[Julia featured above.]

Four

Quinn Gets a Pity Party

Quinn's POV

Julia Reiss would not stop talking about Cody all through advisory. She went on and on throughout the entire ten minutes about his hair, and his eyes, and his smile which had miraculously gotten dimpled and perfectly straight over the summer. I guessed it was a side effect of suffering through braces for three years and finally getting them off. I should have known--I'd endured the awful metal in my mouth, too, but I hadn't exactly been rewarded with a Hollywood smile.

When our advisor finally let us go to our first class at 8:15 on the dot (she was a stickler like that), Julia grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me out into the hallway. Her wedges clacked on the hard floor and then became muted when we reached the grey carpet.

"Remind me why you're wearing high heels and a dress again?" I asked as we opened our lockers and began pulling out our things for our first class. I didn't have a textbook for chemistry, but it was nice to look busy, especially since Andrew Summers was just walking down the hallway.

"I don't know," Julia replied innocently. She was clutching her Algebra II textbook in a way that I would have normally associated with Maybelline, who, as an indicator as to how annoying she was, flirted with Andrew twenty-four/seven. "I just felt like dressing up."

I turned back to my locker. "Cody Marlett," I coughed.

"Are you okay?" Julia was studying me questioningly, her angular bob framing her face.

"Cody," I wheezed, so she couldn't hear.

She must have heard me the second time, because she rolled her eyes and turned away, but not before her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink.

It was only the second day of school. How could she know if she liked him or not? It wasn't like she'd spoken with him last year like I had--they'd generally ignored each other. She didn't even know him.

As I crossed the hallway to Mrs. Smith's classroom, I realized I was being a total hypocrite. Andrew Summers and I had probably exchanged a whopping twenty or so words to each other since we'd met--and that would be a long shot.

Exhaling loudly, I brushed past Elisabeth, who smelled way too strongly of Clinique perfume for there not to be a guy involved, and plopped down in my seat. Most of the class wasn't even in the room yet--no surprise there. Most of my classmates probably wouldn't show up; they were the typical detention recipients, anyway, except for Cody. I surprised myself by wondering where he was.

Slowly, the rest of the class filed in. I pulled out the waiver I'd signed the previous night and then sat absent-mindedly flicking through my various social media apps on my phone while desks scraped and voices exchanged light-hearted conversation. Finally, Mrs. Smith started the class, and I glanced two seats to my right. No Cody.

"Go on and pass up your waivers and we'll get started," Mrs. Smith was saying. She was wearing what looked like the same exact pencil skirt as yesterday, except her hair was wavy now instead of straight.

There was a rapid succession of knocks on the glass paneling of the classroom door, and I turned around in my seat to see Cody standing on the other side, waiting.

"I don't know why that door won't open from the outside," said Mrs. Smith, continuing to collect waivers. "Elisabeth, grab the door for Cody."

Had Mrs. Smith not been a new teacher, she would have known that almost every door in the whole school refused to open from the outside. The class watched languidly as Elisabeth hopped up from her seat and sashayed over to the door. Another strong wave of Clinique overcame me, and I coughed.

"Hey, Cody," she chirped when she swung open the door and Cody strode inside, his black backpack hanging off of one shoulder. He grunted an acknowledgement and then nodded in the general direction of Mrs. Smith before sitting down in his usual seat two down. His brown eyes immediately flicked over to me, and I looked away quickly.

"I'm pretty sure the clock says that it's 8:22," Mrs. Smith replied, not looking at him as she gathered the last waiver and then straightened the stack. "Doesn't class start at 8:20?"

She said it in that voice that meant she knew exactly what time class started. A few people cast Cody sympathetic glances, but I determinedly kept my eyes on the extremely unfascinating wood designs on my desk.

"My phone says 8:20," replied Cody, pulling his waiver out of his backpack and extending it to our teacher. She took it a little coldly and then strode back to the front of the room, probably not wanting to continue the argument. Cody, on the other hand, seemed completely unaffected. Since when did he enjoy being late to class? The Cody I knew last year was about as strict of a student as Julia, and that was saying something.

"As I was saying," continued Mrs. Smith, "we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm giving you lab groups and then we're going to do an investigation."

She grouped me off with Elisabeth and Cody, who looked extremely thrilled with his fortune. I noticed Elisabeth looked over the moon as well, but I was sort of dreading it. Sure, Cody was cute, and we were good friends, but if he liked me and Elisabeth liked him (and it seemed like she did), the group dynamic would be totally ruined.

Mrs. Smith passed out our lab instructions next and then sent us to the lab tables to work. Most of the guys immediately perched onto the tables and began texting.

"I think now's a good time to review lab safety, everyone," said Mrs. Smith, clearing her throat. None of the guys moved off of the tables. "Never sit during a lab, whether that be on the tables or on the stools. If it's a goggle lab, keep your goggles on until you've completely cleaned your lab area and moved back over to the desks. Clear?"

There was a general acknowledgement, but it still took a lot of pestering for Mrs. Smith to get the guys off of the tables. Luckily, Cody wasn't one of the troublemakers, though he did smirk at the guys in that way that guys always do when they congratulate each other for causing mischief.

"What do you have against Mrs. Smith, anyway?" I asked as we started in on the lab. It was simple enough, and involved lighting a match and sticking it inside a test tube. I'd done it before in middle school, but I figured we were starting easy.

Cody shrugged, lighting the match with a quick flick of his wrist and then handing me the flame. "She sort of treats us like we're five," he said. I shrugged right back because I didn't agree, then took the match and stuck it inside the first test tube. There was a popping noise.

"Hydrogen," said Cody, making a note in his lab notebook. Elisabeth leaned over and copied down what he wrote, her shoulder brushing his a little excessively. I wondered if she was actually planning on being helpful.

"You should go easy on Mrs. Smith," I said a few moments later, as he lit the second match and handed it to me. Our hands brushed and I couldn't tell if I could attribute the burning sensation in my fingers to the heat from the flame. "She's new this year. Must be hard. Especially with all the slackers we have in this class."

This time, the flame reignited. I made another note inside my test tube next to the slot for oxygen.

"I think Cody can do whatever he wants," put in Elisabeth as she obediently wrote "flame reignites" just as I had in the box in her notebook dedicated to oxygen. "It's cute."

Cody scoffed and I tried to swallow a laugh, though I sort of ended up choking on my breath instead. When Elisabeth turned to attempt to light the third match, he winked at me, but it was so fast I could hardly even tell if it had happened at all.

"You're blushing again," he mouthed, and there was that annoying smirk again, the one where his eyes sort of sparkled and he looked like he was barely suppressing a laugh. I stuck out my tongue at him.

We tested the third test tube and found out that it was carbon dioxide, then tossed the matches into the trash can and finished cleaning up. At the lab table next to us, Shane, Vanessa's crush who was noticeably not helping his group with the lab, had perched back up on the lab table and was now igniting and reigniting a match, his brows knit together. When Maybelline, his lab partner, turned to ask him what he was doing, he smirked and held the match dangerously close to her platinum blonde hair.

"Stop it!" she squealed, whirling back around and placing her hands protectively on her long straightened hair.

Mrs. Smith reached the lab table in an instant. "Off the table, children," she said, and she must not have seen the whole thing because she didn't even look that mad. I glanced over at Cody and saw that he watching the whole thing amusedly, his eyes flicking back and forth from Shane to the teacher.

"I'm not a child," Shane protested, tossing the match into the sink, where it promptly extinguished.

"If you can't follow instructions and handle this lab in a mature way, then you might as well be a child to me. Off the table, now."

Shane slid off the table as slowly and sulkily as humanly possible, and made sure to tug on Maybelline's hair the second Mrs. Smith turned back around. Cody chuckled and then turned back to me, but not before he saw Mrs. Smith glaring at him as if he'd caused the trouble.

"Problem, Mrs. Smith?" he asked sweetly. "We've already finished our lab. I personally think we have zero percent error."

I tried to give Mrs. Smith a sympathetic look as she turned back around. Poor woman--it was going to be a long year for her.

~*~*~

After school, I quickly realized I only had two options. I could either go home and have to endure Vanessa for the rest of the night, or I could stay at school for a little while longer. And while I never thought there'd be a day when I actually wanted to stay at school after three o'clock, when Julia asked me if I wanted to go watch the first few minutes of her tennis practice, I actually agreed.

The rest of the day had passed in the most ordinary way possible. English had been a bore--Vanessa and Shane had taken turns either fluttering eyelashes or winking flirtatiously at each other while Mrs. Davis yakked on about subject-verb agreement (and the sad thing was, most of the people in my class had no idea what that was). When I finally got to French class, I had seen that the desks were arranged in pair formations again, and when Cody asked me to sit next to him again, I knew I couldn't refuse.

Julia had looked mildly disappointed, but she couldn't have been that angry at me because after school, she hung around my locker while I packed up my books to dissect the class.

"It must just be because you're already friends," she said as I slid my Geometry textbook into my backpack, which had to have already weighed a ton. It was so heavy that when I picked it up, I actually made a small grunting noise. Julia stopped in the middle of her analysis and wrinkled her nose. "Bet you wish you had Andrew to carry that for you."

"You have no idea," I muttered, sliding the other strap onto my other shoulder. It actually wasn't so bad once the weight was evenly distributed.

Julia had already changed into her tennis clothes because she'd had free period the last class of the day; she was wearing a short sky blue skirt and a white shirt that had "love, love" written on it in swirly black font. I wondered if there was more than one reason why she was wearing it.

"Anyway, has Cody mentioned me at all to you?" Julia asked, grabbing her tennis bag and falling into step beside me as we headed down the stairs.

I racked my brain for any mention of my best friend but came up empty. "Um, not that I remember," I said. "But we don't really talk that much."

That was a total, blatant lie. We'd exchanged inside jokes the entire Chemistry class, and French and Geometry were no different. Julia must have been blind to be unable to see how much he liked me.

But again, I couldn't say anything. What if I was being just as blind about Andrew? I wanted to say it was different, but in reality, it really wasn't.

We headed down the staircase, Julia calling out hellos to the handful of students who greeted her and me acknowledging them too even though they said nothing to me. She was bouncing on the balls of her green and blue sneakers, and when I asked her why she was so happy, she just shrugged. That was when I realized something: for the first time in the history of our friendship, no-nonsense Julia Reiss had a completely random and entirely obsessive crush on someone she had absolutely no chance with. And I was the one in her way.

When we reached the tennis courts, Julia tossed her tennis bag on the small set of bleachers and headed out onto the court, her blonde hair glowing in the bright sunlight. I sat down on the top bleacher and crossed my legs at the ankles, my gaze wandering. On the field next door, a burly coach was hosting varsity soccer practice. Andrew Summers was on the field standing in front of the goal, his red shirt bright against everyone else's white uniform. I remembered Cody telling me he was playing soccer this year and tried to identify which of the little people on the far side of the field was him.

On the tennis court, the coach had started warm-up, and the team was doing a bunch of jogging in place and lunges. I pulled out my cell phone and began flicking through my text messages, bored.

Almost immediately, a text popped up from Cody.

I can see you, it said. Feel like coming over here to watch soccer?

I glanced over at the field and saw that one of the players had moved over to the bleachers and was standing with a cell phone in his hand. I stood, glanced over at Julia to make sure she wasn't watching, and then slung my backpack over my shoulder. At least now I had an excuse to watch Andrew practice without looking like I was stalking him.

When I reached the soccer field and crossed the track to get to the bleachers, I saw the team in mid-practice. Cody had moved back over from the bleachers and had joined the team in what looked like an intense conditioning workout. Careful not to watch in case Andrew was looking, I scooted up to the very top bleacher as inconspicuously as possible and then plopped down. Nobody else was watching, and I suddenly felt like a spy. I pulled a book out from my backpack and buried my nose in it, then gave up after a few seconds once I realized that it was upside-down and that I probably looked like a total nerd to anyone who was watching me.

Halfway through the practice, I grew tired of watching the soccer team complete rounds of push-ups and mountain climbers and decided it wouldn't be that awful if I went back home, anyway. After all, Vanessa was probably out with her friends--or if I was lucky, Shane--and she wouldn't be back until late. Maybe I could even have the house to myself for a little while, just like the good old days.

Once I'd arrived home, left my bike sideways in the driveway, and slipped through the front door, I saw Vanessa and Shane sitting on the living room couch, their heads very close together. I hadn't exactly thought of that possibility--and wasn't Mom going to be as strict with her as she was with me about boys?

Unfortunately, it didn't look like my mother was home yet. Even though I kicked off my shoes and stomped upstairs so loudly I sounded like an elephant stampede, my spoiled stepsister didn't even glance my way. And when I reached my bedroom and went into my bathroom to freshen up after school, I saw that Vanessa had stolen every single one of my perfume bottles.

Forget how bad I felt for poor Mrs. Smith--I felt even worse for myself.