Heavenly Creatures

The new boy saw me first. It was at our tri-annual track meet, and one of the competitors, a girl with the name Kali on her jersey, nicked me with her shoe as she passed. My unpraiseworthy temper flared at this injustice as I planned how to get even with her. During our next warm up run, I kicked the back of her knee as I ran past.

Except, I didn’t expect what happened next. Kali fell with a sickening crunch, and a second later she was screaming as blood ran down her chin.

“Hey! Hey!” My coach ran towards me, red-faced. “What the hell are you doing? Get off the track!”

Kali’s coach and a sports therapist ran up beside her, and my heart sank as I looked at her face. The words ‘I’m sorry’ died in my mouth as I realized how monumentally I had screwed up. There was no coming back from this one.

I was escorted off the field, but not before making eye contact with a boy in the stands. I barely registered his face, but he had noticed me all right.

“We don’t understand…” My mother’s voice carried out into the hall, where I stood as I hesitated before entering the principal’s office. “Tara is such a good kid. She would never do something like this.”

The principal motioned for me to enter, which I meekly did.

“What we’re thinking is that perhaps Tara has some repressed emotions from… the accident,” the principal said, glancing at me. I stared at my clenched hands, my gaze hardening. “We suggest a one-week suspension and some therapy.”

My mother sighed, and I looked at her sadly, knowing I had disappointed her.

“Yes,” mother said. “That sounds reasonable.”

On the Monday after my suspension, I noticed the new boy as I walked into calculus. As the class went on, I noticed that he kept staring at me. I felt embarrassed and angry at the attention, which I assumed was because he had formed an opinion of me as some kind of rampant troublemaker. The next time he looked at me, I aggressively stared back, taking the chance to study him. His hair looked like he had been electrocuted, and his face was curiously expressionless.

I considered telling him to cut it out, but he was sitting across the aisle, and I didn’t want to disturb the class on my first day back.

Instead, the next time I caught his eye, I scowled fiercely, putting on the most unattractive glower I could muster. That put a stop to it, and I solved my problem set in peace for the next forty minutes of mind-numbing bliss.

My last class of the day was astronomy, aka hell. I slumped into my chair and complained to Ana, my best friend.

“Why do we need to learn this again?”

“Speak for yourself!” Ana flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder primly. “I’m going to be a physicist.”

“Oh right,” I muttered, rolling my eyes but smiling. “Lucky you. I’m probably going to be a starving artist.”

Ana laughed. “Oh Tara, you can stay with me until you make it.”

“Thanks for your faith in me,” I said. “But I might just have to learn a trade.”

The new boy chose that moment to enter the classroom and make eye contact with me.

“Oh boy,” I said. “Here we go.”

Ana glanced over at where I was looking then turned back to me, giggling.

“Ooh, is that Sun? You know, he won every single race at the track meet.” Ana glanced at me, as if remembering. She smiled weakly. “It was a good distraction from… you know.”

I weakly smiled back. “Thanks for giving me the updates.”

“All right!” Mr. Kirby walked into the room, which quieted a hair of a decibel. “All right, students!” The poor man cleared his throat. “Now, let’s partner up, please.”

I turned to Ana, but she had already partnered with the boy next to her. Typical boy-crazy Ana. I turned to the chair behind me only to find the new boy smirking at me.

“You’re Tara, right?”

I was too dumfounded to reply. He took pity on me and took out his notebook, which looked like he had fished it out of a dumpster.

“It’s your lucky day, partner.”