Hello! I think this upload's on time, but frankly, I forgot to check, so I'm uploading now whether it's late, early, or on time. Hope you all like it :)

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Chapter 9

Physics is literally three rooms away from where I had biology class earlier, so it’s easy to find. But I still turn up late, dragging my feet the entire way there because I’m so grudging to go to AP freaking Physics. The bell has already rung when I finally reach the door to Room 31: Physics, Dr. Anderson.

Pausing for a minute, I gulp slightly. My teacher’s not just a Mr. or Mrs. Anderson. They’re Dr. Anderson. Doctor. They are so going to give me detention for being late… Great. Detention on my first day – it just doesn’t get any better…

I take a deep breath, and then sigh heavily as I push at the door.

Except it doesn’t open.

I sigh again, this time a heck of a lot more frustrated, and I jiggle the door handle, twisting it right and then left, and shoving my shoulder into the door. And, of course, when I hurl myself at the door, it flies open. Typical.

Today is really just going totally swell.

I fly into the room, clutching the handle on the door tight so I don’t fall on my face for the second time today. My heels sound unnervingly loud on the laminate tile flooring in the sudden silence of the classroom.

“Late, as well,” says a voice. He doesn’t sound too pleased, either. “Miss… Clarke, isn’t it?”

“Um…” I pry my shaky fingers off the door handle. It’s stupid, but my hands are trembling at the thought of a teacher being displeased with me and actually giving me detention. So I may not have been a model student in Pineford, but heck, I never got detention!

“Um, yes,” I answer the teacher. He sure looks like a Dr. rather than just ‘Mr.’ I think. His hair is thick and white, and his thin silver-rimmed glasses are perched on top of his head. He has a bony, crooked nose, and he wears a long white lab coat.

“You’re late, Miss Clarke,” Dr. Anderson reiterates. I must look as distracted as I really am, since he sounds a little bit tetchy with me.

“Sorry,” I say, then add in an undertone, “Nobody ever said I didn’t know how to make an entrance though…”

I say it quietly enough that I think he can’t hear me, and a few people in the front row nearest me stifle a laugh, which makes me feel a little less nervous. But even Dr. Anderson chuckles – he must have superhuman hearing or something.

“Um, Dr. Anderson?” I say, edging closer to his desk after pushing the door shut behind me. “There was a mix up with my transcripts… I’m not actually meant to be in this class.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Apparently there aren’t any classes for me to move into.”

“Hmm. And how good are you at physics, Miss Clarke?”

“Not very.” I smile innocently, just to enforce that I’m not being modest, I’m perfectly serious.

Dr. Anderson sighs through his wonky nose and closes his eyes, pinching his fingers to his closed eyelids like he’s got a bad head. “Perfectly capable students and they can’t fit them into the class, and no wonder, if they keep messing up schedules.” Then he says, in a louder voice, “Alright, Miss Clarke, you’ll have to grin and bear this class for the time being.”

“I really don’t think there’s much chance of me being moved,” I tell him miserably.

He sighs again, then scans the classroom. “Mr. Butler, please move to the spare desk at the back. Miss Clarke…” He waves a hand for me to go sit at the spare table at the back. But when Dr. Anderson says his name, I look over to see Dwight’s head snap up.

Dwight doesn’t so much as glance at me. “But can’t –”

“Mr. Butler. Move.” The teacher looks back to me again. “You’ll have to try and muddle through, I’m afraid. I’ll speak to the office at the end of the day and see if there’s anything they can do, but I’m sure Mr. Butler over there will help you out. Worst comes to worst, you’ll have to think about extra classes, or a tutor.”

Then Dr. Anderson claps his hands together. “Now, after that lengthy interruption, back to the matter at hand…” He chuckles at his own joke.

I’m not even listening to the rest of the ‘matter at hand’ though, too busy making my way to my designated seat next to Dwight. He doesn’t even acknowledge me as I drop onto the stool next to him.

“Hi,” I say quietly, after a pregnant pause. I have to say something, just to fill that empty void. It feels so incredibly tense, and I’m not even entirely sure why.

Okay, okay! I know why. I should’ve said something to him at lunch time other than stammering incoherently and running off. I don’t know exactly why he’s being so cold toward me, but I can kind of understand it.

But it stings; he’d been so warm, so nice and friendly to me the other day. Now he won’t even answer me and say ‘hi’ back. Nor will he even look at me, for that matter. So I try again – “Dwight.”

“You know, some of us are trying to learn here.”

He doesn’t sound like the friendly, easygoing Dwight I met in the coffee shop. He sounds irritated. Not mad or snappy; it’s more like I’m a pesky fly.

“Sorry,” I mutter. And I don’t try to talk to him again.

It’s not until we’re told to discuss the answers on page one hundred and eighty of the text book that I talk to him – and I don’t talk to him about question 2a. Dwight reaches across to pull the textbook at the edge of the desk closer, and flips it open to the right page. I watch him for a moment before I blurt out the sentence I’ve been trying to perfect for the past twelve minutes.

“So what, you suddenly hate me now?”

I see his eyebrow go up a little, but he doesn’t turn his head away from the text book to look at me.

He answers me this time, at least.

“Right, because you were just being so friendly earlier, weren’t you? Let’s just be best buds.”

“What did you expect me to do?”

It’s the only excuse I can come up with, and I know it’s a lousy one.

But I’m not about to tell him the truth, to explain myself. And how can I tell him I didn’t know what to do because I’m not much good around people, that I chased after the people who wanted to be my friends because I didn’t want to risk jeopardizing my shot at actually having friends? I can’t tell him that without giving him my life story and sounding like a complete loser.

And no way in heck is anybody here going to find out about Fatty Maddie.

Dwight shrugs in response to my rhetorical question. “I thought you were better than that, Madison.”

I don’t need to ask what he means: he thought I was better than to run off after the popular people just because they wanted to be my friends instead of staying to at least say hi to him and Andy.

But the only reply I can come up with is to snap, “Well I guess we can’t all be perfect, can we? Or geniuses at physics.”

“Don’t expect me to do your project for this semester for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” I snap – but I’m not so much angry as I’m hurt by his comment. “I barely scraped a B last year in physics. Sorry I can’t keep up with you AP brainiacs. Sue me.”

“We prefer the term nerds, you know.”

I cast a sideways glance at him through my narrowed eyes, and I’m surprised to find he’s biting back a smile. And even just a hint of his infectiously friendly smile has me let out a laugh; I can’t help it.

“Sure,” I say. “That’s what I mean. Nerds. Gotcha.”

Dwight lets the smile he’s holding back slip onto his face. Then he says, “Are you going to switch classes?”

“I can’t. Looks like you’re stuck with me for the rest of the year.”

“Whoopee.”

He uncaps his pen with his teeth, then, and starts answering the questions from the textbook into his notepad. I look at him for a moment – the freckles, the gangly arms and skinny frame, the kind of curly black hair…

It hadn’t even crossed my mind when I met Dwight that he could be a nerd. I hadn’t wanted to stick a label like that on him. I’d just thought he was a really nice, kind of cute guy. Now he said it though, it seemed so obvious that he was on a different social level to Tiffany, Summer, Kyle, Bryce, all of them. Like he’d just turned on a flashing neon sign over his head.

It had sort of crossed my mind before, talking to Carter, but I hadn’t directly thought, ‘Dwight’s a nerd and I’m becoming a popular kid so I can’t be friends with him.’

Jeez. Spend years with people not wanting to be your friend and then this kind of thing happens.

But I just… I don’t know what to do. How am I supposed to know what to do?

I don’t want to not be friends with Dwight. I like him. And if he gets over being mad at me, I think he’ll like me, too.

And on the other side of it, Tiffany and the rest of the girls seemed really nice, and I could almost – almost – picture myself being friends with them, and the guys too. But that was hard, since it was darn near impossible to envision myself hanging out with the popular kids.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “About earlier, I mean. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to you. I just… Whatever. I don’t know.”

He’s silent for a moment but then he says, “It’s okay. I get it. New school, you get straight in with the popular crowd… I get it.”

He says it so sympathetically, so understandingly, that I almost believe he really does get it for a minute. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know the half of it.

Dwight carries on, “At least you’re a big enough person to apologize. Just remember though, the higher you climb, the harder the fall.”

I’m silent, because I have no reply to that.

And I have no reply to that because I know it’s true.

Instead, I point at the text book and I say, “What’s Newton’s second law?”

*

I struggle through the rest of the lesson, but I manage to survive it at least. I have a free period on my schedule next, so I figure I can go home. Mom and Dad are still in work, but I think I can find the way by myself. It shouldn’t be too hard…

“What class are you in next?” I ask Dwight, just to make conversation.

“Nothing,” he tells me, shoving his notebook into his over-stuffed messenger bag. “Study period. How about you?”

“Same as you,” I answer.

“Are you staying in school, or going home?”

“I guess I’ll go home, if I can remember the way.”

“If you can remember the way?” he repeats quizzically, with a frown. I hold the door open for him as he leaves the room behind me. “How’d you get here this morning?”

“My dad gave me a ride,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I can remember the way home. It’s not exactly too far to walk, right?”

“Well, no, it’s not,” Dwight says. “Where’re all your friends?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. How am I meant to know where they are?”

“Uh, your cell phone?” he suggests, like it’s totally obvious. And once he says it, it is obvious. Except, you know, I’m not used to using a cell phone for everything, and it didn’t even occur to me earlier in the day to ask for anyone’s number.

“Oh, good point,” I say. “I don’t have anyone’s number though. It doesn’t matter.” I smile impassively. “I’ll just head on home.”

“Hang on,” Dwight says, when I’m two steps away from him. I pause, and turn back to look at him. He fishes his cell out of his back pocket. “I’ll just see if Carter –”

“Madison!” trills a voice, and we both look behind me to see Tiffany and Summer at the end of the corridor, and Summer waves at me.

“Um…”

“It’s fine,” Dwight says. “Go talk to your… friends. I’ll, uh, see you round.”

I start stammering at him that he doesn’t have to go, I’m happy enough talking to him, but he’s already walking off briskly down the hallway, so I’m left gaping, speechless, staring after his retreating back.

“Madison,” calls Summer, and I turn around to see them walking toward me.

I don’t feel much like smiling; Dwight’s sudden departure leaves me feeling confused. And strangely hollow. But I smile at them anyway. “Hi.”

Tiffany nods her head in the direction Dwight just left in. “What were you talking to him for?”

“Dwight? He’s in my physics class.”

She nods and goes, “Mm-hmm,” and she and Summer exchange a glance. But neither of them says anything, so I just smile innocently at them.

“What do you guys have now? I have a free period,” I say then, just to move the conversation on and away from me.

“Free,” they both chorus. Summer adds, “We’re going to the mall, you in?”

“Sure,” I say enthusiastically, not even considering whether I actually want to go to the mall or not. It doesn’t occur to me until after I grin and say ‘sure’ that I only have twenty three dollars in my wallet.

Not that I even really care how much is in my wallet; I won’t buy much at the mall. Maybe a cookie, or a milkshake, since I’m getting kind of hungry now, but I won’t actually buy clothes or anything.

Plus, I’m way too excited that these girls are inviting me to go to the mall with them. It’s like, an actual everyday social activity!

“Cool,” Tiffany says with a smile. “Come on, I’m driving.”

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Yaaay, more of Dwight in this chapter! :) A lot of you guys seem to be pretty big Dwight fans (and I am too, admittedly!) so now I suppose you'll be seeing a lot more of him in physics class ;)

I will probably upload again on Sunday :)