by C. R. Jane
You could start at Rutherford junior year of high school. Even though I’d gotten my acceptance before I’d started sophomore year, letting me know I would be attending there as a junior, it had taken me a while to heal from my injuries from the accident. I’d missed almost all of my sophomore year at my last school. At least I’d been able to complete all my academic work remote. That had been something. It kept my grades up. When junior year came around, I wasn’t ready to start at a school like Rutherford, and I’d asked to be allowed to defer until senior year.
Due to the tragic circumstances of my injuries, the Rutherford Dean had agreed, and I had spent my junior year at the public school across town, taking classes and going to rehab. But news of Jackson's exploits still reached me every day. As a junior and then later as a senior in high school, he managed to hang out with seniors in college. They actually listened to him and looked to him as their leader. With Jackson, you soon learned, you were dealing with someone different.
This was my chance though. No one but Jackson and Caiden had ever believed a girl like me could make something of herself.
If I made it through the next five years, that was a guarantee.
As soon as I walked through the front doors, it was like I'd been transported to a different world. The floors were black marble flecked with gold, and actual chandeliers hung from the ceiling every five feet or so. The front entryway was an enormous rotunda, reminding me of the U.S. Capitol building. There were carved statues along the dark walls. The ceiling of the rotunda was at least fifty feet high. I stared wide-eyed at the mural someone had painted on the ceiling.
A cluster of students walked by me, eyeing me curiously, either because of my limp or because I was new. I tried not to stare back, but I estimated that their outfits cost more than the beater Ford truck I’d driven to school today.
The girls in the group looked like they’d just gotten a blowout at the salon across the road, and the guys looked like they belonged in an Abercrombie catalog.
I forced myself not to fidget with the plain black long-sleeved tee from Walmart I was wearing. This morning when I tried it on with the fake leather knee-length skirt that I'd found at a thrift store to go with it, I’d thought I looked great.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
All of the girls were wearing high heels; I had on a pair of black flats. It wasn’t very practical...or safe for me to try and wear any kind of heels with the way my left foot dragged a bit. I also wanted to be prepared just in case Jackson had me running for my life once he saw me.
Well, hobbling for it anyway.
That last time we had seen each other…
It had been terrible.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I found a sign pointing in the direction of the Admissions Office. I followed the arrows until I found the glass-encased office. Pushing open the door, I cringed when I ran smack into someone.
“Ooof,” I cried out as the bag I’d been holding tumbled to the floor. I was about to follow it when a strong set of hands caught me. Looking up, all I saw was green at first. The boy who’d caught me had the greenest eyes of anyone I’d ever seen.
“Hi,” he said with a smug smile as he carefully helped me steady myself.
“Thank you,” I breathed, trying to calm my pounding heart. I hadn’t needed that extra shot of adrenaline. My espresso earlier had been enough.
“You’re new,” he commented, eyeing me up and down appreciatively before finally letting me go.
He was attractive, just like everyone else I had seen at this school. He had russet-colored hair to showcase those amazing green eyes of his, and he had to be at least six feet tall with a body that looked good, even under his clothes.
I watched him for a second, hoping that I would feel something, some small glimmer of attraction.
But like every guy I had seen since I was eight, my heart didn’t even twitch.
I was impossibly fractured. Jackson Parker had cast some kind of spell on me and I wasn’t sure that it would ever be broken.
It sank in, awkwardly, that the green-eyed hottie still stared at me. He had said something, but like the awkward turtle that I was, I had completely spaced it and missed what he said.
"Sorry...what?" I stuttered and he gave me a bemused smile like he wasn't used to girls not paying rapt attention to every word that came out of his mouth.
"I asked what your name was," he said, amused.
"Everly," I stated, intentionally not giving him my last name. He would hear about who I was soon, and then he wouldn't want anything to do with me. "What's yours?" I quickly added so he wouldn't ask me to give it to him.
"Landry Evans," he replied, as if he expected me to know who he was.
Whoops. It was a defect that I needed to remedy. For too long, the only people I had cared about were Jackson and Caiden.
You would think that would have changed over the last two years.
"Nice to meet you," I finally answered, aware again of the awkward pause we'd just had while he waited for me to recognize him.
His amused grin grew wider. He had only seemed a little interested when I'd first bumped into him, but now the look in his eyes was almost feral.
It was a little unsettling.
"I'm the captain of the hockey team," he explained, still apparently waiting for that recognition to hit me.
I shrugged awkwardly. The only sport I followed was football, and that was only because the twins had forced it down my throat almost since the moment they’d met me until I loved it almost as much as they did. Both of them had played it and watched it 24/7, ensuring that I would have a steady diet of it.
I hadn’t, nor would I ever, tell anyone how I’d spent every home game last season hovering outside the gates of the Rutherford Academy stadium...listening to the sounds of the game while I watched it on my cell phone, silently cheering Jackson on.
My heart throbbed painfully when I thought about the fact that the Dallas Cowboys had won the Superbowl last year, winning for the first time since 1997. They had been Caiden's favorite team and he, obviously, had missed it.
I took a deep breath.
"Well, I'm just going to get my schedule," I told him as I reached for my bag, as awareness of how close we were standing to each other hit me.
He rocked back on his heels, a little disappointment settling on his face. Maybe he realized I wasn't experiencing whatever connection he was.
"I could show you around?" he offered, once again shooting me that winsome grin.
"That's so nice, but I believe they've already assigned me someone to act as my class guide today. I really appreciate it though." I fought to sound earnest, while at the same time, beginning to push past him to get in the office. His face fell into a look of dismay.
He seemed to shake himself out of it though, and he started to back away, not taking his attention off of me and not bothering to look behind him to see if he was going to run into anyone. I had a feeling that things often went his way around here. He reminded me a little bit of Jackson, in that Jackson always put out that he had this outrageous confidence that everyone liked him and everyone would do as he said.
I was the only one who knew that was a lie.
"I'll be seeing you, Everly," he told me, and rather than sound like a goodbye, it sounded like a promise.
He would learn I wasn't the kind of girl you should make promises to.
I gave a half-hearted wave goodbye, and then I turned and finally made it into the Admissions' Office.
A stern-looking, grey-haired woman grimaced when she saw me approaching the counter. Looking down at my phone, I realized that Landry had cost me ten minutes that I didn't have.
Damn, I muttered to myself as I straightened my clothes and shot Ms. Grump a hopefully friendly smile.
She didn't seem impressed.
"Everly James," I announced politely. "Today's my first day."
"Class starts in ten minutes, Ms. James," she huffed with a shake of her head. "Yo
u would think you wouldn't want to be late on your first day," she continued as she began to type feverishly on her keyboard.
I didn't bother answering her that I'd tried to be early. Things just had a way of constantly going wrong in my life.
Ever heard of Murphy's Law? I was pretty sure that it should actually be called "Everly's Law" because I had never heard of someone having more bad luck than me.
"Do you have your license, Ms. James?" she asked loudly, and I realized that once again, I'd missed what someone said to me. I was really going to have to get myself together and pay attention. Unlike my old school, Rutherford Academy wasn't the kind of place where you could get away with spacing out and thinking about how much your life sucked.
That was probably a good thing for me.
I handed her my license, and she sniffed loudly as if my very presence offended her. Or maybe it was because unlike the rest of the student population here, who most likely housed their licenses in Louis Vuitton wallets...my wallet was something I had made myself using duct tape and safety pins. It had seemed cool when I'd made it. Or maybe that was just because Jackson used to have one just like it…
She held the license out to me with two fingers, most likely already envisioning how soon she could wash her hands. I took it back quickly, waiting quietly as she started to print out papers. Looking around the room, it was apparently I'd caught the attention of the entire office. Some of the employees were watching me unabashedly. It made me wish once again that I'd been able to start last week with the rest of the students. Even though I was new, I wouldn't have stood out so much.
Mom getting drunk and falling down a flight of stairs hadn't been in the cards.
But, again…not much in my life was.
"Here you go," the woman said sharply, handing me a black folder emblazoned with the Rutherford Academy crest in the center. "You'd better hurry. You have two minutes before the bell rings," she muttered, before turning her attention back to her computer like I didn't exist.
“Aren’t I supposed to have a student guide?” I asked, looking around to see if anyone looked like they were waiting for me.
“Get to class, Ms. James,” she said in a bored tone, completely ignoring me.
"Thanks," I responded, just barely succeeding in keeping the annoyance out of my voice.
I walked out the door, back into the hallway.
And suddenly, there he was.
A rush of adrenaline hit me. I thought I had remembered how beautiful he was, but the memory and the pictures that I had didn't do him justice. Especially this new, older version of Jackson. The structure of his face was like a work of art, the planes and angles so geometrically perfect that he was a flesh and blood sculpture. His golden skin fit across his bones like a glove, a piece of satin stretched taut. His blonde hair was perfectly tousled, not long enough to be feminine, but long enough to attract all things feminine. I looked up at his beautiful face, his shockingly blue eyes and strong jaw, just the perfect amount of stubble softening the angles. His broad shoulders beckoned to me, and the smooth skin of his hard chest was visible above the collar of his shirt.
Everything about him called to me.
Have you ever felt it? The change in the air around you? That essential change in the tides? The way the sun suddenly seemed like it rose and set with only one person in mind. Maybe it didn’t happen for everyone, maybe it was just me. But the feeling when you know your life will absolutely never be the same again—I’d only felt that twice before. The day my father killed himself, and the day I first met Jackson Parker on the playground.
Now, seeing Jackson again? That feeling engulfed me and took my breath away. It was a tingle in my toes, a warmth in my stomach. Wet burned my eyes, and I fought it, like people always did when they were scared, but it won.
My heart sped up to beat wildly. Especially when he looked up. He walked towards me, and the fluttering inside my stomach intensified. Was this going to be it? Were we just going to reconnect right now as easily as that? Had he finally forgiven me?
He was five feet away when I realized that he was focused on someone behind me. He walked past me like I didn't exist, even though he had to have seen me. I turned around to watch him go, very aware that many of the other people in the hallway were also watching him, despite the fact that the bell was going to ring any minute.
Then he strode over to a beautiful girl with auburn colored hair and pulled her into his arms, beginning to make-out with her right there in the hallway.
He might as well have just punched me. Because it might have been kinder than how it felt as he devoured the pretty girl’s lips.
It was awful, and it transported me back to that last night I’d seen him and the cruel words he’d spoken.
Suddenly, the rosy picture I painted for myself of what life was going to be like at Rutherford Academy went up in smoke.
An arm slung over my shoulder and I startled at the unexpected touch. Looking to my left, I found a girl with raven-colored hair, bright blue and green streaks colorfully woven throughout it. She was dressed in a pair of artfully torn skinny jeans and a vintage Ramones t-shirt. I only said vintage because people didn't seem to like the Ramones very much nowadays. My father had fed me a steady diet of rock-n-roll when he wasn’t stealing from people, and so I appreciated her shirt. The stranger smacked a piece of gum and watched the Jackson show with an amused smirk.
"Oh, don't tell me the Heartbreak Prince has already caught your eye. That doesn't bode well for you," she commented dryly in a delightfully raspy voice.
I shrugged her arm off me, my cheeks coloring with embarrassment.
"Who are you?" I asked with a frown. I needed to get to class but I seemed trapped and unable to keep my gaze from flicking back to Jackson, who’d thankfully finally stopped devouring the girl’s mouth.
"You’re new today, right?" the girl next to me asked, grabbing my attention again as she stared me up and down. "The school's not that big, and I know I would've noticed you before if you’d started with the rest of the new juniors last week.”
"I’m—” I began.
"Oh, I haven’t introduced myself. That's why this is awkward," she said with a sly grin, extending a hand that was laden with different sized rings. "I'm Lane," she explained. "And you need to relax. I’ve just been messing with you. Admissions sent me to show you around. I assumed you were the new student, since I hadn’t seen you before."
I let out a little sigh of relief that one of the first people I talked to in the school hadn't ended up being a crazy person. Although, I guess that really remained to be seen.
I extended my hand. "Everly.”
She shot me a sneaky grin and then shook my hand. After letting go, she pulled a folder out of the blue satchel she was carrying. My name was on it. "Let's take a look at your schedule and get you to class. There’s not much we can do for you to be on time for this first one, but hopefully you won’t get too hard of a time. The professors here are kind of crazy about punctuality. Although you would think with the amount of money that we're paying, they would work around our schedule," she said with another smirk.
The hallway had become a ghost town. Jackson and everyone else had disappeared in the minute I’d been talking to Lane. I ignored the flicker of hurt singing my insides that Jackson hadn’t even bothered to say a word to me.
I would have taken even a hateful word after two years of harsh silence.
The bell chose that moment to ring.
Lane began walking as she examined a piece of paper she'd pulled from the folder. She made a few noises as she examined it. "Looks like we have a little smarty on her hands," she commented. "Half of your classes are with the freshman. We even have British literature together."
My mood improved marginally. At least I would have one class with someone I knew. I dreaded the freshman classes the most, even though they were on topics that interested me because there was a greater chance that I would be in a class with Jackson.
> "Okay, I'll show you to AP Biology. It's in the next building,” she explained as she started to walk quickly. I followed after her.
She pointed out some things along the way, like one of the three cafeterias that the school possessed. Rutherford also had two coffee shops, a pizzeria, a Japanese/sushi joint, and a burger place. It all seemed a bit much considering there was only around five hundred students in the junior and senior grades and fifteen hundred people in each college class...but what did I know?
Lane directed my attention to one hallway where the various football offices were. Beyond the double doors at the end of the hallway was the main athletic complex along with the giant stadium that could seat forty thousand people. Although the school was small, the alumni base was so strong, and the football team so good, that the school had built a new stadium about five years before. Games were always sold out, even with that many seats, and there was talk of expanding the stadium in the near future to hold even more.
Of course every time I thought of football, I thought of Jackson. How could I not when he’d been playing since he was in sixth grade? He was currently the star wide receiver on the team, even as a freshman, and he deserved all the hype. He was magic on the field.
Just like he was everywhere else.
Lane looked at another piece of paper as we walked and let out a small squeal that made me stumble, not something that was difficult to do with how much my foot was dragging today. I’d noticed early on after the accident that my symptoms seemed to be aggravated whenever I was particularly nervous...or when the weather was bad.
I liked Lane even more when she pretended not to notice.
My limp wasn’t huge, but it was impossible to miss, and I’d had people tell me over the last two years how tragic it was that I’d sustained such a flaw in an otherwise perfect physical appearance.
Because all the other things that happened because of the accident weren’t tragic, right?
My limp was really a small thing in the grand scheme of the horrors created that night.
