping he would.
He didn’t walk so much as saunter, taking his time. I think he knew everyone was watching, whispering about him behind their hands. Most new kids would have been embarrassed but he seemed unaffected. In fact, he seemed rather used to the sort of attention he attracted, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. Some people were just like that. They had a kind of magnet inside of them that drew people like moths to a flame.
I’d fallen in love with Tyler Vincent in an moment, the first time I saw him on a television screen, even before he opened his mouth and began to sing. I understood that sort of instant fascination, the thrill it gave you just to watch someone walk across a room, filling all the available space, radiating so much energy people found themselves turning toward the source, like the sun. They couldn’t help it.
And I couldn’t help staring at Dale Diamond like that, even though I told myself not to. I was giving myself a very stern lecture in my head. Where was my loyalty? What kind of fan was I, if my head could be turned by some look-alike, just a wannabe, a cheap knock-off, nothing even close to the real thing? My mind was trying hard to reason with my body, but it wasn’t gaining much traction.
My hands, gripping the edges of my notebook to keep them from trembling, were damp and clammy. There weren’t butterflies in my stomach, there were fire-breathing dragons. My belly burned. I felt like I could barely breathe, which was good, because I thought I might just breathe fire, I was so hot. The temperature in the room had risen by about a hundred degrees. I was actually sweating, quivering, sure I was going to melt into a little pile of nothing, and that was before he met my eyes.
He moved toward the table behind the Flashdance twins—it was empty and they were practically dancing in their seats—when he stopped, looking my way for no reason at all, peeking over their Aquanetted hair-dos at me. I swear it was like he felt me or sensed me staring at him, thinking about him, even though I was mostly hidden behind my notebook. His dark hair fell haphazardly over one eye and he flipped it out of his way, like he was trying to get a better look, the expression on his face like an animal spotting its prey.
Then he cocked his head and smiled, and I was done for. He hadn’t even pounced yet— was still in the tall grass watching, tail swishing, while I grazed nervously nearby—but I was already a goner. His smile was instantly captivating. If I thought he’d been as bright as the sun before, his smile doubled the wattage. His smile was perfectly white, perfectly perfect, a dimple appearing high up on one cheek, and it reached the corners of his eyes like a rising tide, finally pooling in them with a warmth that would have buckled my knees if I’d been counting on them to support me at that moment.
And once he saw me, he didn’t stop. He didn’t look away. There was no shyness or hesitation. Part of me hadn’t wanted to be seen, was afraid of what might happen if he looked my way, afraid of what I would feel, what I might do or say, but another part of me wanted to be seen. Not just seen—chosen. That secret part of me, one I hadn’t even known existed until that very moment—he seemed to bring it out—wanted him to choose me.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
“Sit here, Dale!” One of the Flashdance twins, the one furthest from me but closest to him, clearly felt his energy shift and didn’t like it, not one bit. She tried her best to redirect him, pointing to the empty table behind her, even daring to reach out and tug a handful of his Dead Kennedys t-shirt in her fist to get his attention.
He glanced down at her, annoyed, taking a step back.
“Mr. Diamond, would you please choose a seat?” Mr. Woodall insisted.
The class snickered, all eyes still on Dale, who changed direction, walking in front of the Flashdance twins’ table like they didn’t exist, their longing gazes following him and finally settling on me with so much jealousy I could feel it like an atomic bomb blast.
“Yes, sir.” Dale snapped him a salute, the energy in the room shifting. They were laughing at the teacher instead of Dale now as he approached my table and sat down.
And my body reacted like Tyler Vincent had just dropped into the chair beside me.
CHAPTER THREE
Mr. Woodall resumed his lecture, but I wasn’t listening. I concentrated on staring at the notebook propped on my knees, hair hanging down to cover the flush in my cheeks—I hoped. I couldn’t focus on anything. Sound receded. Woodall was still talking but I could barely hear him, like I was underwater. To me, he sounded like one of the teachers in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
I tried hard not to pay attention to the guy sitting beside me. It was bad enough he looked like Tyler Vincent, which brought up an instant, involuntary response—at least I understood Aimee’s enthusiasm at the lunch table now—but having him just a foot away was beyond distracting. And quite unfairly so, I reasoned. So he was good-looking—so what? So he looked a little like Tyler Vincent—big deal. There were a lot of cute guys at the academy. What made him so special?
Nothing. That’s what I told myself as I tried to catch my breath and started back in on my drawing, ignoring Dale’s existence beside me. He wasn’t the man I wanted, after all. My pencil on the page reminded me with every stroke who my heart really belonged to, filling in his strong jaw and that sweet dent in his chin, adding a little morning stubble, because in my fantasy it was the morning after and I was watching him sleep.
Beside me, Dale leaned back in his chair, putting one black combat boot up across his knee, drawing my eye away from my notebook, tracing the denim seam up from his knee to the V, hesitating at that shiny, studded belt securing his jeans at his waist, all the way up to the Dead Kennedys logo, but I didn’t dare look up any further. I felt his gaze on me. He wasn’t paying any attention to Woodall either, or the dirty looks we were getting from both the Flashdance twins and Holly Larson across the room.
