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Celestial Souls , Book I: Christine
Chapter One: The Newbie

I like to think I’m pretty good about getting up early – there’s no point in bitching so I don’t. I stretch, shiver on cold mornings, and fumble for my housecoat. Breakfast usually helps in waking up too, even if it’s just a bowl of cereal. Like I said, pretty good. Except for today.

It could have been the fact that Shelby Summers, the closest thing to a ‘best friend’ I had since I moved to this little backwater town, had called the night before. We (okay, it was mostly her) talked for three hours at least; I didn’t hang up until around eleven. Babbling on about God-knows-what. But right at that moment, it was six-thirty in the morning, unusually cold to boot, and I felt like I’d slept on a wooden mattress – if she’d said anything important, it wasn’t going to come to mind.

The hallway was dark. That was good. Thomas wasn’t up yet. I winced as my back gave a sharp, stabbing pain – what the hell had I done to it – trudging down the badly carpeted hallway to slip into the bathroom, the tile cold under my feet. The door shut with a squeak and a click; the flicked on the light-switch, wincing at the sudden light burned my eyes. You’d think I would be used to it by now, but no, I’ve been temporarily blind every morning.

My eyes adjusted quickly, as they usually did, and I peered at myself in the large mirror. Bed-head, of course; my hair was all limp, and even the golden hue didn’t really look pretty. I didn’t look sick – no paler than I usually was, no rings under my eyes – but I felt like crap. Seizing the white knob of the medicine cabinet, I pried it open with a grunt. Several rows of medicine greeted me, prescription and non – my brother’s hay fever medication, some cough syrup, some antacids, and many orange-tinted bottles containing various medications for my mother. I was never entirely sure what they did – the bottle to the far right contained something for high blood pressure, that I knew, but the rest were an anomaly; estrogen pills or something and other crap and other stuff I was always never comfortable talking about.

But there was a bottle of aspirin there. I seized that, the text on the blue label promising relief from headaches, toothaches, and al sorts of pains. Popping the lid, I shook out a pill and popped it in my mouth, quickly grabbing water to wash it down with. I winced, swallowing hard a second time as the pill forced its’ way down my throat.

The hallway was still dark when I left the bathroom and made my way down the hall to the kitchen. I flicked the light on – blinded again – to see the kitchen – Mama had left some papers on the table; a few glasses were in the sink, and the dishwasher needed emptying. Throwing the lock open, I opened the door, seizing a spare dishrag to dry and inevitable bits of water that collected in certain spots.

Dinner plates, forks, knives, and glasses all went away in their usual spots – the rickety old cupboards – and it was only until I got to the bowls that it hit me: a guy. Shelby had been blabbering about a guy, and the only reason this was so important it was because it was a new guy.

That did sort of change things. Okay, it changed a lot of things. As cheap as the real estate was slightly over a year ago, as urbanized as it was, it was still a very small city, especially when you’ve spent a lot of time bouncing from army base to army base. I considered St. James to be rural, even though it really wasn’t. It wasn’t like there was a population in the hundreds, or everyone-knew-everyone, but it still felt stiflingly small. God only knew this new guy probably would need some adjustment depending on where he came from. The people at St. Francis’ were generally a little too welcoming to newbies.

I was finally woken by cereal, and by the time I had cleaned up my things and headed towards the back of the house to my room, Thomas was in the bathroom. This was apparent by the fact that the light was on – Mama would never get up so early unless she had to – and I could smell a distinct unpleasant scent. My nose crinkled. Thomas liked body spray too much, and the house reeked because of it. If I wasn’t worried about making some kind of stink bomb, I swear I’d toss those cans in the nearest fire. They’d explode, but at least it would be out of the house.

Changing in the bathroom was out. He’d be in there a while. I busied myself picking out something from the closet that seemed warm enough – it was unusually cool for September – and selected the ugly red sweater-vest. It was thick, it was durable, and it hung off my bony frame like a towel hanging on a rack, emphasizing absolutely nothing. (Not that there was much to emphasize, mind you, but it was better to make the attempt).

Then again, so did pretty much very piece of the uniform that was designed for average-sized people, not really scrawny ones.

After struggling to find the last pair of khaki uniform pants I owned – hopefully they weren’t in the wash; black pants with the sweater-vest always looked like some sort of valet uniform – I found them, crumpled into a sad, wrinkly heap at the bottom of my closet. I smoothed out some of the creases. Eh, who would notice, anyway? No one ever paid much attention to me.

Thom was still in the bathroom, and I made a move for it, pounding my fist on the door.

“Thom! Hurry up!” I snapped. I was rewarded with a grunt. I slammed my fist against the door again; it rattled.

“All right, Christine!” Thom snapped right back. “Just gimme a sec!”

A few steps down the hall I could hear Mama turning in her bed. “What’s going on out there, Chris?” she said in very incoherent German.

“Nothing!” I replied.

“I will be out in a minute!” Thom snapped again.

“You’d better!”

Trust Thom to take up a good half-hour in there. He preened over his appearance more than I did. And for what? To look ‘cool’? It wasn’t difficult to look ‘cool’ around here, but money talks when it comes to being ‘cool’. But eventually he did come out – he had the fan running but I could still smell whatever spray he’d bathed in today; a thick, musky scent that made me gag. Keeping the door open just to air out the place, I began to wash up and see what I could do for my hair.

As I later found out, there wasn’t much I could do – though by that point I was awake as I was going to be for seven in the morning. Last night’s conversation drifted back slowly, in bits and pieces as I fumbled with the flat iron.

“You know that big old place on Princess Avenue?” Shelby had said. She lived near the area; I didn’t.

“No.”

“You know – you go down my street, pass by that old playhouse and then some other street and then turn and you’re there?”

“I only go on your street to see you,” I pointed out. “But I’ve seen the playhouse.”

“Right, well – on that street. Mom sold it about a week ago. I tried to get her to tell me who they were, but she wouldn’t. Said it was unprofessional,” Shelby had said, and I could picture her rolling her eyes in frustration. “It’s not like I wouldn’t have met the guy anyway, right? All she would tell me is that their kid’s coming to our school. We’ll have to keep our eyes out for a new face.”

“How can you tell?” I said warily. The school was not exceptionally large compared to some of the public schools nearby, but even then I only knew a few select people in each grade, everyone else sort of blurring into an anonymous mass.

Shelby had laughed. “Seriously? How can you not tell? You’ve been taking classes with them for a year now.” I had not quite known what to say to this. “I’ve been going to school with these guys since kindergarten. New faces automatically stand out. I just hope Carly doesn’t get to him before I do. She’ll probably want him to be her boyfriend if he’s hot enough.”

“And if he’s not?”

“You know her,” Shelby said gloomily. “If he’s still decent-looking and useful to him, she’ll keep him around...so that means we have to be on alert!”

As I carefully straightened my hair, I didn’t feel alert. The day felt no different from any other one – my hair was thrown back in a headband like it usually was when I was feeling lazy, I put in the same pair of earrings as I had yesterday, little teal-coloured glass-like balls dangling from the earring, and I got ready to leave in the usual way.

“Bye, Mama!” I called down the hall as I was lacing my shoes, my backpack lying near me. “See you later!”

Mama said something – German or English, I couldn’t tell – that sounded like a goodbye. “I’ve got today off,” was all I definitely caught.

Thom lingered, watching the last bit of bland morning television while I headed out the door. “Going to the bus stop. Lock the door when you go.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

The morning air was brisk, and I shivered a little bit, even though I had on a sweater and a light coat. It was still early in September; the leaves were still in the middle of turning autmn-y colours, and the ground wasn’t covered in them as I walked, my own footsteps all I could hear. The route was always the same – go down the street, turn left at the first corner, and then go down one more block until you hit the actual bus stop. But there was something calming in that routine, as unchanged as it was – like it was so routine that I didn’t need to think about where I was going or what I was doing, letting my mind wander to other things.

Right now my mind was wandering to this mysterious new guy. I didn’t even know his name and I was intrigued. He could be a really repulsive guy for all I knew. He could be politely condescending like most of the popular guys, which feels just as insulting as being actually insulted rather than treating me like I’m stupid. He could be all sorts of things I don’t like, and here I was wondering about him – why? Because he was a new face? Good God, I was starting to get as bad as Shelby.

A few others were already at the corner when I got there – a girl in my grade who I never really talked to – I think her name was Emily, her younger sister, and a gangly-looking guy who, judging by his sudden appearance there not two weeks ago, must have been a freshman. Emily and her younger sister offered me a brief greeting.

“Where’s Thom?” her younger sister – Claire? Was that her name? – asked.

“He’s running late,” I said. “He’ll be here.”

I think Claire had a crush on Thom. Not that I had paid any attention to him when we moved here; I had my own issues. But that was okay because he never paid attention to me, either.

Thom eventually strolled up, his beat-up backpack hanging off one shoulder, his hair carefully styled, and his uniform worn in a fake-casual way, the dress shirt untucked and partially unbuttoned to reveal one of his favourite t-shirts underneath. Rather than embarrass him in front of Claire by casually mentioning that I had seen the vice-principal purposefully button up other guys’ shirts like they were children, I was silent. Embarrassment like that could easily come back to bite me in the ass if I wasn’t careful.

Emily decided on small talk while we waited for the bus. “Shelby seemed really excited yesterday – did Shawn ask her out?”

“I dunno. She never said anything to me. She was going on and on last night about a new guy showing up at school today.”

Emily looked mildly surprised. “In our grade?”

“Yeah, ‘parently. Didn’t get his name, but she knew he was coming here. Her mom sold a house on Princess to his family.”

“And she didn’t get his name after all that? Weird.”

Another guy showed up, looking not quite awake. Thom and Claire were holding some quiet conversation of their own.

“Did you hear on the news last night, some girl near here went missing?”

“No,” I said. “I heard something about a bad car wreck just outside of town—”

“No, this was something else entirely. Those girls that kept disappearing up in Bruce County? And then they’d find them a day later completely okay? Yeah, one went missing just outside of town.”

“Wow.” That was all I could say in such a situation. It was mildly frightening, hearing that – girls going missing, with so many bad things that could happen – but at the same time, distant. Far away. Maybe she was out too late and got snatched. That couldn’t happen here. The town was not that small.

“And not hurt at all?”

“From what I’ve heard. There isn’t much coverage on the news.”

“Weird. Usually you hear stuff like that and it’s awful.”

“I know! But they’ve got to be holding something from us. It just seems that way. Something isn’t right.”

The bus, a yellow-and-black monstrosity, chose that moment to pull up with a loud squeal.

The ride was quick, as it always was, and Shelby – as she always did – practically attacked me as I made my way to our locker. The Grade Nines got a locker to themselves, but for some inexplicable reason everyone else had to share due to a shortage. She had already dumped her things there, her bus having arrived first, and she merely hovered as I got my things for my first class.

“Okay,” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone new yet. But I checked on Carly’s stupid little group and they haven’t seen anything either, so there’s hope. If he’s on Princess Avenue his bus stop should be the same as mine, though...”

She frowned, flicking a strand of carrot-orange hair out of her eyes.

“Maybe he missed the bus,” she mused. “That way no one would notice when he comes in. That’s probably what he wants, you know, because I told a lot of people besides you and he probably doesn’t want to be mobbed...”

“Maybe he drove to school,” I suggested, trying to dig my Religion textbook out from underneath one of Shelby’s binders. “Or got a ride until he settles in?”

Shelby paused. “Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that!” She glanced at the nearest clock. “But class is about to start! And you know O’Reilly locks the door after bell...!”

“Relax, Shelby. If you don’t see him here, there’s always lunch.”

Shelby seemed to calm at this. “Yeah, you’re right – but what if he has a class with Carly first?”

She practically blanched at the thought, and all I could do was shake my head as I stood up and shut the locker. I had been here for about a year now, and I still couldn’t understand the animosity between Shelby Summers and Carly Dupree. Sure, Carly was one of the popular girls – one of the meaner ones, really – and Shelby had a...dislike of the popular group, but as far as I could tell, neither one had really done something to provoke the other. It appeared to be a long-standing grudge, one that had happened long before I’d moved here and would likely continue long afterward.

Luckily neither of us had Religion with Carly. Seats weren’t assigned, but there was always a ‘usual’ seat – for me, it was the third row from the back, right by the left wall. No one usually sat behind me, as there were more desks than students in this particular class. The ball rang again, signalling that classes were to begin, and Ms. O’Reilly strode in, her long skirt swishing about her legs as she walked, set her things on her desk, and locked the door. It was very fitting. Although my next class was the one before lunch, this one seemed to go so much longer.

O’Reilly habitually brushed a strand of her straw-coloured hair out of her face, adjusted her glasses, and began.

“Before we begin the lesson, I would like us to join in prayer for that poor young girl who was kidnapped near here, and for all the young women who have gone missing. They might not be hurt, but clearly something has happened to them and knowing that someone out there is thinking of them might help.”

Or scare the crap out of them. That came to mind first.

O’Reilly raised a hand to cross herself, and it was a sign we were to follow suit. Prayer in school is always an awkward thing; there’s never any heart to them, just a bunch of teenagers mumbling through it and thinking how much they’d rather not be in school at the moment. That was very much how this prayer went; O’Reilly called upon Christ and the Virgin Mary to ‘help these women in their time of need’, and then we all mumbled through an ‘Our Father’.

And then the lesson began. O’Reilly shut off the light and turned on the overhead projector, and we went to work furiously scribbling notes. Finally, an hour and fifteen minutes later, when morning announcements came on the television, it was a relief. My hand was cramping up, and I rubbed it, hoping to ease the pain. It didn’t work.

Then it was off to History in the portable outside. I winced a little at the possibility of that during the winter. Summer and autumn were fine, but trudging through knee-deep snow just to get to class was not appealing.

We passed by Carly and her little group on the way there; Shelby’s eyes narrowed and I merely attempted to hustle her along as we stepped outside, the crisp breeze refreshing after O’Reilly’s stifling classroom.

“What’s your hurry, Schumacher?” Carly said in sweet tones. That was what pissed me off about her: aside from the usual venom she reserved solely for Shelby, she could be outstandingly cruel while superficially seeming nice and sweet. The tone she used could have been used for asking about a missing pet or a sick family member.

There was no point in trading barbs with her; you wouldn’t win. “No reason,” I said lightly. “I just like to get there before all the good seats are taken.”

Carly laughed. Why, I had no idea. But it was by the time I’d reached the door, jerking it open, that Carly caught up to us – Shelby glared – and smoothly cut in front of me, sending me stumbling back to avoid a collision, all the while politely thanking me for holding the door open for her and her little crew. I let Shelby pass before stepping in myself, shutting the door behind me, and nearly running face-first into Shelby’s back.

“Hey,” I said, gently nudging her with the edge of my binder, “You gonna move? It’s crowded back here.”

She was taller than I was, so I had to peer around her to see what had captivated her attention so – and then I saw him. The glorified newbie.

He was good-looking, sure – evidently Carly would snap him up, as she had attempted to do with me when I had arrived, assuming that I was skinny and blonde, therefore I was somehow cool – but somehow that didn’t seem like a fitting description. He was handsome, with very even, chiselled features, neatly combed auburn hair, and rather muscular build. He looked just as stupid in his red polo and khakis as everyone else though, which brought me back to reality. He was really handsome, so what?

I was forced to nudge Shelby a second time, harder, before she moved briskly to her seat. It was only then that I saw Carly, in her tanned-skin-and-natural-platinum-blonde glory, was all but sitting in his lap. Our eyes met briefly – his were dark, that was all I could tell – and we shared a look; he seemed somewhat pleased that he’d been here all of a few hours and already pretty girls were in his lap, but it was mostly awkwardness. I couldn’t blame him.

I noted his finger was absently winding itself around a ball chain on his neck, though I didn’t get a good look before I went to my seat near the far wall. He sat closer to the door, where the ‘popular’ ones sat. Beside me, Shelby seethed.

“I knew I should’ve checked the parking lot,” she said. “I could have made it if I’d rushed.”

“You couldn’t help it. Probably they had first period together.”

“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing...”

I tried not to roll my eyes, knowing it’d offend her. I just couldn’t understand the animosity. I probably never would.

Mr. Rourke, a tall man with curly, dark hair and a small goatee, stepped in, a binder of his own under his arm. I don’t know if we were going to find out this new guy’s name or not, as introductions varied from teacher to teacher, if they even had any. When I had first come here, the English teacher, Mrs. Chalke, hadn’t even bothered to make me introduce myself, just jumped straight into the lesson. But Rourke was generally not too bad about these sorts of things – he’d take roll call, engage in a little bit of banter, and that’d be it.

Sure enough, he plopped down in his usual chair, flipped open the roster, and began roll call. It wasn’t long before I found out his name:

“Mark Christie – there you are; how’s your arm?”

Mark mumbled something about it healing better; his arm had been broken.

“I broke my arm when I was your age playing football,” Rourke said. “Had to wait in the ER for hours...Zack Dawson...not here again...” and it was about here that Carly’s name usually came up; she paused from her conversation with Nameless Newbie to raise her hand. “Eric Dessler?”

Nameless Newbie, a.k.a Eric Dessler, half-heartedly raised a hand. “Here.”

“Where you from?” Rourke asked conversationally.

“A place called Chesley, up in Bruce County. We came down here ‘cause my grandfather retired. Apparently prices were good over here.”

“Your grandfather lives with you?”

“Yeah, I live with him and my grandma,” he said with a shrug, looking a little uncomfortable. He, instinctively, it seemed, twirled his finger around the chain again. Rourke did not bring up the subject further; they bantered a bit more about sports, and then Rourke continued.

“Carly Dupree, how can anyone miss you?” Carly smiled, in that sickeningly-sweet way. I tried not to wince.

My name came and went as usual; Eric paid me no mind, looking more concentrated on Carly; she’d moved from his lap by now, but still seemed to be uncomfortably close. Beside me, Shelby continued to seethe.

“She’s coming on to him faster than she usually does,” I noted, tearing my eyes away from them. “He could have a girlfriend back home for all she knows.”

“I think he’d have said something,” Shelby grunted, flipping open her textbook and looking angry. “That’s it, it’s over. She’s got him and we won’t be able to get a word in edgewise.”

Before I could make a comment on how he’d just been here only a few hours and that wasn’t really enough time for Carly to inject him with her venom – she needed a day at the absolute minimum – Rourke finished up whatever he was doing, standing up, and beginning his lesson. He was much more engaging than O’Reilly, and while we did write notes, a large portion of it was reading from the textbook and answering questions from there. For the last thirty minutes, we were given time to work on the questions, which usually meant everyone would just talk amongst themselves.

I tried to turn to my work. The first question – Using the excerpts provided, name three crucial differences between the philosophies of Plato and damn it, I had become distracted. Carly was making conversation with Eric far too loudly.

“You live with your grandparents?” she said. I couldn’t tell if that was distaste in her voice or something else.

Eric began twirling his finger around the ball chain again. “Yeah. What’s the big deal?”

Carly immediately launched into a pity party: “That’s so sad.”

Mark, one of Carly’s groupies – I would swear he had been her boyfriend at one point too, but obviously they were no longer dating, as she was outright hitting on him – took notice of this. “Cool necklace. I’ve got a pair too,” he said, fishing a ball chain of his own out from underneath, two American-style dog tags hanging from it. Custom-made, obviously. I should have told Thom to see if he could get his hands on Papa’s old Tag. Maybe that would make him cool – or anger Mama. Either way, the results were bound to be funny in a schadenfreude way.

“Thanks. This was my dad’s.”

Immediately my attention was bound. His father was CF too? Well. Perhaps it wasn’t as hopeless as Shelby had thought. I must have been staring like an idiot, for Carly glanced over and gave me a cold smile, her eyes trailing to Shelby; she quickly sneered. A sudden jab near my shoulder blades – too close to the spine for comfort – jerked me around of it. Shelby had used her pen, and was looking quite intrigued herself.

“Obviously you two have something in common,” she said, and I could see the delight in her eyes, malicious as it was, at showing up Carly. “Go talk to him.”

“No way,” I said. “That’s not much in common—”

“He doesn’t seem like a bad guy,” she said.

“This coming from you, who said it was ‘over’ just earlier. Fight with Carly all you want, man, don’t use me to do it.”

Shelby looked mildly offended, her eyes widening. “I would never do that, Chris. You were checking him out too, you know—”

“—your dad is in the army?”       

“Yeah,” Eric said, sounding a touch uncomfortable, “he was. Took it for the college money, I think.”

I couldn’t stop myself – it was rare to find other brats in the area, let alone anyone with a strongly military background, and I can’t properly explain it beyond that small similarity that most other people might find meaningless – I found myself twisting around sharply in my seat and saying, a little too loudly for my own good: “Were you ever stationed at Petawawa?”

Immediately I felt stupid for having done so. The other guys there were giving me a mixture of strange glances and that condescending, she’s-not-from-around-here-therefore-she’s-a-little-childish look they gave me so often. Carly did not react like I would have expected, but smiled at him and seemed to try and brush it off. I was getting in her way.

Eric did not seem to think it entirely strange; at the very least he wasn’t giving me as funny a look. “Um, I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was just a little kid.” He paused. “Were you ever stationed there?”

“Yeah,” I admitted with a sheepish grin; I felt my face flush a little. “One of the longer places I’ve been at. We just moved here a little less than a year ago.”

Eric grinned a little at this. “Seems like every time I mention that, someone asks if I was ever stationed where they were.”

“I don’t usually come across other brats,” I admitted.

“You don’t have to insult him, Schumacher,” Carly said sweetly.

“That’s not really an insult from the army perspective,” Rourke cut in, as he sometimes did. Very laid-back man. “Have you ever heard the term ‘military brat’?”

“Er, no,” she admitted. “But it sounds insulting.”

That pretty much shows what she knew.

Not long after that, the bell rang again. Lunch period. Shelby practically threw my things at me and hustled me out the door.

“That went very well,” she said, beaming as we headed to the cafeteria. Eric caught up with us not long after – Shelby hid her delight very badly. I almost wanted to kick her to get her to stop giggling and grinning like an idiot.

“Hey,” he said. “I, er, don’t know if I caught your name earlier. Christine, right? The teacher asked you about not being awake or something?”

He sounded embarrassed. I brushed it off. It was hard to figure out names from a roll call.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Christine Schumacher.”

I offered my hand for a shake, although we were beyond ‘first impressions’ at this point. He probably mentally thought of me as ‘Petawawa Girl’ for all I knew. He took it, giving a firm shake.

“Eric Dessler. You probably already knew that.” He gave an awkward little grin. I couldn’t help it. I grinned back. “And this is...?”

“Shelby Summers,” Shelby said, offering her hand as well; he shook it.

“Where’d Carly get to?” Shelby further pondered aloud. I wanted to kick her again.

“Oh, her. I think I lost her in the crowds. I heard something about going out for lunch – and speaking of that...”

The unfortunate reality of having only one lunch period is that space was at a premium – and after we had each gotten our lunch, there was pretty much no room to sit. Sure, there was the front half of the stage, for the cafeteria doubled as an auditorium for school plays, but even the stairs to those were littered with people lounging about. Eric looked about.

“Is it always like this?”

“Yeah,” Shelby said. “They used to have two separate lunch periods but people were jerks and kept pissing off the people still in class, so they just merged it into one period. You pretty much have to skip class just to get a good seat.”

“Damn. School I went to before had three forty-minute periods; you either got the first one or the last one and the other two periods added up to one class.”

“That does sound more convenient,” I admitted, twisting through the crowd, trying not to spill my tray. “But you get the whole period here, which isn’t so bad.”

There was literally no place to sit. Personally I blamed the school. We found ourselves just outside of the cafeteria, sitting on a small bench set into the wall, propping our lunches on our laps. It was less uncomfortable than it sounded; that was usually the course of events for me – apparently not so with Eric.

“So,” he said, trying to break the ice. “You’re still sort-of new here too?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Not popular enough to attract as much attention as you have.”

He laughed. “I don’t know where they’re getting it. Most I did was play basketball at my old school; everyone focuses on football.”

I shrugged, taking a bite of the noodle casserole, or whatever it was that day. Whatever it was, it wasn’t horrible – just mouth-scorchingly hot. I winced and washed it down with my drink, the cold numbing the pain.

“Yeah, football’s big here too. They’re big on the pep rallies, too.”

“Yeah, everyone is. ‘Specially when it’s about football.” He paused. “You get all the cheerleaders out and stuff, it’s pretty awesome.”

“I just use it to get out of class. Football’s not really my thing.”

“Yeah, I prefer basketball myself.” He paused again. “You wouldn’t happen to know if there’d be tryouts coming up soon?”

“Nope,” I said. “No idea. I don’t pay attention to that sort of stuff.”

“Really? Huh. You struck me as a cheerleader type—”

It was all Shelby could do to not choke on her food; half-laughing, half-choking, she managed to calm down enough to breathe again, but her shoulders were still shaking with suppressed laughter. Eric glanced over at her, looking confused and concerned; all she could spit out was: “Chris...a cheerleader...!” followed by more giggling. I felt my face flush just a little – yeah, it was a funny concept, but it wasn’t that funny, and she was coming off as an airhead...

“So I take it you’re not?” Eric said, looking a little amused himself, but more embarrassed for his continual mistakes. “There were a lot of really tiny girls doing cheerleading back home, and they were usually pretty welcoming, so I just assumed...”

“That’s okay,” I said, willing to excuse him a lot of things. After all, he was new to the area, and he didn’t seem to think I was anorexic. “I’ve heard a lot of things – but I’ve never heard that suggested.”

He looked relieved.

The conversation was not as long as I would have liked, as Carly made a re-appearance not long afterwards, which told me one thing: she really wanted him, and evidently I was getting in her way. As much as I ignored most people, Carly was hard to ignore when Shelby was around, and so I had a good idea of her routine. Leaving school during lunch was normal; coming back halfway through the period was not. Usually she showed up just in time for our unfortunately shared P.E. class the following period, where she would sit on the bleachers and gossip as much as she possibly could get away with.

“See you tomorrow?” Eric offered.

“Sure,” I said. He walked off.

“I think he likes you!” Shelby said, her eyes practically bulging with excitement. I rolled my eyes. Trust Shelby to exaggerate.

The rest of the day was uneventful – Gym wasn’t too bad, as it was only two weeks into the year; the really hard stuff hadn’t come up yet, and Music was similarly as bland. It was only at the end of the day, as Shelby and I were standing at our locker, did anything interesting come up:

“He’s in my French class!” she crowed, wrenching her backpack out of the locker with a clatter. I had been kneeling down, stuffing my books into my backpack, and I looked up to get a face full of Shelby’s battered black backpack.  

“That’s nice,” I said, shoving it away from me before standing. My backpack was smaller, and didn’t need to be wrenched out – but my coat did. Where had I put it?

“He asked about you,” she said, a glint in her eyes. Uh-oh. That was not a good sign at all.

“What, whether or not I’ll try out for cheerleading now?”

Shelby laughed. “No, not that. Just...things...that I didn’t really know the answer to...”

“Did he ask about my family?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Asked where your dad had been deployed. I didn’t remember. Iraq?”

“Afghanistan.”

Ah, the coat had slipped off the hook somehow and had been buried under one of the books. I fished it out. It had been cool in the morning, but it was warm now, so I merely slung the backpack on my back and the coat over my arm.

“Oh. I think I said Iraq. He looked at me funny, that’s all I know. But I think he’s interested! I got the impression he doesn’t want to make a move too quickly because it might come off as creepy – and he’s right about that, because if you come on too quickly you wind up looking like a slut like Carly...”

Shelby babbled the whole walk down to the buses, and I only escaped it when she had to get on hers; I moved further down the line of buses out front to step on mine. It was crowded, as always. Thom didn’t appear to be on there, but Claire and Emily were – and thank God, there was an empty space beside her.

“D’you mind if I...?” I gestured to the seat, which Emily had been using for her backpack.

“Oh, sure,” she said, dragging her backpack off so I could sit; it hit the floor with a thunk. “Did you hear?”

“What?”

“They found that girl today, walking down the road just off Main Street.”

My attention was caught. “Really? When?”

“Sometime before lunch. I heard it on the radio on the way back to school.”

“Was she hurt?”

“I dunno, they didn’t talk much. Check the news tonight; they might have information.”

I did check the news that night – Mama was sitting on the couch, while Thom and I were in the kitchen, cleaning up the table. The most I heard was a brief snippet – “A St. James’ area girl who had went missing last night has been found this afternoon, safe and sound. She was found just before eleven o’clock on the corner of Main and Highmore. Police are currently investigating, but they say no charges have been laid.”

“Something’s not right,” Mama said very calmly. “Sounds like a gag order’s been placed on the news.”

“How would you know?” Thom said.

“You can just tell. Normally they give more information than that if a missing person’s been found. You be careful, Chris. There have been girls going missing all over the province. I don’t want you to be next.”

“There’s lots of people in this province, Mama. I won’t be next.”

“Don’t get so cocky – this last one happened here.”

There was no point I getting into an argument either, as I was bound to lose. “All right, Mama. I’ll be careful.”

“You’d damn well better,” she said lightly. Most people think she’s harsh to me, but she’s not really. That’s just the way she is, period. That was practically her way of saying ‘good’, or ‘I hope so’. “How was school?”

“Jake got a new dirt bike,” Thom jumped in. “He’s going out to test it tomorrow night.”

“And you’re going with him?”

“Yep,” he said. “After all, this creepy guy’s not going after guys.”

“What ‘creepy guy’?” Mama said.

“Jake said he saw this creepy looking guy hanging out on roads near the school or something. Said he looked really weird, so he’s probably the one doing this.”

“Well! Just because he looks ‘weird’ doesn’t mean he’s doing anything wrong.”

“I’ll bet you ten bucks they arrest him,” Thom said.

“You don’t have ten bucks on you,” I pointed out.

“She can take it out of my allowance,” he said.

“Okay,” Mama said. “If they arrest anyone. How was your day, Chris?”

“Okay,” I said, carefully placing a dish back in the proper place. “New guy showed up at school today—”

“Was he really pale and creepy-looking?”

“No Thom, he was tan and not creepy, okay? Shelby’s mom apparently sold a house on Princess to his grandparents.”

“So?” Thom said.

“Was I talking to you? He lives with his grandparents. I think his father was in the Forces.”

“Oh, what’s his name?” Even my mother was intrigued now, poking her head into the kitchen, greying hair in her eyes. My father’s Tag was around her neck, the metal catching the light.

“Dessler. He said he was never at Pet; I already asked.”

“No, the name doesn’t sound familiar. Your father knew a Destler – he was one of the sergeants when he first arrived, but no Dessler.”

“I didn’t find out much. He didn’t seem comfortable talking about it.”

“Mm. I could see why.”

My theory was that he had lost his father like I had – and that didn’t seem as depressing as I would have expected. It seemed like it had happened a while ago – but hadn’t time passed for me as well? The one-year mark was in three weeks, give or take. Only one year, one very long year, but life had gone on, and me with it. I couldn’t just coop myself up and mourn.

Of course I couldn’t – didn’t – want to just throw myself at the nearest guy either. That just seemed wrong, and I had no idea where Shelby was getting the idea he was interested, or we would make a nice couple. I got the why, and that was mostly because of some imagined rivalry with Carly, but I was half-convinced Shelby was grasping at straws. So we had a little bit in common; that meant nothing.

As I showered that night, the hot water lulling me into a half-asleep state, I wondered how far Shelby was willing to go over this thing – and how much I would be willing to tolerate from her. I caught myself at the last minute – just as I stepped out of the shower; the cold air probably had something to do with it – and realising I was thinking this over way too much. Thinking too much about such trivial things was what Shelby did, and while I like her and get along great with her, I didn’t do that. I was the one who got excited over practicing a new aria. I was the ‘weird’ one.

I think I just needed a good sleep and a good breakfast tomorrow, and everything would be just fine. The newbie was no longer quite as new, Carly would still be a bitch, and the cafeteria would be as crowded as ever. Things would not change just because one new student showed up; they never had before, and Shelby would just have to get used to it. She could not force me to date him, although she’d probably try.

Not that it would work out. I was, after all, just the weird Petawawa Girl.