After Ever After (9780545292788) (2 page)

That first week of school had at least one other huge highlight: I met the girl of my dreams. I mean, it's not like we had some exclusive relationship or anything. She was probably the girl of just about everyone's dreams. But I'm the guy who made friends with her first.

Kind of.

It happened just before science class, first thing in the morning on the first day of school. I was trying to hustle through the crowded chaos of the hallway, which is hard to do with a limp. As I came around a corner, I saw a girl crouched down on the floor, attempting to gather up a million papers, along with the contents of her entire backpack. People were stepping around her, and even right over her stuff, but nobody was stopping to help. I figured I'd be late to class if I stopped, but I also figured this girl was going to get stampeded if someone didn't help her to pick up her stuff before the warning bell rang.

I knelt next to her and started grabbing lipsticks, packs of gum, and — uh — feminine items. Her dark hair totally covered her face, so I didn't get a look at her until we had gotten everything back together and stood up. When she looked sideways at me to say thank you, I felt my entire world shift violently on its axis. I'd heard people say that beauty can hit you suddenly, but I had thought it was a figure of speech. Uh-uh. This was like,
Ka-POW!

Miss Ka-POW! spoke, and the torrent of words was as overwhelming as her looks. “Hey, thanks! Wow, people around here are really serious about getting to class on time. Back in California, nobody would have helped a new kid, either, but that's because they'd be worried about not looking cool. But here — geez! I felt like I was, like, in the middle of a riot. Hi, I'm Lindsey. Lindsey Abraham. We just moved here from L.A. Well, not really L.A. The O.C., technically. But close enough, right? And you're…?”

I was speechless. The neurologist would tell you I have “slow processing as a late effect,” which is
another way of saying that people can really make me look dumb if they're quick talkers. And apparently Lindsey Abraham was, like, an intercontinental talking missile. By the time my brain worked its way through her whole train of thought, I must have looked like a total goon. “Uh, it's Jeffrey. Jeffrey Alper. From New Jersey.”
Oh, good God
, I thought.
Did I really just say that?

She giggled. “Well, hello, Jeffrey Alper from New Jersey. And thanks again for being the one person who stopped to help.” The bell rang. “Ooh, now I've made you late to class.”

“It's OK, my class is right here. I hope you don't think our whole school is rude. Someone would have stopped to help, but, you know, first day and all….”

Lindsey Abraham smiled at me. Wow, do people have white teeth in California, or what? “It's all right. Someone
did
stop to help. By the way, are you one of those people who always see the good in everybody?”

“I try.”

We looked at each other, and for that instant, we were equal — I don't think she knew what to say, either. Of course, she recovered first. “You said your class is this one, right?” She squinted at her schedule, which was partly crumpled in her hand and had a big sneaker footprint across it. “Science with, uh, Laurenzano?”

“Yeah, but watch out going in. He's famous for getting mad when people come in late.”

Lindsey smiled again.
I could get used to that smile
, I thought. On second thought, no, I'd probably never get used to it. I liked it, though. A lot. “Come with me,” she said. “I owe you one. Is that the back door of this room? OK, you hit that one, and I'll go in the front.” Then she turned on her heel and barged into the room like it was a Hollywood party and she was on the red carpet. I headed for the back door. What else was I going to do?

Miraculously, Mr. Laurenzano was nowhere in sight. Kids were grabbing seats for their friends, but there was still a totally empty table for four at the back of the room, so I kind of eased my way over
there, hoping nobody would notice I was late. I sat in one chair, and pulled the chair next to mine away to save a space for Tad.

Meanwhile, in front of the room, Lindsey was the star attraction. It was like a movie scene or something: Everybody's conversations just totally stopped as she walked across the floor. Nobody was going to notice me
now
. She smiled at the closest guy — this chess geek named Connor — and said, “Is this Mr. Laurenzano's room?” He just swallowed a few times, then nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I'm new here, and this school is
so
confusing! At my old school in California, we didn't have all these inside hallways. It was more like —”

Mr. Laurenzano popped out of the little back room that lab classrooms always have, and said, “Seats, everybody! We have science to do!” Lindsey looked around for an empty place, and my table was her only option. I couldn't believe my luck. She glided over, gestured toward the chair directly across from me, and raised one eyebrow. “Be my guest,” I said.

Wow, was that a slick line, or what? “Be my guest.” So suave, so smooth. This girl's heart would be mine by third period.

As if.

Lindsey sat down, and the smell of her perfume wafted across to me. I was hypnotized. Mr. Laurenzano started taking attendance, and when he got to her name, I repeated it in my mind:
Lindsey Abraham
. Such a perfect name: five syllables that rolled right across the tongue. Lindsey Abraham. I wondered how much it would hurt to get those fourteen letters tattooed on my arm.

Unfortunately, I realized, if somebody wanted to get all of that onto my bicep, they would have to write pretty small. But maybe just the initials? L.A. And she was from there, too! It was perfect.

Now if only I didn't —

“Jeffrey Alper!” Mr. Laurenzano was calling my name, his lower lip already curling into a sneer of distaste. And everybody was staring at me, including Lindsey. Apparently, this wasn't the first time he'd
said it. But this wasn't my usual spacing-out problem. This was, like, a hormonal emergency. Lindsey grinned.

I thought I might pass out.

“Here,” I said weakly.

“Mr. Alper, I don't know what kind of attention your seventh-grade science teacher demanded, but in this classroom, you will be silent and attentive at all times. We will be working with dangerous, flammable —”

Lindsey was grinning at me. Her lips were lush and perfect, sparkling and glossy. I just wanted to stare at them until —

“Is that understood, Mr. Alper?”

“Uh, absolutely,” I replied automatically. I mean, I had no clue what I was supposed to have understood, but I didn't think asking this guy to repeat himself would help. Just then, the classroom door opened, and Tad wheeled himself over to my table. He looked at me, then at Lindsey, who had stopped grinning, and was looking coolly at him. Then he looked back at me, and kind of smirked down into
his book bag as he took out his laptop computer. Tad and I are allowed to type everything. A lot of cancer survivors do fine in school, but Tad and I both have tons of nerve damage, so we get special accommodations — as Tad says, we're kind of like honorary speds. Both of us have really horrendous handwriting because our hands aren't very coordinated, so voilà! We get laptops.

Other kids are always jealous of our laptop privileges, and once in a while someone mutters something about it. When we were in seventh grade, this one kid named Tim said it wasn't fair, and Tad just about lost his mind right in the middle of social studies. He was all, like, “Not fair? Oh, I'm sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you'll probably survive until your eighteenth birthday.” Then the kid was going, “Uh, I didn't mean …” But Tad wasn't done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then
he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, “Why don't you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat.”

The teacher was totally pale and panicked. She said, “Um, Tad, why don't you just … I'm sure Timothy wasn't trying to … uh …” Tim looked like he wanted to die on the spot, but Tad still wasn't finished. He said, “What, Timmy? Don't you want to trade places anymore? Then you could be a partial cripple instead of a …” At that point, Tad had to stop and catch his breath because it's really hard for him to support himself. I rushed around a couple of desks to get to Tad, and tried to help him back into his seat. This brought on one of his alarming coughing fits, but as he sank back down into his chair, I'm pretty sure everyone in the room noticed that a couple of the coughs were really the end of his sentence: “… complete COUGHing COUGHhead.”

I knew he had it ten times worse than I did with the late effects, and I knew a lot of people didn't like the way he never, ever held anything back, but at
moments like that I always wished I could be even a tenth as brave as Tad.

OK, so now you know the deal with the laptops. Anyway, Tad got his booted up, and then just as Mr. Laurenzano launched into part two of his amazing lab safety speech, my computer pinged. Lindsey looked for a moment, but then went back to staring out the window. Apparently she wasn't a huge lab safety fan. Mr. Laurenzano gave me a warning glare, but didn't come over from behind the big old slate-topped demonstration table in front of the room. Science teachers never come out from behind the big table. I looked down at my screen, and saw that Tad had IM'ed me:

Just then, I noticed that a large shadow had fallen over my screen. I couldn't even bear to look up as Mr. Laurenzano said, “Thaddeus Ibsen, Lindsey Abraham. Lindsey, Thaddeus. There, you've been introduced. NOW can I teach some science?”

Wow, it looked like this was going to be my year for unusual teachers.

For the rest of the period, I totally tried to concentrate, but it was impossible. I kept thinking about how Lindsey's legs were just inches from mine under the table. And I know that's totally inappropriate, and you probably think I'm some kind of sick per
verted horndog, but hey, it's the truth. During our brief but meaningful forty-minute relationship, I had noted that: A. Lindsey was wearing a skirt, and B. She had hot legs.

Even if I could have torn my brain away from the new love of my life, it wasn't like I could have ignored the distraction of Tad. I had turned off the sound on my computer, but he was still IM'ing me nonstop. I kept whispering for him to cut it out, but he's not very, um, directable. And every time I looked at him, he rolled his eyes from me to Lindsey and back, over and over again. It looked like he was having some kind of spasm. Fortunately, Lindsey didn't notice, because she had turned halfway around in her chair to face Mr. Laurenzano.

Which allowed me to add the back of her neck to my list of perfect things about Lindsey Abraham.

After about a million years, the warning bell rang, and Tad wheeled himself out. He always got to go either at the warning bell, or three minutes after everybody else, because it was hard for him to get
through the halls if they were full of people. When the rest of us got dismissed, Lindsey looked right at me and said, “Um, Jeff?”

Wow, she remembered my name. Unfortunately, she was probably so mortified by Tad that she would never speak to either of us again. “Yeah?”

“What was that about?”

“What was
what
about?” If this girl didn't think I was a complete moron yet, she had to be getting pretty close.

“You know, why did the teacher introduce me to your friend Thad?”

“It's Tad. And he introduced you because, uh … well …” Here's where a smarter guy would have just shut up. But for some reason, whenever I'm under pressure, I have this awful habit of telling the truth. “We were IM'ing about you.” I could feel a brilliant crimson blush spreading across my cheeks as Lindsey cocked her head to the side and chewed on a lock of her gorgeous hair.

“Oh.” She broke into a grin. “Were you saying anything good?”

Now the blush was hitting my neck. My ears felt red-hot, too, and I was sweating. “No!”

“No? You mean, you were saying something bad? That's not nice!” She wagged her finger back and forth at me like preschool teachers do when they want to show a kid that pegging teachers with the blocks is a no-no. But the grin was still there.

“NO! We weren't saying anything bad about you, either. We were just, uh … I mean, I think you're nice. That's all.”

She giggled a little. “You just told Tag that you think I'm nice, huh? I'm so sure!”

“For real! And it's Thad. I mean, Tad.” That was it. She had to think I had the approximate IQ of lettuce by this point. Before I could dig myself any deeper into the Pit of Conversational Stupidity, the late bell rang.

“See what you did, Jeff? First you go writing about me all over town, and now you made me late to class again. Well, there's only one thing to do.”