~~~
The school bell rang and, soon, the courtyard that weaved the blocks of John Atkins High into a cohesive unit, was flooded with students and teachers who busily made their way to their next classes.
Keane, though, was in stealth mode. He was a ninja. And just like a ninja, he’d narrowed his body behind one of the pillars outside B block.
The idea had come to him that morning while getting dressed for school. And what a good idea it had seemed like at the time too. It had presented itself as the obvious solution to the ‘Thursday Afternoon Conundrum’ as he and Brok had come to call it, the name stemming from the Bullies’ practice of jumping them every Thursday on the way to the chemistry lab in B block.
Keane and Brok agreed that the Bullies always chose this time and place because B block was the most open of the school’s blocks, with the fewest hiding places, and also because the chemistry teacher, Mr. Green, didn’t take attendance like a lot of the other teachers did.
So, on the way to hand in his French assignment to Madame Dubois, Keane had told Brok about the idea of hiding behind the pillars until Randy and his lot got to class, leaving the coast clear. He’d snuck the word ‘ninja’ in there to pique Brok’s interest. According to Brok, nothing got to ninjas. Except other ninjas, which Randy and his lot most certainly were not. They were far too oafish to be ninjas. And the only thing better than one ninja, Keane had explained, was two ninjas.
But Brok had been rattling on about his own covert plans, and Keane, late to hand in the assignment, had rushed off after promising that they’d discuss it later.
It was now later, Keane hadn’t a clue where Brok was, and what had seemed like a good idea in the morning had, in practice, just left him stuck behind a pillar for the last ten minutes. He’d failed to account for the fact that, although he was now hidden from view, he couldn’t see anything or anyone either, and now he didn’t dare look out lest he accidentally come face to face with one of the Bullies.
“Oh, has chemistry moved to behind this pillar here? I must’ve missed the memo.”
Keane jumped almost a foot into the air before painfully crash landing on his bottom.
Seeing that it was Zara who had startled him, he urgently grasped at the pillar in an attempt to hoist himself up. But the new girl, who’d already been chuckling, started to laugh her head off at his futile efforts.
“Only, I can’t imagine chemistry formulae fitting this way,” she said between her tearful fits, motioning to the narrow pillar. She turned her head sideways and mimicked scrawling along the height of the brickwork. “Maybe this way…?”
Keane straightened up, dusted himself off, and tried to play it cool, like he hadn’t just been frightened half to death.
Zara, though, seemed to find even his fake nonchalance hilarious. It bugged him to see just how much his misery amused her.
“Shhh!” he hissed at her. “Just… shhh, okay?”
Zara put a finger on her lips, still giggling. “Okay, okay,” she whispered.
“Is the coast clear or not?” said Keane, peering around the pillar. But when he turned back, Zara had stopped giggling and was glaring at him, which he found more than a little frightening.
Seeing Keane now cowering away from her, Zara grunted with exasperation, rolled her eyes, and grabbed his arm.
“Come on!” she said as she violently dragged him toward the block’s entrance.
Keane found himself being involuntarily pulled along, his feet more in the air than on the ground. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break free from her grip, and all the while he could only think of how Brok would have pointed out that this didn’t bode well for his future as a ninja.
“You are freakishly strong!” he said.
Zara’s ice-cold glare made him promptly retreat into his shirt collar, not unlike a frightened turtle.
“In-in a good way, I mean,” he said, from inside the shirt.
When Zara smiled mischievously, he realized that she was just toying with him and popped his head back out.
“They really got you good, didn’t they?” she said.
He sighed. “You saw the blood. You tell me.”
“Niagara Falls,” Zara chuckled. Keane laughed along, but only half-heartedly.
“Not sure why I’m laughing, ’cos I very nearly died.”
“Oh, quit drama-queening around, Drama Queen. We’re late for chemistry…”
He groaned wearily at the dreadful nickname but, in truth, even Drama Queen was better than Freak Show.
Then, quite suddenly, he perked up. Did she just say we’re late for chemistry? We?
He wiped the eager grin off his face, cleared his throat and summoned up the most nonchalant tone he could.
“So, do you want to chemistry me?” Instant regret. He slapped his forehead. The Idiot Brain was doing its word vomit thing again. “I mean, lab my partner?” Worse. That was, somehow, even worse.
He cried in internal torment, praying that by some miracle she hadn’t heard him. But of course, she had; she was looking at him as if considering which mental asylum he would be most suited to. Keane decided that there was only one solution to this matter—that he never be allowed to talk again. Ever. Especially not to girls.
“I’m just going to go…” he said, “to, like, the Arctic…”
He started back toward the pillar. The pillar was good. It didn’t judge him. It didn’t argue with him. And it hid him well. Yes, the pillar was good indeed. Keane liked the pillar.
Zara laughed. She renewed her grip on his arm and pulled him along once more, so resolutely this time that he almost lost a shoe.
“Yes, we can be lab partners,” she said. “But if you try to ‘chemistry’ me? I’m going to kick your butt.”
To Keane, who believed that Zara should be kicking his butt anyway, considering his mounting battery of awful blunders, that sounded fair enough.