Thanatophobia

So, here's the thing about this boy Cam. He's easy to read, like the word thanatophobia. I couldn't read him by his name, of course. I didn't know his last name, and I knew he didn't belong to a rich family because I know every one of them throughout the state of New Jersey, courtesy of Sheri's constant fund-raising. No, Cam was a different kind of readable. You have to look into his actions and his looks to figure him out. Words are easy to pick apart, like thanatophobia. There's a pre- or suffix and a root. Once you know that, you're set. You couldn't pick apart Cam like you could pick me apart. Everyone sees Hamilton and pegs me to be a daughter of a loser politician. But this isn't about me, this is about Cam.

The way the kid walked, with his books in one hand and his free arm swinging at his side, shoulder-to-shoulder with Lucy hanging on his every word contributed to the theory that he was hot shit, and he pretended not to know it. He had curly, dark brown hair that was longer than most boys' but shorter than the burnouts', which meant he didn't subject himself to the norm. Cam wanted to be different without trying to show it. He had brown eyes that were about the same shade as mine, in fact, but framed with thick, black eyelashes that most boys had but not all could pull off. Girls loved that, just like they loved the way he wore a t-shirt under a plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned. Most guys don't care enough for layers, but he went the extra mile to skip the mainstream tee. It was a subtle addition to his obviously huge ego, but no one bothered to notice because they were too distracted by his smile or his eyelashes or his attempt to get them off a cliff.

He was a do-gooder, for sure. Not only did Cam utilize his "good Samaritan" handbook and try to save a damsel from jumping to her death on a cliff, but he was also an office aid, by the looks of the stacks of passes he was holding. He and Lucy were walking together, oblivious of anything other than delivering passes to the designated classes.

Lucy didn't even notice me until she shoulder-checked me, sending her clipboard toppling to the floor. "Shoot!" she breathed and looked at me for the first time all morning. "Oh, Shelby, hey!"

She stooped down to pick up her clipboard and said, "We were just talking about you!"

She looked over her shoulder for Cam, but he was gone. "Well," she said, brushing her hair away from her face, "Cameron was with me a second ago. He must have been in a hurry to get back to the office."

I gave her a cautious look. "Why was he talking about me?"

She shrugged. "He wanted to know more about you. He said you weren't very talkative, he didn't even get your name!"

Lucy gave a chuckle and I smiled distractedly. What was with the disappearing act?

"What class do you have first?" she asked, looking me up and down like I had my schedule tattooed somewhere on my body.

"Um," I said, shuffling through my stack of folders. I wasn't good with my locker yet so I just carried most of my stuff with me. I found the schedule and read off, "First period, home economics."

"Fun!" said Lucy with way too much enthusiasm. "You need help getting there?"

I shrugged. "Why not."

Lucy showed me where the room was, and she started asking about what I was doing after school.

"I'm getting a ride home," I said discreetly.

"Oh, I was wondering if you wanted to go to get ice cream with me and Angelica or something," she responded. "But, you could, like, invite your brother if you want."

"My brother?" The warning bell rang and Lucy looked down at her clipboard.

"Yeah, doesn't he pick you up?"

I didn't want to have to tell her about Tom, so I just nodded. "Right," I said. "Well, I'll ask him about it. Talk to you at lunch?"

She gave me a huge smile and waved. "See you then!"

I turned around into the classroom and sighed. How did that girl have so much energy this early in the morning? The teacher recognized me as new right away, squinting through her thin, wire glasses and shooting a quirky smile in my direction. Her name was Mrs. Wernick and she sat me at one of the tables in the back with three empty seats. At one end of the table was a group of girls and a guy that were so immersed in their conversation that they didn't even notice me sit down at the other end. The girl I sat next to was staring at them with contempt and fiddling with her Monroe lip ring.

I didn't plan on talking to her, and she looked a little shy herself, so I sat back while class started. This girl was incredibly pale, with shoulder-length, coffee-colored hair and wide, hazel eyes. She looked like she just stepped out of a magazine cover, air brushed and all. Her porcelain skin was intimidating, and I could tell she wore probably a size zero jeans. She seemed like every girls' dream- big eyes, perfect skin, tiny waist, and a little ski-slope nose.

There were girls like her at my old school, and my boarding school, too. She wore a red sweater tied with a belt over a white tank top, dark jeans, and a pair of matching red moccasins. She was the kind of girl that wears shoes around the house- the kind of girl who has the world wrapped around her petite little finger. It surprised me, then, that no one was sitting with her, or looking her way at least. At my old school, this was the kind of girl that everyone wanted to be friends with, not the girls across the table with crackly, obnoxious voices and mismatched hair extensions. Those girls were trash, so why did they have all the friends?

For a minute I felt bad for her, which was weird for me. I hadn't felt anything about anybody at my school since I moved back to New Jersey last year. It's like there was a force that when I saw this girl said, you guys will be friends. You should be friends because you have everything in common.

But I'd never met her.

She look up at me, and I realized I was staring. Her hand dropped from her mouth and she smiled awkwardly like she couldn't decide whether or not to say anything.

The awkward moment was broken when Mrs. Wernick announced, "Let's all get into our groups now for the cooking lab!"

Her eyes scanned the crowd until they rested on me, and she walked over. "Why don't you work with Lauren's group?" she suggested, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Is that all right?" she asked the girl next to me, like her input mattered.

The girl shrugged. "That's fine," she said in a soft, dainty voice.

The teacher patted me on the back with extra force and walked away, and the girl started going through papers in her folder. "I'm Lauren," she said quietly.

"Shelby," I said.

"Fair warning," she told me, not taking her eyes off the recipe instructions. "Our group is filled with dumb asses."

She smirked, and there was a sparkle in her eyes while she wrote our names on the lab sheet. "What's your last name?" she asked, her pencil hovering over the paper.

I hesitated, for a second wondering if Lucy was the only one at this school that had an obsession with my parents, or if politics were a school wide thing. "...Hamilton," I said cautiously.

She nodded and started writing it down. "Easier than mine," she commented. "It's Merklov."

Her face turned a little pink, like she was embarrassed of her name. "It's not too bad," I told her.

"You'd be surprised how many people get it wrong," she replied. "I've been called Lauren Merchant before. That's not even close!"

I laughed, and we kept a conversation going for most of the class while we made chicken pot pies. Ours came out a little burnt, because the girl in charge of setting the timer set it for five hours instead of 50 minutes, but otherwise it was pretty okay.

When the bell rang, Lauren picked up her books and ducked out right away, but I didn't mind. I was used to being alone.