I see a flash of the fire in my mind’s eye.
“This spring we’ll be spending a lot of time discussing what it is to be unique,” continues Mr. Phibbs. He stands and hobbles over to the small table at the back of the room, where he picks up a stack of books and begins to pass them out.
“Our first book of the semester,” he says.
Frankenstein.
“It’s alive!” yells the guy with the pink lady on his snowboard, holding up his book as if he expects it to be struck by lightning. Kay Patterson rolls her eyes.
“Ah, you’re channeling Dr. Frankenstein already.” Mr. Phibbs turns to the whiteboard and writes the name Mary Shelley in black marker, along with the year 1817. “This book was written by a woman not much older than you are now, who was reflecting on the battle between science and the natural world.”
He launches into a lecture about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the impact his ideas had on art and literature at the time that Mary Shelley was writing. I try not to stare at Kay Patterson. I wonder what kind of girl she is, to snag a guy like Christian. And then, since I don’t know anything about him other than what the back of his head looks like, and that he likes to rescue girls who pass out in the hall, I wonder what kind of guy Christian is.
I realize that I’m chewing on my pencil eraser. I put my pencil down.
“Mary Shelley wanted to explore what it is that makes us human,” Mr. Phibbs concludes. He glances over at me, meets my eyes like he knows I haven’t been listening to a thing he’s said for the past ten minutes, then looks away.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he says as he holds up the book, and then the bell rings.
“You can sit at my table for lunch, if you want,” Wendy offers as we’re leaving the classroom. “Did you pack your lunch? Or were you planning to go off campus?”
“No, I thought I’d get something here.”
“Well, I think today it’s chicken-fried steak.” I make a face. “But you can always get pizza, or a peanut butter sandwich. Those are the JHHS staples.”
“Healthy.”
I shuffle through the line to get my food and follow Wendy over to her table, where a bunch of nearly identical-looking girls peer up at me expectantly. Wendy rattles off their names: Lindsey, Emma, and Audrey. They seem friendly enough. Definitely not pretty people, all wearing T-shirts and jeans, braids and ponytails, not a lot of makeup. But nice. Normal.
“So, you’re like a group?” I ask as I sit down.
Wendy laughs.
“We call ourselves the Invisibles.”
“Oh . . . ,” I say, unsure of whether she’s joking or how to respond.
“We’re not freaks or geeks,” says Lindsey, Emma, or Audrey, I can’t tell which. “We’re just, well, you know, invisible.”
“Invisible to—”
“The popular people,” says Wendy. “They don’t see us.”
Great. I fit right in with the Invisibles.
Across the cafeteria I catch a glimpse of Jeffrey sitting with a bunch of guys in letterman jackets. A little blond girl is gazing up at him adoringly. He says something. Everybody at his table laughs.
Unbelievable. In less than one day, he’s Mr. Popular.
Someone pulls a chair up next to me. I turn. There is Christian, straddling the chair. For a moment all I can focus on is his green eyes. Maybe I’m not so invisible after all.
“So I hear you’re from California,” he says.
“Yes,” I murmur, hurrying to chew and swallow a bite of peanut butter sandwich. The room is quieter now. The girls at the Invisibles table are gazing at him with wide eyes, as if he’s never crossed into their territory before. As a matter of fact, pretty much everyone in the cafeteria is looking at us, a curious and almost predatory stare.
I take a quick sip of milk and give him what I hope is a food-free smile.
“We moved here from Mountain View. That’s south of San Francisco,” I manage.
“I was born in L.A. We lived there until I was five, although I don’t really remember much.”
“Nice.” My mind races for the right response to this information, some way to acknowledge this amazing thing we have in common. But I’ve got nothing. The most I can come up with is a nervous giggle. A giggle, for crying out loud.
“I’m Christian,” he says suavely. “I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself before.”
“Clara.” I put my hand out to shake, a gesture he seems to find charming. He takes my hand, and it’s like my vision and the real world clap together at this moment. He smiles this stunning, lopsided smile. He’s real. His hand around mine is warm and confident, just the right amount of pressure. I’m instantly dizzy.
“Nice to meet you, Clara,” he says, shaking my hand.
“Totally.”
He smiles again. Hot is really not an adequate enough word for this guy. He is crazy beautiful. And it’s more than his looks—the intentionally messy waves of his dark hair; the strong eyebrows that make his expression a bit serious, even when he smiles; his eyes, which I notice can look emerald in one light and hazel in another; the sweetly sculpted angles of his face; the curve of his full lips. I’ve been seeing him from the front for all of ten minutes total and already I’m obsessing about his lips.
“Thank you for before,” I say.
“You’re very welcome.”
“Hey, ready to go?” Kay walks up and puts her hand on the back of his neck in a decidedly possessive gesture, spearing her fingers through his hair. Her expression is so carefully neutral it could have been sprayed on, like she couldn’t care less who her boyfriend’s talking to. Christian turns to look up at her, his face practically even with her br**sts. Around her neck dangles a shiny silver half heart with the initials C.P. stamped into it. He smiles.
Spell effectively broken.
“Yeah, just a sec,” he says. “Kay, this is—”
“Clara Gardner,” she says, nodding. “She’s in my English class. Moved here from California. Doesn’t like birds. No good at math.”
“Yeah, that’s me in a nutshell,” I say.
“What? Did I miss something?” asks Christian, confused.
“Nothing. Just a stupid exercise we did in Phibbs’s class. We better go if we want to get back before next period,” she says, then turns to me and smiles, a flash of perfect white teeth. I’d bet money that she wore braces at some point. “There’s this great Chinese place we like to hit for lunch about a mile from here. You’ll have to try it sometime with your friends.” Translation: You and I will never be friends.