"Sydney."
I was waiting for my English class to start and was startled to see one of Greg Slade's friends standing over my desk. His name was Bryan, and although I didn't know much about him, he'd never come across as obnoxious as Slade, which was a point in Bryan's favor.
"Yes?" I asked, wondering if he wanted to borrow notes from me.
He had shaggy brown hair that seemed to be purposely grown unkempt and was actually kind of cute. He ran a hand over it as he picked his words. "Do you know anything about silent films?"
"Sure," I said. "The first ones were developed in the late nineteenth century and sometimes had live musical accompaniment, though it wasn't until the 1920s that sound become truly incorporated into films, eventually making silent ones obsolete in cinema."
Bryan gaped, as though that was more than he'd been expecting. "Oh. Okay. Well, um, there's a silent film festival downtown next week. Do you think you'd want to go?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so. I respect it as an art form but really don't get much out of watching them."
"Huh. Okay." He smoothed his hair back again, and I could almost see him groping for thoughts. Why on earth was he asking me about silent films? "What about Starship 30? It opens Friday. Do you want to see that?"
"I don't really like sci-fi either," I said. It was true, I found it completely implausible.
Bryan looked ready to rip that shaggy hair out. "Is there any movie out there you want to see?"
I ran through a mental list of current entertainment. "No. Not really." The bell rang, and with a shake of his head, Bryan slunk back to his desk. "That was weird," I muttered. "He has bad taste in movies." Glancing beside me, I was startled to see Julia with her head down on her desk while she shook with silent laughter. "What?"
"That," she gasped. "That was hilarious."
"What?" I said again. "Why?"
"Sydney, he was asking you out!"
I replayed the conversation. "No, he wasn't. He was asking me about cinema."
She was laughing so hard that she had to wipe away a tear. "So he could find out what you wanted to see and take you out!"
"Well, why didn't he just say that?"
"You are so adorably oblivious," she said. "I hope I'm around the day you actually notice someone is interested in you." I continued to be mystified, and she spent the rest of class bursting out with spontaneous giggles.
While I became an object of fascination, Jill's popularity fell. Part of it was her own shyness. She was still so conscious and worried about being different that she assumed everyone else was aware of her otherness too. She continued holding back from connecting with people out of fear, making her come across as aloof. Surprisingly making this worse, Jill's "doctor's note" had finally come through from the Alchemists. The school wouldn't put her into a different elective that was already in progress. Freshmen weren't allowed to be teacher's aides like Trey. After consultation with Miss Carson, they'd finally decided that Jill would participate in all indoor PE activities and do "alternate assignments" when we were outdoors. This usually meant writing reports on things like the history of softball. Unfortunately, sitting out half the time only managed to isolate Jill more.
Micah continued to dote on her, even in the face of adversity.
"Lee texted me this morning," she told me at lunch one day. "He wants to take me out to dinner this weekend. Do you think... I mean, I know you guys would have to go too..." She glanced uncertainly between Eddie and me.
"Who's Lee?" asked Micah. He had just sat down with our group.
A few moments of awkward silence fell. "Oh," said Jill, averting her eyes. "He's this, um, guy we know. He doesn't go here. He goes to college. In Los Angeles."
Micah processed this. "He asked you on a date?"
"Yeah... we actually went out before. I guess we're, well, kind of dating."
"Not seriously," piped in Eddie. I wasn't sure if he was saying this to spare Micah's feelings or if it was some protective way to stop Jill from getting too close to anyone.
Micah was good at hiding his emotions, I'd give him that. After a bit more thought, he finally gave Jill a smile that only seemed slightly forced. "Well, that's great. I hope I can meet him." After that, the conversation turned to the upcoming football game, and no one mentioned Lee again.
Finding out about Lee changed how Micah acted around Jill, but he still hung out with us all the time. Maybe it was in the hopes that Lee and Jill would break up. Or it could've simply been because Micah and Eddie spent a lot of time together, and Eddie was one of Jill's few friends. But the problem wasn't Micah. It was Laurel.
I didn't think Micah would've been interested in Laurel even if Jill hadn't been in the picture, but Laurel still saw Jill as a threat - and went out of her way to make her miserable. Laurel spread rumors about her and made pointed comments in the halls and during class about Jill's pale skin, height, and skinniness - Jill's biggest insecurities.
Once or twice, I heard the name vampire girl whispered in the halls. It made my blood run cold, no matter how many times I reminded myself it was a joke.
"Jill isn't what's keeping Laurel and Micah apart," I remarked to Julia and Kristin one day. They were amused by my continued efforts to apply logic and rationality to social behaviors in the school. "I don't understand. He just doesn't like Laurel."
"Yeah, but it's easier for her to think Jill's the problem, when really, Laurel's just a bitch and Micah knows it," explained Julia. Ever since the awkward encounter with Bryan, she and Kristin had taken it upon themselves to try to educate me in the ways "normal" humans behaved.
"Plus, Laurel just likes having someone to pick on," said Kristin. She rarely spoke about the tattoo but had been serious and sober ever since. "Okay," I said, trying to follow the logic, "but I was the one who called her out about dying her hair. She's hardly said a word to me."
Kristin smiled. "No fun picking on you. You talk back. Jill doesn't defend herself much and doesn't have many people to stick up for her either. She's an easy target."
One positive thing did happen, at least. Adrian was staying on good behavior after the Los Angeles mishap, though I had to wonder how long it would last. Based on what I gathered from Jill, he was still bored and unhappy. Lee's schedule was erratic, and it wasn't his job to look after Adrian anyway. There didn't seem to be any good solution for her, really. If Adrian gave in to his vices, she suffered the effects of his hangovers and "romantic interludes." If he didn't, then he was miserable, and that attitude slowly trickled into her as well. The only hope they had was that Jill would eventually learn the control to block him out of her mind, but from what Rose had told her, that could take a very long time.