Emily laughed. "Let's just hope you don't receive the tail-end of that lecture."

"Exactly what I was just thinking." She must've known my dad pretty well. It felt kind of strange then to know I shared him with so many other kids. I always knew that, but never experienced it firsthand before.

Dad sat back at his desk, and I chose the opportune moment, as he reached for something on the floor, to slink quietly past-sinking my neck into my shoulders.

Emily, however, shamelessly stopped in front of the desk just to tell Dad how great his lecture was today. Never mind that she wasn't even listening. I really quite liked Emily.

"Hi, David," I said.

He just smiled and took my bag as we walked into the corridor.

"Look, I'm so sorry. What was my dad saying to you?"

He laughed once. "You know, it's okay, Ara. If I was your father and I saw some punk kid look at you the way I'm sure I was, I wouldn't have used words."

We stopped walking, and I groaned, slamming my back against a row of lockers as I tried to rub the ache of mortification from my temples.

"Of course," David continued after a short breath, "if I'd known he was your dad, I might've thought twice about-"

"Hanging out with me?" I dropped my hands to my sides. "I'm sorry. I should've told you." And so, I lost my first friend. I was in no way offended, though. I knew going to the same school as my dad would have its pitfalls. I'd accepted that.

"No-" He stepped closer to me, shaking his head. "No, Ara, I would have thought twice about staring at you that way-in front of him." His words softened on the end.

"Oh. Okay. Well, uh, I'm sorry I didn't mention it earlier."

"Well, a heads-up would've been nice," he said.

"Touche." I smiled, surprised he remembered me saying that in music class.

"So?" We both said at the same time, then laughed.

"You go."

"No, ladies first." He bowed his head.

"Um, about before-"

"Okay, wait." His hand came up like a stop sign; I snapped my mouth shut. "What I said before about dating?" He paused. "It was a mistake. I'm so used to having to give that speech, it just came out on auto. But I didn't mean it for you. I was just illustrating how I don't-I mean-I'm just not that kinda guy." David's fists clenched beside him. "What I meant was that I'd never date any of them-I didn't mean that to include yo-I mean, what I'm trying to say is-" He looked directly into my eyes, and all the students in the hall seemed to disappear. "You're not just any girl, Ara, I-" he swallowed, "-I...like you."

Uh? What? My lungs went tight, like a softball just got lodged in my chest. I looked around, waiting for a group of kids to jump out from behind the lockers and laugh at me, screaming April Fools. Despite it not being April.

David laughed to himself then. "I'm sorry. That was very forward of me. You don't even know me yet, and I-"

"Um, David?" I stopped him. Oh my God. I had no idea what to say. I mean, for all I knew, I had merely imagined him saying that and, at any minute, I'd wake up, still in Dad's class, Emily beside me and a piece of paper stuck to the drool on my chin. I hugged my arms across my waist. "This is all a little bit weird."

"I'm sorry." He scratched his thumb across his upper lip, clearing his throat. "I get it."

"No, you don't get it." I chased after him as he turned away.

"No. Really." His smile radiated sincerity. "I really do. You don't have to explain."

"But-"

"Come on, we're late." He walked a little faster then, but slowed and turned back to face me, pointing his thumb toward the stairs. "It's uh-it's this way."

I walked after him, forcing my fingertips into my own brows. I wished I could scream it out-tell him exactly what I was thinking. But I just didn't want to seem creepy or desperate. And it was creepy, and probably a little desperate, to like a guy I just met. Of course, that didn't change the fact that I was practically envisioning my initials beside his surname. Creepy.

David stopped walking. "Did you just say something?"

"I uh-no." I hope not. "Was I thinking out loud?"

"Uh, I don't know. Did you mean to say that?"

"Say what?"

"You two!" A door burst open beside us, and an evil-villain-type-scary woman, who probably kidnaped Dalmatians, popped her angry face out. "Why aren't you in class?"

"Sorry, Miss Hawkins, we were just going," David said slowly.

"Well, make it quick, please, the bell has rung." She slammed the door, leaving David and I alone again.

The awkwardness separated us with an invisible line.

"Lunch?" David said, shattering the tension.

"Lunch?"

"Yeah. Can I..." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking up from his shoes. "Can I walk you to lunch after class?"

I smiled, a simple smile. "Sure, why not."

The words 'coward', 'moronically deranged' and 'stupid, stupid, stupid!' stared at me from the page where an equation was supposed to be solved. But if I couldn't find the formula for curing regret, how was chemistry going to be any easier?

I dropped my face against my hands, slamming my elbows on either side of my book, while the whole conversation with David played in my mind like a regret marathon on repeat. How could I have just stood there with my giant gob open and let nothing out? I should've told him. I should've said, "Thanks, David. I like you, too." What is wrong with me?

"Everything all right, Ara?" Miss Swanson asked.

I sat up straight and grabbed my pen. "Um, yeah. All good."

Satisfied, the teacher turned back to the board and, one by one, the students followed suit, leaving me and my scribble alone again.

My scribble became pictures then, each word transforming into a snake or overlapping circles and other various works of notepad art, all twining together to form two words: Knight Fever. I had it bad-bad enough to be drawing love hearts.

I scribbled them out, practically ripping the page with my pen. It was way too early to use that word. This was in no way love at first sight-just my deep-seated need to feel accepted manifesting itself into emotions that weren't real. I nodded, satisfied with my psychological assessment. That would've made Vicki proud. Except, I didn't want it to be right. It felt good to like a boy. It felt good to be that distracted. But I couldn't let that feeling divert me from the plan; to put my head down, get through this year and hopefully, somewhere in the mix of all my moving on, I might actually move on-without dragging anyone down with me.

When the lunch bell rang, I stayed in my chair, sharing my pendulum thoughts with the Bunsen burner. He didn't talk back, thankfully, but I wished he would. If it was even a he. "Sorry," I said, "If you're a girl, you have a lovely figure."

"I assure you, I'm a boy," it said in a velvety voice. And my cheeks went really hot when I realised it wasn't the Bunsen burner that spoke.

All I could do was laugh, staring forward with a rock of tension making my head want to sink down. "I'm...just gonna go hide under the desk."

David cleared his throat into his fist. "Don't do that. It's okay, I talk to inanimate objects all the time."

"You do?" I said as he sat beside me.

He nodded. "Is something on your mind, new girl?"

"A lot of things are, but only one of them's bothering me right now."

He clasped his hands together on the table in front of him. "I'm all ears."

I tried to think of something funny to say, but couldn't. "I'm sorry about before."

"Before what? Before the beginning of the world, before the coming of Christ?"

"Ha-ha." I slapped his forearm, noting the silkiness of his skin just below his sleeve. "No, about before, when I choked up."

He laughed. "Oh, don't worry about that, pretty girl. I have a tendency to..." he smiled, "...over-share."

"Not really. All you said is you like me." I dipped my shoulder a little, feeling funny about saying that out loud. "And I just choked because no one's ever said that to me before."

"Well, it wasn't a confession of love. Like can mean many things."

"I know." I just wished it was a confession of love. "And I guess...in that sense, I actually like you too."

He grinned, making a thin line of his lips. "Good. Then, friends?"

"Yeah, friends."

David frowned then, looking down as my belly added its two cents. "Hungry?" he said.

I wrapped my hands over the rumbling. "Uh, yeah, just a little."

Chapter Four.

Though the rest of the school was unbelievably free of cliches, given that I'd expected a High-School-Musical type scene when I first arrived here, the cafeteria was not. The buffet style cabinets, the old ladies in hairnets, and even the giant hall with long lines of plastic picnic tables, looked just like something out of a movie. Nothing like the old window-in-a-wall we had at my old school, where you could buy pies and wraps and that's pretty much it.

"This is so much cooler than back home," I said, sliding my tray down a few seats to sit at the centre of the empty table. The warm weather had attracted most of the students outside today, so we had free pick of the room.

David slid in next to me. "Cooler would be if they hired enough kitchen staff to accommodate the great number of students."

"I thought they did just fine."

"Today, yes," he said. "But it usually takes until the end of lunch period to be served, and half of us end up eating in class."

"Oh, why was today so quick then?" I looked back at the now empty buffet-all the kids seated, eating, aside from a few dregs gathering by the drink machine or buying dessert.

"They had help today."

"Volunteers?"

"Of a sort." David covered his smile with a fist. "Half the football team is serving detention in the kitchen."

"Really? Why?"

"Something about ditching paper cannons." He picked up a corn chip and held it near his mouth. "You planning to eat?"

"Oh, um, yeah." I straightened my tray and leaned my elbows on the table. "So, what's the deal here anyway, like, social hierarchy? I'm guessing they're at the top." I pointed to the group of well-built jocks at the corner of the room.

"The guys having the fruit war?" He smiled as a piece of banana hit the glass window then slid down into a pile of pulp on the floor. "That's the other half of the football team, and yeah-" he nodded, looking away from them, "-they're pretty much the top of the food chain. Fourth on the list would be these guys." He waved at one of the girls at the table in front of us. "Music class. They pretty much hang out together. The lowest ranking would be the boys behind you."

"Let me guess." I smirked, looking at their paper-wrapped sandwiches and milk cartons beside the chessboard. "They're the chess geeks."

David laughed. "You must be psychic."

"Well, the whole scene is self-explanatory, but the 'Chess Club' jacket was a dead giveaway."

"Yes, I suppose it is. Do you play?"

"Play?"

"Chess."

"Oh, yeah. I do. Should I be sitting with them?"

"No." He chuckled. "Unless you want to wear fruit juice home every day."

I shrugged. "Strawberry would look rather fetching on me, I think."

"Your hair smells like strawberries," he said, and I wondered quietly how he could smell that.

"So where do you fit in?" I asked.

David looked to the side. "Well-"

"Hey, guys." Emily perched herself on the seat across from David.

"Emily." He nodded his greeting.

"Hi," I said, then shovelled a mouthful of lasagne into my gob-an offering for the empty hole in my belly where a green ogre dwelled.