Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [3]
I finished signing my forms and returned to my cousin, who snatched the schedule from my hands, scrutinizing my teachers.
“Your Monday through Wednesday schedule is almost the same. You have Mr. D for chemistry. He has people call him Mr. D because his name is so long. That’s good. He’s supposed to be fair,” she mused. “Ugh, Mrs. Dell. She suuucks,” Ashley said, drawing it out dramatically. “Sorry about that. But hey, we’ll be in the same class!”
I looked to see which subject she was talking about. Latin. Wait, Latin?
I realized I had been put in freshman Latin.
I never really paid much attention to which classes I’d actually be taking. Christine was on the board at Vincent Academy and pulled some strings to allow me to take the placement exams late—which was why I was starting three weeks after the school year had already begun. I forgot that the Vincent Academy required students to take two years of Latin. All I knew about Latin was E Pluribus Unum.
I looked down at Ashley and tried to be optimistic about it. “Well, at least I have a friend in class!”
She smiled her billion-dollar smile and showed me to my locker, in a narrow hallway next to the chemistry lab and boiler room. I felt like some goblin, tucked away in the basement dungeon. I would not have been surprised if Freddy Krueger stored his books next to me.
“Okay, now I have to go to my locker.” She smiled again, giving me an apologetic look. “It’s on the second floor. I won’t see you until Latin, which is the last class.”
“After lunch,” I replied woodenly. “Oh, crap!” I moaned.
“What?” Ashley looked alarmed.
I realized I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to go to lunch alone—and here, each grade took a separate lunch period because the cafeteria was kind of small.
“Nothing,” I said, throwing on my brightest fake smile. “I thought I forgot to bring something.”
“Oh. Okay, well, I’ll see you in Latin. You’ll hate it,” she promised, then added, “but Mrs. Dell has a moustache so it’s kind of funny to watch it move as she says anything that ends in ‘-ibus.’ It truly…flutters in the breeze,” she added dramatically.
I giggled, and gave her a hug.
“Thank you,” I said into her mess of curls, and gave her a bigger squeeze so she knew how much I really did appreciate it.
She bounced back to the stairwell and turned back to face me, looking older than the fourteen years I knew her to be.
“You’ll be fine.” Ashley looked at me solemnly with her giant blue eyes before skipping up the stairs, her overstuffed backpack bouncing up and down on her hip.
I eyed the emergency fire exit door and considered making a break for it.
“Don’t be stupid, Emma,” I whispered to myself. “Just two more years of high school. It can’t be worse than living with Henry.”
I shoved my notebooks into my locker and slammed the metal door defiantly.
Here we go.
Getting to school a little early was a good plan. My first class was still empty, so I was able to discreetly slip the form the gray lady gave me to my first teacher, Mrs. Urbealis, who greeted me warmly and said, “Sit anywhere.”
She looked sharp and clever. I figured I could ask.
“Anywhere? Come on, where should I really sit?” Back in Keansburg, I always had the third seat in the second row. In every single class. Enough of a breeze if the window was open, and if it was cold out, the first row got the brunt of the chill. Great seat. Sonny, the funniest guy in class, always sat in the front…Cyndi, our class president sat behind him. I stared at the desks, knowing that they had been unofficially assigned since the first week of freshman year.
Mrs. Urbealis broke into a knowing smile.
“Okay, Emma. I would say, take that