Chapter 24

A few snickers broke out around Owen as soon as he finished speaking.

Owen Brooks was rigid, stubborn, and usually either first or second in the class. Studying came before everything else. The girls in his class were either noisy or nowhere near his level, and a poor student sitting beside him would be a distraction. They would lose focus in lessons, then interrupt him while he was trying to work.

His current desk partner did about as well as he did. Studying alongside someone who could compete with him suited him perfectly.

He saw nothing wrong with what he had said. He lowered his head and went back to his practice problems.

Ms. Parker's face darkened. Knowing Owen, though, she doubted anything she said would get through to him.

Most of the class looked ready to enjoy the spectacle. No one wanted to sit with Elise, and now even the class representative had made his opinion of her public.

Vivian and Kayla Morris exchanged a pleased glance. They could hardly wait to see how Elise would handle standing up there while every person in the room refused to have her.

The smile faded from Elise's face.

Owen had managed to look down on both poor students and girls in the same breath. He could underestimate her grades all he liked; she knew she did better than he did. But she wasn't going to stand there and accept being dismissed because she was a girl.

Julian had told her to be friendly to people who treated her well. If someone didn't like her, she had no reason to keep being nice to them.

Whispers spread through the room. A vein jumped in Ms. Parker's forehead, and she slapped a hand on the lectern.

“Quiet.”

The noise subsided.

“Are your grades very good?” Elise asked.

Her voice was clear, though she hadn't raised it. Everyone was already watching her, and the classroom fell silent. They held their breath, waiting to find out what she was doing.

Owen noticed the quiet and looked up. Elise was looking straight at him.

His brow creased. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes curious.

A couple of days ago, she had worked through a fall junior-year math paper and scored ninety-five out of a hundred. Owen was only just starting junior year. A paper covering last year's material ought to be roughly comparable, perhaps a little easier.

“What would you get on a math paper covering last year's work? Out of a hundred?”

Kayla propped her chin on her hand and gave an amused little snort.

“What's the point of asking? Whatever he gets, you won't come close.”

Laughter went around the room.

Owen would rather have left the question alone, but Elise kept looking at him. His fingers tightened around his pen.

“Eighty-five on last semester's math final,” he said.

Math was his strongest subject. He was first in their class and among the top ten in their year; that score had put him seventh. The highest score in the year had been ninety-two, only seven points ahead.

“Please. Nobody in this class has ever beaten Owen in math. First in the class, seventh in the year!”

Someone else chimed in with agreement.

Elise's eyes widened. She had known Northbridge was academically strong before transferring. Its averages were certainly higher than those at her old school. What she hadn't known was where her own work would put her here.

If eighty-five could put Owen first in the class and seventh in the year, how would she do?

“Oh.” She nodded absently, still thinking. Then she realized how flat she sounded and added, “That's really good.”

Owen slowly frowned.

She was complimenting him. So why did it sound as though she had barely given the compliment a thought? There was something almost dismissive in it, as if his score had turned out to be nothing special.

He shifted uneasily. Someone beside him was still going on about his grades, and his face began to feel hot. He wished they would stop talking.

Having thought it through, Elise turned to the teacher.

“Ms. Parker, I don't want to sit with him, either.”

That was understandable. He had insulted her in front of everyone. Of course she wouldn't want him beside her now.

Ms. Parker was about to nod when Elise went on, bright-eyed and perfectly earnest.

“I don't want to sit with a boy who gets bad grades. He might get in the way of my studying.”

For a moment, nobody seemed able to make sense of what she had said.

Then the classroom erupted.

She looked so sweet, and she could say something like that? Did she simply have no idea what she was talking about?

Owen would get in the way of her studying? Surely she had that backward. How could she possibly compare her grades with his?

That innocent face was wasted on someone who spoke without thinking.

Kayla and her desk partner dissolved into laughter.

Ms. Parker looked embarrassed. She couldn't very well say what she was thinking. Confidence was a good thing, after all.

“Well. All right,” she said, rather faintly.

Owen's pen stopped, dragging a long line across the page.

Someone beside him noticed his expression. “Owen? What's wrong?”

He sat with the pen motionless against the paper and drew a deep breath.

Everyone else thought Elise had said something ridiculous. He had heard how completely she believed it. He couldn't bring himself to laugh.

The laughter kept going until Ms. Parker raised a hand to cut it off. Her patience had run out.

“Quiet, all of you. I'll ask once more. Is anyone willing to help our new classmate? Otherwise, I'll choose someone.”

Faces fell around the room.

Elise might look harmless, but she bullied Vivian. And now she had shown them all this absurd confidence, saying whatever came into her head. Who wanted to sit with her?

Elise waited calmly. She had already accepted that she might end up on her own. It could even make studying easier. She didn't see anything wrong with that.

In the silence, a hand went up at the back of the room.

“I'd like to,” a small voice said. “I'll sit with her.”

Everyone turned.

The girl in the corner of the last row had her hand raised. Finding the whole class looking at her, she immediately ducked her head.

Elise blinked. She knew that girl. It was the one she had caught on the stairs when she nearly fell.

Her hair was cut in a bob that reached her ears. She had round eyes and small, delicate features; everything about her looked little and softly rounded.

Kayla glanced back and laughed under her breath.

“Perfect. Put the two worst students together. What a match.”

The girl's name was Nora Ellis. She had been last in the class for as long as anyone could remember. Quiet and painfully unsure of herself, she was usually left on the edges of everything.

Of course she had volunteered. She was already shut out. She and Elise could keep each other company.

Nora lowered her head, her ears turning red. It had taken everything she had to raise her hand. Most days, the class barely heard her say a word.

Besides, she couldn't understand why nobody wanted to sit with Elise.

She was so pretty. Like someone out of a fairy tale. And there was something about her that made Nora want to be near her.

How lovely would it be to have her as a desk partner?

Ms. Parker nodded in satisfaction. If nobody had volunteered, she would have been left in a thoroughly awkward position. Worse, seeing the whole class reject her might have hurt Elise's feelings.

In this class, seats were arranged by academic standing. Elise and Nora ended up in the last row, beside the window.

Elise already had a good impression of the girl. As soon as she sat down, she smiled.

“Hi. I'm Elise Whitmore.”

“I'm Nora Ellis,” the other girl said softly, her cheeks pink.

Elise smiled at her again.

Nora's eyes widened. Sunlight came through the window and fell across Elise's face, catching gold on her lashes. Her skin was already fair; in that light, she seemed almost to glow.

“You're really pretty,” Nora blurted.

She had liked Elise ever since she caught her on the stairs. Who wouldn't like someone that beautiful who was kind enough to help a stranger, too?

“Thank you,” Elise said sincerely.

She took her textbooks out of her schoolbag and arranged them on the desk.

Nora was still flushed, but Elise was so easy to talk to that the words began coming. She leaned closer and lowered her voice.

“Are your grades bad, too? Mine are. I think I'm just too stupid. I can never remember the formulas. Even when I do, I can't use them in different problems the way the teachers tell us to.”

“Which formulas are giving you trouble?” Elise asked after a moment.

Nora took out her workbook. There was one extended problem whose question she could barely understand. She hadn't even known how to begin.

She spread it open in front of Elise and bit the end of her pen, looking troubled.

Elise read the question. It covered material from the second half of the previous school year, mixing two topics together and slipping in a trap. Anyone who wasn't comfortable with both trigonometry and arithmetic sequences could easily get lost in what it was asking.

She picked up a pen and circled a few key parts.

“Use the double-angle identity for sine to work out these two terms first. Then put those into the sequence formula. That should give you...”

She worked it out quickly on a sheet of scratch paper and wrote down a 2.

Nora frowned over the calculation for a few seconds. As she followed Elise's steps, her face suddenly cleared.

“You're amazing! I've been stuck on this for days, and you just did it!”

“The question sets a trap.” Elise smiled. “It takes you the long way around. Once you spot the turn you need to make, it's much easier.”

Nora read through the working from beginning to end again. Elise had done it so quickly. Even the calculation on the scratch paper had flowed straight through, without a pause.

The whole thing had taken only a few minutes.

At last, Nora looked up at her seriously.

“They all said your grades were bad. I don't think they're right.”

She wasn't sure even Owen could have solved it, let alone that fast.

Elise felt a little embarrassed by such wholehearted praise.

“If you listen carefully in class, keep practicing afterward, and ask the teacher whenever you don't understand something, questions like this get much easier.”

She remembered the remarks about Nora being last in the class and smiled at her.

“Let's work on it together.”

Nora nodded hard. “Yes!”

By the break, they were getting along comfortably, and Nora had firmly counted Elise among her friends.

Elise was happy, too. Most of the class might dislike her, but at least she had made her first friend.

As they relaxed around each other, Nora noticed the hair clip in Elise's hair. It was shaped like a fern leaf, with diamond accents glittering along the little stem. Against her smooth hair, it looked delicate and bright.

“Your hair clip is so pretty.”

Elise reached up and touched it. Adrian had given it to her a few days ago, telling her he'd picked it up in a little accessories shop. She liked sparkling little things, so she had worn it for her first day at school.

“My brother gave it to me.” Her mouth curved. “I love it, too.”

Nora kept looking at it, her eyes shining.

With a smile, Elise slipped the clip out of her hair and held it out for her to see.

Nora took it and carefully ran a finger over the diamond accents.

“It's beautiful. Where did he get it? How much was it?”

She wanted one herself. Little accessories were her weakness; whenever she saw something she liked, she could hardly make herself walk past. But she had never seen a clip this finely made. The stones were so clear they looked like real diamonds.

“I don't know how much it cost,” Elise said, thinking. “But he got it at an accessories shop. It must have been cheap.”

Nora nodded. Her grades might be poor, but her family was comfortably off, better off than most. She loved buying little accessories, and each of hers usually cost a few hundred dollars. She rarely bought anything from the little shops along the street.

Elise saw how reluctant she was to put the clip down.

“Do you like it? You can borrow it.”

Nora's eyes lit up. She did like it. It was prettier than the clips she had paid hundreds of dollars for.