Chapter 3 — Nicholas

There were three classes in the morning, one of which was a free period. Then came lunch, where everyone split up into their cliques, leaving the new kids to wander around wondering where to sit. After a third round of the cafeteria, I was relieved to hear a familiar voice.

“Hey, bus stop boy.” Alex waved his hand in the air. “Come join us.”

I took the seat beside him and unwrapped my sandwich.

“Did you make a new friend, Alex?” asked a girl with short brown hair. “He’s kind of cute. You look like a Brady, maybe an Andrew.”

“That’s Nicholas, Lexi,” Elliot said. “Don’t scare him away.”

He had deep brown skin and dark eyes framed by thick glasses. I had seen him in math class.

Lexi smacked him. “Whatever, Elliot. Did you guys hear the commotion in the hallway earlier?”

“I was in study hall with Mr. Coleman, but I think there was a loud thump,” I said.

“You missed it?” Alex’s eyes went wide. “Dude, it was awesome! Delaney, you saw it right?”

“I was standing next to you, genius,” said the Hispanic girl.

Alex smiled sheepishly. “Right. Anyway, Josiah stole this kid’s pencils, and the kid kept trying to get them back—”

“That’s nothing exciting,” Elliot said. “Josiah picks on all the new kids.”

“Hush and listen,” Delaney said. “I promise it gets good.”

Alex nodded. “So the kid gets madder and madder. Then he grabs Josiah and slams him into the lockers. He wrenches his pencils back and breaks Josiah’s arm like he’s snapping a twig.”

Lexi’s jaw dropped. “No way. He did that to the Josiah Sargon? The one who’s been taking MMA fighting since he could walk?”

“Don’t forget the time he scored a touchdown with two linebackers hanging off of him,” Delaney added. “That’s why we were so surprised.”

Alex grew still. “Oh my God, that’s him!”

I followed his gaze. The boy who had sat next to me on the bus walked out of the lunch line, carrying a tray of food.

“Hey, ghetto boy!” Alex called. “Come sit with us.”

The boy glanced in our direction. If looks could kill, Alex would have been a pile of ashes. The boy deliberately walked in the opposite direction and sat at an empty table next to a group of popular girls.

Cheryl looked scandalized and hurried away. Her friends trailed after her.

“What does Cheryl have against him?” I asked.

“You don’t know?” Lexi said. “Queen Bee over there is dating Josiah Sargon. If I were her, I’d hold a grudge too.”

“Nicholas is new to the school district,” Alex explained. “And he made the mistake of trying to talk to Cheryl this morning.”

Elliot winced. “Ouch. Sorry you had to learn the hard way.”

When the bell rang, I pulled out my schedule to check my afternoon classes.

Alex peeked over my shoulder. “Cool. You have English with Lexi and me. We can walk there together.”

The English teacher, Mrs. Hunter, was an older lady with cat-eye glasses and the unfortunate tendency to butcher the names she tried to call. Not to mention the students who went by nicknames instead of the legal names written on the attendance sheet. By the time she reached me, having dealt with Max, Ellie, Ace, and Kate, she looked ready to explode.

“Nicholas Pierce.” Mrs. Hunter squinted over the tops of her glasses. “Or do you prefer Nick?”

She spat out the name like it was poison.

“Here,” I said. “And, uh, Nicholas is fine.”

I sighed in relief when she moved on with attendance.

“My brother calls her the Dragon, you know,” Alex whispered. “More than half his grade failed a semester of English because of her.”

“Let’s hope our first project is easy,” Lexi said.

It turned out to be anything but. We had to read Shakespeare, a headache in of itself, then make a product that displayed the play’s literary and historical elements. On top of that, it was worth thirty percent of our grade in both English and History.

Alex grabbed our arms. “Let’s make the dream team.”

Lexi twisted free. “We still need a fourth member.” She noticed Ace sitting alone at a table and waved him over.

Ace dropped into the seat next to me, seemed to recognize Alex from lunch, and turned his back. Alex either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“What you did earlier was so cool!” he enthused. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I took a few self-defense classes,” Ace replied.

The sentence rolled off his tongue with a smoothness that sounded rehearsed.

I raised an eyebrow. “Surely it was more than a few. What place did you go to?”

“Shouldn’t we be starting on the project?” Ace said.

Lexi looked up from her phone. “Already am. I googled a list of Shakespeare’s plays and put them into a random generator.”

“You read my mind,” Alex declared.

“Don’t I always? Drumroll, please.”

Alex and I beat our hands on the tabletop.

“The play we’ll use for our project is…” She pressed a button on the screen. “Henry V.”

With their sense of productivity satisfied for the day, Alex and Lexi started up a conversation. It consisted of pretty standard questions directed toward Ace and me. Which school did we used to go to? Why did we leave it to come here? Had we always lived in the city?

It was nothing I hadn’t prepared for so I wasn’t on edge. Ace, on the other hand, gave vague answers, becoming increasingly guarded. My suspicion grew.

We had a study hall together next period, and Ace sat as far away from me as possible.

I wasn’t in the mood to read Shakespeare, so I amused myself by writing out a list of cuss words in code. If my mom ever deciphered it, I would be in a load of trouble. I ripped the paper into pieces and tossed it in the recycling bin.

There was no teacher in the history classroom, even after the bell rang.

“Are we in the wrong room?” I asked.

“Along with everyone else in sixth period?” Alex said. “Not likely. Besides, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”

The door opened and my jaw dropped. A young man walked into the room wearing tights and pantaloons that puffed out around his thighs like balloons. A stiff white collar sat around his neck. It reminded me of a dog cone.

“What’s in a name?” the man asked. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“Romeo and Juliet,” said a girl in the back.

His eyes twinkled. “You are correct, Miss…”

“Leah Gutierrez, sir,” she supplied.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Leah,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I will be your guide this year into the years of the past and your tool in peeling back the layers of history. You can call me John.

“I’m sure you all have been to English class, seeing that it’s the last period of the day, so you have all picked out your groups and the plays you will be reading. Spend the rest of the class reading. If you want to talk, do so at your own peril.”

John made a round of the room, noting the plays everyone had chosen.

“You never answered my question earlier, Ace,” I said. “Where did you train to fight?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious.” I shrugged. “It’d be cool to learn martial arts. I could be like Jackie Chan or something.”

“Ooh, if you plan to sign up, let me know,” Alex said. “I’ll come with you for moral support after you’re pounded into the mat.”

“Glad to see you have such faith in me.” I looked at Ace. “Well?”

“It was just a few classes,” he said. “I don’t remember where.”

“Come on, you can tell me. You’ve obviously taken more than a few classes, and there’s no way you can forget a name if you’ve been there so many times.”

I flashed him a smile. It was one I had spent hours perfecting in front of the mirror, showing just enough teeth so I didn’t appear threatening and making my eyes wide and innocent. The smile had gotten a young woman to divulge the locations of several drug stashes and Underground meeting points.

Ace, however, looked unimpressed.

“Lay off the questions,” Lexi said. “Let the guy keep his mysterious vibe.”

Ace looked grateful. “Yeah, let’s start reading so we won’t have too much homework.”

At the final bell, a stampede of students rushed out of the classrooms. Alex got a ride home with his mother, so I sat next to Ace on the bus again. He seemed afraid I would question him again.

Instead, I pulled out my phone and punched in a number.

“Hello?” a voice answered.

“Hi, Ishaan,” I said.

“Nicholas!” Ishaan sounded delighted. “I thought your mother placed you under house arrest.”

“She did, but I need your help. Feeling up to it?”

“Of course. Do you take me for an idiot? What’s the last name?”

“You know the mythical creature that’s part lion and part eagle?”

“Griffin?” Ishaan guessed.

“That’s the one.”

“First name?”

I glanced at Ace. “The Dark Side twin in Star Wars Legends.”

“The same spelling too?”

“Yup.”

A pen scribbled. “I’ll call you when I have information. It might be awhile with the EAGLE director breathing down the back of our necks. He’s obsessed with taking down the Underground. It’s a good thing you’re not here, or he would have sent you out with the rest of the agents.”

I kept my voice cheerful as I said goodbye.

“Who was that?” Ace asked.

“My friend.”

“What did you need his help with?”

“It’s a present for my mom. She loves mythology and sci-fi.” I frowned. “Were you eavesdropping on me?”

Ace opened his mouth, then closed it with an audible click. I felt a flash of satisfaction.

No matter how he might suspect, everything I said rang true. Lying was second nature to me.

After all, I did it for a living.