Existing (4 page)

He shakes his head and weaves his way to his desk when we get into class. I nod at Mr Parker and take my own seat at the desk behind Riley.

I really don’t want to be here today. It was my choice to keep the secrets of my past hidden, but today is the first day that I’ve ever regretted that decision. Maybe I can tell Riley. I know he’ll understand, but then I will have to explain why I haven’t told him before, and I’m not sure he’s ready for that deep and meaningful conversation yet. He’s too much of a dick.

I pull out my
notebook and a battered, chewed-up pen and drop it onto the desk. No one sits by me. I don’t know why, but I’m glad that I get left alone sometimes. There are only so many times I can fake-smile at people or make meaningless, pointless conversations with them.

Mr Parker ste
ps into the middle of the room, but just before he can start the class there’s a knock at the door. He takes a deep breath and calls, “Come in.”

Miss Guttridge steps into the room with her hair sticking to her puffy, red cheeks and blows out deeply. “Mr Parker,” she chirps, “I have one of your new students here with me.”

Mr Parker glances at some paperwork that’s littered on his desk and nods. “What about my other one?”

“She’s in the school office, b
ut we couldn’t locate her files so I told her to wait there.”

“Haven’t her files arrived?” he asks, sounding annoyed.

“Y-yes,” stammers Miss Guttridge, “but I’ve temporarily misplaced them.”

Riley leans back in his chair so his shoulder
s run along the edge of my desk and half turns his head towards me. “That dude looks like Mr Parker’s love child,” he whispers.

I glance at the blonde haired, blue-eyed guy that’s standing at the front of the class looking bored and snort. He actually does look like a younger version of Mr Parker.

The boy’s eyes roam confidently around the room as he stands and watches the exchange between the two adults. When he looks at the two of us, he grins, as if he knows something that we don’t.

“Gay,” hisses Riley.

“Shut up,” I say, pushing his chair forward so he sits back at his desk properly.

“Right,” says Mr Parker. “Miss Guttridge,
can you go and get my other new student, please? And Ashley, you can take a seat on the right-hand side near the back.”

Ashley no
ds at Mr Parker and sits down at the desk that’s to the left of me. Miss Guttridge blushes and backs out of the room.

“Ashley has joined our school and today is his first day,” Mr Parker informs us. “He moved from Portland a few weeks ago and now lives in Cannon Beach.”

I don’t bother to look at Ashley again, but I can tell that most of the girls are turning to look at him.

“Turn to page eighty in your
textbooks, please,” asks Mr Parker.

People start rummaging in their bags and flipping their books open.
I can’t be bothered to open my textbook. I know everything that’s in there anyway. Instead, I let my arm drop over the seat that’s next to me and wait for class to start.

Mr Parker sits back down at his desk and sips his coffee. “You need to read the first chapter of that text and then close the book.”

While everyone is reading, I let my head drop down so it at least looks like I’m doing the same thing that the rest of them are.

Two quick knocks sound out at the door again. Mr Parker puts his mug of coffee onto the desk and rolls his eyes as he walks towards the door.

“This is ridiculous,” he mumbles, pulling the door wide open.  “Ah, hello again, Miss Guttridge. I hope you have my other student with you?”

I lift my head up as Miss Guttridge’s giggles echo out around the room.

“Yes, I do,” she says. “I’m sorry for making her late. Roisin did arrive to the office early, but as I’ve already said, I couldn’t locate her files.”

Riley leans back i
n his chair again, grinning at me like the cat that got the cream.  “Weird name, but she’s still hot.”

I hear Miss Guttridge step aside, but I still can’t see this Roisin girl. Mr Parker’s face creases into a huge smile a
s he steps forward with his outstretched hand.

“You must be Roisin,” he says.

I don’t hear the girl say anything back, but I guess she must have smiled or acknowledged him because Miss Guttridge mutters something about leaving him to it and backs out of the room. I watch, as if it’s in slow motion, as the door swings closed and then I see her. She seems to glitter and shine and I hate myself for being interested enough to bother to carry on looking at her.

What I told Riley earlier was not strictly true. I’m a guy
and I can appreciate a hot girl. It’s just that I know what happens when you act on that attraction, and that’s what I’ve been avoiding for the last three years.

“I told you,” says Riley, looking pleased.
“F.A.F.”

“F.A.F?”
I repeat, trying not to stare at her. “What’s that?”

“Fi
ne. As. Fuck.”

I frown at him and his stupid, made-up acronym. Mr Parker leads Roisin into the middle of the room
and leaves her standing there for us all to stare at, while he gets some papers from off his desk.

“I’m gonna nail her before the end of next month,” whispers Riley.

He’s so derogatory that if he wasn’t my best mate, I’d probably hate him. I look up at her and see the big, brown eyes that Riley was telling me about and the silky, dark brown hair and tanned skin, and I have to agree that she looks Italian. But that’s not what’s left me feeling breathless. It’s her face. She looks terrified and I know that starting a new school in the middle of the semester is scary because I’ve been there myself, but I can instantly tell that there’s something else going on with this girl. I can tell by the way that her shoulders remain stiff that she’s controlling her breathing. It’s something I’ve gotten very good at myself. I can tell that she’s using every ounce of strength that she has to keep her head held high. And I know that all she wants to do is to crawl underneath something big so she can hide.

Her eyes quickly
and shyly roam over the students, but I can tell she’s forcing them to do it. I watch her stare at the new guy, Ashley, for a few seconds and I notice how something briefly changes in her face, before she clamps it back down and moves on from him. Her eyes travel from row to row and I feel myself tensing as they shift towards me.

“She’s shaking like a shitting dog,” Riley says.

I look up at her and her hands that hang awkwardly at her sides and see her fingers trembling.  “Yeah,” I agree, “she is.”

“She’ll be shaking like a shitting dog when I’m done with her,” he says
. “And she’ll be panting like one too.”

I ignore him and lean back in my seat, just as her eyes start on my row. I want her to look at me. I don’t know why but I want her to lock eyes with me so I can silently tell her that she’ll be alright. There’s something about her that m
akes her look so vulnerable that I actually feel sorry for her.

When her deep brown eyes finally fall on me, they halt for a second. I stare at her and then it hits me. She’s hiding something. I know she’s hiding something because she has that same haunted look in her eye
s that I see when I look in the mirror every single morning.

“So, guys, this is Roisin Williams
,” booms Mr Parker.

Roisin’s eyes widen in her head as she turns to look at our teacher.

Mr Parker picks up a file and quickly scans a few lines. “Roisin and her family have recently moved to Cannon Beach from Utah.”

I try not to smile as I watch her mouth drop open.

Why is he making me stand up here like a statue while he fills the class in on my life story? I glance at the file and wonder what else he has in there.

“I’m sure you can all understand how difficult a move like that must be for someone your age and during the middle of an important semester, so I hope you will all play nice.”

A few of the people in the class chuckle but one of them just stares at me. His bright blue eyes remind me of Zak and I silently kick myself for thinking about him. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.

I scan quickly over the other faces and find a different set of eyes that stare into me, pinning me to the spot
and making me feel like my heart has stopped working for the quickest of seconds. I avert my eyes and roam over the other faces until I feel too self-conscious. I glance quickly at him again and feel a little unnerved when I realize he’s still staring at me. He’s sitting alone at a double desk on the back row with his arm hanging casually over the empty chair beside him. I drop my eyes after they’ve traced the strong line of his jaw, up to his perfectly-centered nose and messy light brown hair. His murky grey eyes remind me of the sky in the instant before it pours with rain.

Mr Parker walks up to the side of me a
nd points to a desk in the center column, two rows back. A girl with olive skin and bright green eyes smiles at me.

“You can sit next to Charlotte today
, Roisin,” he tells me.

I nod and walk past the other desks
, praying I don’t trip or drop my folders. Thankfully I don’t and slide as silently as I can into the seat next to Charlotte.

She smiles at me and watches
as I pull my pen and notebook out of my bag before looking forward again to watch Mr. Parker wheel a dangling, life-size skeleton into the center of the room. He recounts the names of the main bones, every one of which I already know. He then fetches plastic muscles and starts to ask people to come to the front of the class and fit them onto the bones of the skeleton. I feel clammy. I never put my hand up to answer a question before, even though I knew the answer to every single one that was asked. I was never asked to read aloud or stand up and give a presentation. It was like the teachers at my old school knew not to bother.

Mr
. Parker starts with the front desk on his right and moves across the room. My hands are wringing wet with sweat when Charlotte is called. I watch her step up and place the gluteus maximus onto the rear of the skeleton. A few sneers sound out. Someone behind me even shouts out that they’d like to touch her gluteus maximus.

“Roisin,”
Mr. Parker says gently.

I stand slowly
and walk carefully to his desk.

“Roisin,” he repeats as I walk up to him, “is that an Irish name?”

“Yes, but it gets shortened to Rose.”

He smiles kindly
at me and twirls a yellow and blue beaded necklace around in his fingers. “And which of them do you prefer?”

I’m suddenly aware of the silence that has descended around the room. “I don’t
really mind. I guess Rose is easier.”

He smi
les and hands me a muscle. “Were you born in Ireland?”

I walk toward the skeleton and shake my head. “My Mother was
half Irish.”

I glance at him and see his eyebrows
rise at the detection of the past tense I’ve used.

“Half Irish and half
what?” he asks.

“Italian,” I tell him, bending down and placing
the calf muscle on the back of the tibia and fibula.

“Correct,” he says, “and for an extra point
, do you know what the name of the muscle is?”

“Gastrocnemius,” I say quickly.

“Excellent, thank you.”

I nod and sit back down.

Charlotte leans over to me and turns her head into the side of my face. “He’s so hot. Don’t you think?”

I glance up at
Mr. Parker again as he hands over another muscle to a different student and look at his face. I hadn’t really noticed before but he is very attractive in a teacher sort of way. He’s young and lively and with his blonde, floppy hair and sea-blue eyes, I guess I can see why she thinks he is hot.

I sh
rug at her. “He looks like a surfer.”

She giggles. “That’s exactly what I said. You can imagine him in his wetsuit on a board with the sea dripping from his hair.”

I glance up again and look around to make sure no one is listening to us and smile at Charlotte. Her sparkling green eyes remind me of our new neighbor’s cat. She screws her face up when she smiles, making them twinkle even more. Even with her face like that, she’s still the prettiest girl I have ever spoken to. It’s unnerving having someone that attractive sitting right next to me when I feel so plain and boring.

“Where do you live?” she asks
, doodling on the inside cover of her workbook.

“Up on South Cannon Road.”

She stops doodling and snaps her head up at me. “Very nice,” she says. “You’re about two miles away from me. I live on Cove Road.”

I try to think of the streets I’ve walked up and down but it all seems like a maze to me
, and I still have no idea how to get to anywhere. “I’m not sure what street is what yet,” I confess, “we only moved here ten days ago.”