Falling into Forever Page 8

  “Please allow me to introduce Dr. Sean Callahan,” said Dr. Sullivan with great enthusiasm. “He has agreed to teach Mr. Frost’s classes this semester, and it is an honor for him to be here. Please make sure to welcome him to our Collinsworth home when you see him on campus. Dr. Callahan is an Oxford University professor, and he has interrupted a research trip to come here as a personal favor.”

  The headmaster stopped speaking and looked at the assembly of astonished students in front of him. Sitting in stunned silence, the students did not seem to feel as comfortable with the turn of events as Dr. Sullivan.

  The hint of an Irish brogue skipped from the lips of the mysterious stranger as the assembled students stared openly. Callahan scanned the room from side to side as he assured everyone how glad he felt to be teaching at Collinsworth. To Alexandra, his eyes seemed to fixate on her at the back of the room.

  He said, “I am looking forward to meeting every one of you. Your youth and bright minds are a treasure. Now let us prepare for many adventures together.”

  High above the assembly, the ringing bell tower startled the students.

  “You are dismissed,” said Dr. Sullivan, regaining the microphone. “Please exit slowly now and have a tremendous day.”

  Bodies pushed against Alexandra as she squeezed into the wave of students all trying to rush out the doors of Drake Hall at the same time. She made her way through the doors and into the sunshine to wait for Taylor, who appeared, guiding Benjamin behind her by the hand.

  “What was that all about?” Taylor asked. Without giving Alexandra a chance to answer, Taylor officially introduced her to Benjamin. “Alexandra, this is Benjamin Lawson. And no you cannot have him. He’s mine.” She giggled, pleased with her audaciousness.

  Benjamin dropped Taylor’s hand to shake Alexandra’s. “It’s nice to meet you, Alexandra. Call me Ben.”

  As he smiled at Alexandra, she felt her cheeks blush. His eyes are as blue as the sky, she thought to herself. His golden hair sparkled in the bright morning sun, and his smooth, tanned skin glowed like sweet caramel.

  Taylor caught Alexandra staring and coughed beside her. “Alex, Benjamin just moved from California,” she said as she put her arm around his waist. “He’s a surfer.”

  “Cool,” stuttered Alexandra, her face flushing red. Well that went just great, she mused.

  Sliding his hips from Taylor’s grasp, Benjamin focused his blue eyes on Alexandra’s cheeks. “I’m glad you don’t cover those up,” he told her.

  “Cover what?” Alexandra asked as she stared at her black Mary Jane shoes shuffling against the cement sidewalk.

  “Your freckles,” he said.

  “I have to go make potions in chemistry now,” Taylor interrupted. “What do you have for first period, Alexandra? Let me see your schedule,” she demanded and ripped a piece of blue paper from Alexandra’s fingers. Disappointment registered across Taylor’s face while she silently read the schedule.

  “Look, Ben. You and Alexandra have first-period German class with Frau Stunkhaus.” With that fact revealed, Taylor turned her nose up and pranced away to class.

  Alexandra stood still, tongue-tied.

  “Do you mind showing me where class is?” Ben asked. “I’m totally lost here.”

  A shy grin eased across his handsome face while he waited for her to answer.

  “Are you okay?” asked Benjamin. Unnerved by him, her fingers twirled her hair unconsciously.

  He pulled a rumpled class schedule from his pocket. “Which way is Mitchell Hall?”

  Struggling to regain her composure, Alexandra pointed her finger past his head to the ivy-covered, red-brick, two-story building straight behind him. “It’s that one,” she mumbled. “Not hard to miss,” she added.

  “Let’s go, then,” said Benjamin eagerly, leading the way. He paused and waited for her to catch up so that they could walk together. Alexandra thought surely that the eyes of every student in the quad were upon them.

  Reaching Mitchell Hall, they climbed a staircase to Frau Stunkhaus’s second-floor classroom. Ever the gentleman, Benjamin held the door open when they’d arrived at the right room. Alexandra actually paused for a moment in the doorway, not realizing he was holding the door open for her.

  “Does she bite?” Benjamin joked patiently, propping the door open with his arm, waiting for Alexandra to enter.

  She looked at him, puzzled. Not accustomed to shy, polite teenage boys, it took her a moment to grasp his gesture.

  “Thank you,” said Alexandra, smiling. They walked toward the back of the room.

  Cramped and drab Mitchell Hall was one of the oldest buildings on campus. Its uncomfortable classrooms showed their age. Students often had difficulty concentrating when the sun baked or the wind howled outside the building. This was because in Frau Stunkhaus’s second-floor classroom, the radiator broke down in the winter, and the air-conditioning sputtered off and on until fall.

  Alexandra also found her concentration thin today in that room, but for a different reason. Except for the row of windows and the blackboard at the front of the class, every inch of wall space in the classroom was papered with posters of the European countryside. There were fairy-tale castles, majestic Alpine mountains, and quaint villages nestled in deep valleys. Alexandra’s eyes traveled over the scenes as she took her seat. For a fleeting moment, she let herself imagine that she lived in one of the faraway scenes.

  Careful to choose the desk closest to the bank of windows lining the room’s entire exterior-facing wall, Alexandra planted herself on the hard, wooden chair and reminded herself not to complain about how cold it would be once winter arrived. Wanting to stick close to Alexandra, Benjamin chose the last seat in the row directly across from her.

  “Guten morgen, y’all,” Frau Stunkhaus greeted her seated students as others still wandered into the room.

  Alexandra giggled, and Benjamin smiled at her. With her cheeks blushing, she noticed how warm the room felt. Stifled by her blazer, Alexandra again removed it and hung it securely on the back of her chair.

  Remembering that her ponytail holder sat at the bottom of her book bag, Alexandra pulled her long, auburn hair into a loose pile on the back of her head. Running her fingertips over the birthmark on the nape of her neck, she sensed that someone was watching her and turned around to meet Benjamin’s gaze.

  “I would cut it,” she admitted, “but it’s the only thing that keeps me from looking like a twelve-year-old boy,” she said, giggling.

  “Hardly,” he responded. Her stomach flipped. A moment passed while Benjamin dug inside his book bag for a pen. “What’s that mark on the back of your neck?” he said finally.

  “It’s a birthmark,” she tried to explain. “Taylor says it looks like I have eyes on the back of my head. That’s why she never does anything behind my back that she wouldn’t do in front of me.”

  Benjamin leaned over for a closer look and reached his hand out to brush her hair aside for a close look. “I agree with her,” he said. “That’s kind of freaky.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” Alexandra said flatly, momentarily horrified. As Frau Stunkhaus approached them with her heels clicking on the linoleum, he pulled his hand away from Alexandra’s neck.

  “Guten morgen, Miss Peyton,” her teacher said, smiling. She proceeded to open the window beside Alexandra’s desk. A breeze ruffled the notebook pages on Alexandra’s desk, and she sucked in the fresh air greedily as Frau Stunkhaus walked back to the front of the room, ready to begin class.

  Frau Stunkhaus was petite, ash-blond, and she still possessed striking good looks, though long past her youth. Aside from her name, she seemed the epitome of a southern belle, with a refined demeanor and saccharine voice. Of course when she stepped in front of a class of students to teach the German language, the sounds that came out of her mouth were hard and guttural. She practically spit the German from her mouth.

  During the lesson, Alexandra found it difficult to concentrate because her ne
rvous, sideways glances at Benjamin throughout class confirmed her fear: he’d become preoccupied with her birthmark. Rubbing at her neck, Alexandra tried to keep the mark covered with her hand. Finally she gave up and let her hair down from her ponytail.

  “You should have left your hair up, Alex,” said Benjamin as he leaned over the aisle between their desks. “It was cute that way,” he told her.

  “Thanks,” she stuttered, her cheeks the same color as Frau Stunkhaus’s flaming-red lipstick.

  The bell rang out from the hallway outside the classroom, and Frau Stunkhaus dismissed class. Benjamin pulled his crumpled schedule from his pocket. Casually spying the schedule Alexandra held in her hands, Benjamin asked, “So what’s next? It does look like we have lunch together later.”

  “Taylor will be there, too,” Alexandra added. “We usually grab something quickly and sit outside to eat.”

  “Cool,” he said enthusiastically, flashing a wide smile.

  There were two hours until lunch. Alexandra promised herself that she would be able to regain her composure by then. As they left class, they saw Taylor waiting for them at the foot of the staircase. Alexandra and Benjamin descended from the second floor.

  “Later,” Benjamin said, bypassing Taylor and hurrying to his next class.

  “Humph,” grunted Taylor, her ego bruised. She yanked Alexandra outside and wrapped her arm around her so she could not escape as they walked through the grassy quad. “So, what did you two talk about without me?”

  “Not much. Ben didn’t have much to say. He is very observant, though,” Alexandra said, blushing at the thought of Benjamin Lawson staring at her neck.

  “I saw that,” Taylor said accusingly, but the ringing of the bell reminded her to hurry to her next class before she could ask any more questions. “I’ll see you at lunch,” she said as she ducked back into Drake Hall for drama class, leaving Alexandra to walk to calculus class by herself.

  8

  Hunger

  Trudging from class to class like a zombie, Alexandra pressed forward through her morning schedule despite a lack of sleep and an empty stomach. Chemistry class followed calculus class. She finally found the lab room, which was in the dankest basement on campus. This was not the end of the horror; Mr. Haney assigned her to sit next to Pete Evans, one of Taylor’s former boyfriends.

  Victims, Alexandra aptly called them.

  Pete still harbored an unrequited obsession for Taylor. That morning, his obnoxious questions about her nauseated Alexandra almost as much as the fumes from his cologne.

  When Mr. Haney dismissed class, she escaped from Pete as fast as possible. Only psychology class separated her from lunch and seeing Benjamin again. Inside the classroom, Alexandra took a desk next to Courtney and Michelle. They were redheaded twins, and she’d been on the tennis team with them since freshmen year. The twins eagerly attempted to catch up on the latest news before class started.

  “I heard Taylor got a nose job over the summer. Is that true?” asked Courtney.

  “Is she dating Benjamin Lawson or what?” poked Michelle. “He is beyond cute.”

  “No nose job. And she’s not dating him,” Alexandra explained. “But maybe you should just ask her yourselves.”

  “No way,” said Courtney. “You’re the one who is a friend of hers. She hasn’t spoken to me since the ninth grade when I told her that her eyebrows didn’t match her hair.”

  “Spill it, Alex,” demanded Michelle. “We need some gossip.”

  Alexandra shrugged. “I don’t know anything,” she fibbed. “Taylor was gone most of the summer. Besides, I wouldn’t talk about her behind her back.”

  “But that’s no fun!” said Michelle, giggling as their teacher closed the classroom door and brushed past their desks.

  “Finally,” Alexandra mumbled as Courtney and Michelle turned their attention away from her and toward the teacher.

  Alexandra did not look at either of the twins the rest of the class; but when they waved goodbye to her at the end of the lesson, she mustered a smile. Gossip fiends, she thought, forcing a fake smile across her face as her stomach rumbled loudly.

  Following the smell of French fries across campus, Alexandra neared the doors of the cafeteria and spied Taylor lingering outside impatiently with her arms crossed.

  “It’s about time, Alex,” Taylor squawked as Alexandra came up beside her. “I’m going to buy you a decent watch, something big and expensive that you might not lose. And maybe a GPS, too. Daddy owes me some presents. I haven’t touched his American Express since I got back from Italy.”

  Too hungry to argue, Alexandra steered her friend toward the lunch line. Taylor grabbed an apple and a bottle of water, then she ordered her lunch: “Two soft tacos, please. Hold the chicken. Hold the cheese. And no sour cream.” A cafeteria worker handed her two tortilla shells filled with lettuce.

  “Looks yummy,” Alexandra joked, looking at the plate. “A cheeseburger and extra fries for me, please,” she ordered, as hungry as a ravenous animal.

  Following Taylor into the noisy lunchroom, Alexandra heard her name shouted across the cacophony of teenage chatter. Turning anxiously, she saw Pete Evans waving for them to join him.

  “That’s so not happening,” Taylor said firmly as she nudged Alexandra toward a glass door at the back of the room. “Pete doesn’t even have a car!” she reasoned emphatically, much too closely to Alexandra’s ear. “As if!” She rolled her eyes at him once more before she stepped outside into the bright daylight of the quad.

  In the sapphire sky above their picnic table, little clouds began to gather slowly, threatening an afternoon thunderstorm. Alexandra felt a pang of relief. Benjamin was nowhere to be seen as she hungrily shoved her food into her mouth. Across the table from Alexandra, Taylor picked at her taco plate and rambled on about her morning classes.

  “I don’t know how you stay so thin eating the trash you do,” said Taylor, a look of jealous disgust spreading across her pretty face.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” said Alexandra, setting her soda back down on the table as she belched out loud.

  “Obviously,” Taylor observed, “there is no need in asking you to hurry so I can go have a smoke.” Taylor scanned the crowd of students sitting around the grassy quad. “Where do you think Benjamin is? I know he said he had lunch this period.”

  “Maybe he’s not hungry.” Alexandra shrugged her shoulders as she glanced behind her back.

  “It’s getting late,” Taylor said, reading the time off her cell phone before dropping it into her handbag. When she did, her fingers lingered inside the bag, searching for something else. A cigarette appeared conspicuously, and she put it to her lips unlit. “Let’s go, then. If you’re done, that is.”

  Hesitation kept Alexandra seated, and Taylor read it in her eyes. Agitated with her friend, she asked, “Do you have something better to do? Or someone to see?”

  Alexandra ignored her as Taylor gathered her book bag.

  “Fine, then,” Taylor said as she stood up from the hard wooden bench. “You’ll miss me,” she warned as she stomped away from the picnic table toward Drake Hall.

  With Taylor gone, Alexandra noticed how badly her head ached. Closing her eyes, she crisscrossed her arms on top of the picnic table and rested her head down on her arms. Laughter and gossip swirled around her. But curiously her thoughts faded to a single face: the chillingly handsome young man in the park, the one who played the guitar.

  Maybe I’ll say hello today. The thought flittered through her mind, and her lips smiled nervously as her cheeks rested against her arms.

  “Alex!” Taylor shouted harshly across the quad.

  The handsome face dissolved into a fog as Alexandra’s eyes popped open and adjusted to the daylight.

  “Alexandra!” Taylor shouted again impatiently.

  What would she do without me? Alexandra mused as she gathered her book bag to follow after Taylor.

  Behind Drake Hall, Taylor lit her cigarette while Al
exandra crawled up to sit on the stone wall. Just beyond was the cemetery.

  Taylor idly watched a gray-haired man raking leaves among the headstones. In her skirt pocket, her cell phone beeped. Checking the cell, Taylor giggled and poked her bottom lip out in a fake, practiced pout.

  “Look,” demanded Taylor, holding the phone up to Alexandra’s face. “Ben sent me a picture of himself eating pizza.” She read the text aloud to Alexandra: “‘Where r u 2?!’”

  “Let’s go!” Taylor ordered, scraping her cigarette on the ragged stones on top of the wall and tossing the butt into the cemetery.

  “You smell hideous,” Alexandra advised her as Taylor popped a piece of chewing gum into her mouth.

  “And you need to get some sleep,” Taylor hissed at her and stomped away swiftly, leaving Alexandra alone.

  A soft breeze rustled her long hair. She thought that she smelled a whiff of smoke. Peeking down the side of the wall, she saw Taylor’s cigarette butt burning through a dry, brown leaf on the ground. Hastily, she jumped down from the wall on the side of the cemetery and stomped the smoldering fire out with her foot. Terrific job, Taylor, she thought as she bent to pick up the cigarette butt.

  The man Taylor had noticed in the cemetery had watched Alexandra from nearby. He walked up behind her silently and tapped her shoulder as she bent over the ground. Startled, Alexandra whipped around and stared into the dark eyes of a gray-haired old man, his skin darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled from the sun. A scruffy, grizzled beard covered his chin.

  “You scared me,” gasped Alexandra, her heart pounding.

  The old man’s nose twitched as he took a step closer. He pulled his thin lips back into a smile over his yellowed, gnarled teeth. “I’ll take that,” he said, holding his fingers out for the cigarette butt in Alexandra’s hand.

  His fingers lingered over her palm too long. A shiver ran down her back as he took the piece of trash from her hand.