6
12:01 P.M.
JONATHAN
Jessica headed to lunch, a fist of nerves clenched in her stomach.
Dess had given her the creeps again, just like that first day in trig. Jessica could see why Dess didn't have many friends. Every time Jess felt like they were starting to connect, the girl would make some weird, knowing observation, as if she wanted to convince Jessica that she had psychic powers. All Jessica had wanted was some help with trigonometry, not a course in the arcane ways of Bixby, Oklahoma.
Jessica sighed as she made her way toward the cafeteria. Now that she thought about it, Dess wasn't really all that mysterious. Just sad. She was pushing Jessica away on purpose. The befuddling twists and turns of her conversations were probably meant to shut people out. Messing with people's heads was easier than getting to know and trust them. Maybe she was afraid.
But Dess never seemed afraid, only calm and confident. However off the wall her lines were, she always delivered them in such a knowing way. Dess talked as if she lived in an alien world with completely different rules, all of which made perfect sense to her.
Which was another way of saying she was crazy.
On the other hand, something inside Jess felt as if Dess was actually trying to communicate with her. Was trying to help her understand her new town or maybe even warn her about something. Dess had been totally right about the weird dream. Of course, that didn't necessarily make Dess a mind reader and didn't mean the Bixby water supply had caused it. A lot of people had funny dreams when they went new places. Dess probably realized that Jessica was freaked out about moving and had decided it would be fun to freak her out a little bit more.
It had worked.
As Jess reached the lunchroom, the slightly rancid smell of frying swept out of the open double doors, along with the roar of hundreds of voices. Jessica's step slowed as she crossed the threshold. As the new girl, she still experienced a few seconds of minor panic while figuring out where to sit, not wanting to offend new friends or get stuck with people she wasn't sure about.
For a moment Jessica almost wished that Dad hadn't decided to start packing lunches for her. Waiting in line for official Bixby High School slop would have given her more time to scope out where to sit. Maybe that was why high school lunches had been invented. It certainly hadn't been for their nutritional value. Or their flavor.
As her eyes scanned the room, the butterflies in Jessica's stomach started fluttering again. There was Dess, looking straight at her. The girl must have used some quicker route to the lunchroom through the Bixby High maze. She sat at a table in a distant corner with two friends. Like her, they wore all black. Jess recognized the boy from the first day of school. She remembered that moment of anxiety entering Bixby High for the first time, terrified that she was late. The memory was strangely clear; the image of his glasses getting knocked off was cemented in her mind. Jessica wondered why she hadn't seen him around since then. With his long black coat the guy should have stood out at Bixby. There'd been a lot of kids like him and Dess back in PS 141, but there were only three or four here. It was too warm and sunny in Oklahoma to do the whole vampire thing.
Unless, of course, you were "photophobic," if Dess had even been telling the truth about that.
Now the boy was looking at Jessica too, as if he and Dess were both expecting her to join them. The other girl at the table was staring off into space, headphones over her ears.
Jessica looked around for somewhere else to sit. She wasn't up for any more head games today. She looked for Constanza or Liz, but she couldn't see them or any of the other girls from the library table. Her eyes searched for a familiar face, but Jess recognized no one. The horde of faces blurred together into a bewildering mass. The cafeteria slipped out of focus, the dizzying roar of voices assaulting her from all sides. Her moment of hesitation stretched out, suddenly transformed into total confusion.
But somehow her feet kept walking, bringing her closer to Dess's table. The girl and her friends were the only stable part of the room. Instinct carried Jessica toward them.
"Jessica?"
She turned, recognized a face out of the blur. A very attractive face.
"I'm Jonathan, from physics class. Remember?"
His smile cut through the fog enveloping her. His dark brown eyes were very much in focus.
"Sure. Jonathan. Physics." She had noticed him in class. Anyone would have.
Jessica stood there, unable to say anything more. But at least she had managed to stop walking toward Dess's table.
A look of concern crossed his face. "Want to sit down?"
"Yeah. That would be great."
He led Jessica to an empty table, in the corner opposite Dess's. Her dizziness began to subside. She gratefully dumped her book bag and lunch sack onto the table as she sat down.
"You okay?" Jonathan asked.
Jessica blinked. The cafeteria was back to its normal self: loud, chaotic, and a bit smelly, but no longer a roller coaster. Her disorientation had vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. "Much better."
"You looked like you were going to take a spill."
"No, I... Yeah, maybe. Tough week." Jessica wanted to add that she didn't usually act like a zombie in front of cute guys but somehow couldn't find the right words. "I think I just need to eat."
"Me too."
Jonathan overturned his lunch bag, spilling its contents onto the table. An apple rolled perilously close to the edge of the table, but he ignored it. It stopped just before falling to the floor. Jessica raised an eyebrow as she looked at his pile of food. It included three sandwiches, a bag of chips, a banana, and a carton of yogurt in addition to the wayward apple.
Jonathan was thin as a rail. A hungry rail. He grabbed a sandwich from the pile, pulled off its plastic wrap, and tore into it.
Jessica looked at her own lunch. As always, Dad had gotten bored last night and created something complicated. Grated cheese, ground meat, chopped lettuce, and tomato all occupied their own corners of a multisection container. A couple of hard taco shells were visible through the plastic of another. The tacos were already broken. Jess sighed and popped open the containers, dumping all the ingredients together and starting to mix them up.
"Mmm, taco salad," Jonathan said. "Smells good."
Jessica nodded. The spicy aroma coming from the meat had taken the edge off the fried smell of high school cafeteria. "My dad's getting into southwestern cuisine in a big way."
"Beats sandwiches."
"That one looks good."
"They're peanut butter on banana bread."
"Peanut butter on banana bread? All three? That's a... time-saver, I guess."
"Saves slicing bananas. I can't ever wake up early enough to make anything fancy."
"But three of them?" she asked.
He shrugged. "That's nothing. Some birds eat their own body weight every hour."
"Sorry, I missed the feathers on you."
Jonathan grinned. He looked sleepy. His eyes never quite opened all the way, but they twinkled when he smiled. "Hey, if I don't get enough calories, I'm the one who's fainting." He opened the second sandwich and took a huge bite, as if talking this much had put him behind schedule.
"That reminds me," Jessica said, "thanks for saving me. That would have been a smooth move, falling on my face in front of the whole school my first week here."