If Looks Could Kill - Vance Hopper

eight

It's been nearly three weeks since Vance and I have spoken. I don't see him much. I've been removed from two classes that I've had him in. I now am in the same Math and English class as Jeremy, which he wasn't too happy about to begin with.

"You can't sit next to me. You can't talk to me. You can't come anywhere near me," he explained as we walked down the eleventh grade hall to his math class. "And definitely do not pass notes to me. "

I pulled my brows together. "Why would I want to pass notes during class?"

He scoffed an looked at me funnily. "What are you?"

He warmed up to me after I agreed to let him copy off me for the mid-term in exchange for a seat at his table.

I wasn't surprised to see half of Bruce's friends at the table. I made Jeremy introduce me to everyone and was stunned to see that some people had the same common interests as me: Stephen King, art, theatre, -one boy even planned on attending Stanford!

After meeting those kids, my mind focused less on Bruce's disappearance and the argument with Vance. It was nice to have friends.

Vance has also been avoiding me, obviously embarrassed. I didn't tell my parents or Jeremy or the the cops, simply bought the jewelry back.

Now, I sit in science class, bored out of my mind. In two weeks, school will be out for Thanksgiving break.

Mr. White hands out assignment sheets. I've been doing better than the grades I'd get when I was only thinking about Bruce. I haven't yet raised the letter grades above an average B-, I've tried, I just can't.

I look at Vance, dotting down answers on his paper. I often wonder where he end up sleeping every night, but that's none of my concern. Not anymore.

I look down at my paper. There's a low quality print of the periodic table on the bottom corner of the page. I can barely make out what the elements say.

A question, the first one, at the top of the page: What is a substance made up of only one type of atom? Easy. An element.

Next question: Identify the atoms listed below by the number of protons in the nucleus. Does the number of electrons equal the number of protons in a neutral atom?

What?

I hold my head in my hands.

Question three: What is electron affinity and what are its periodic trends?

How does Vance do this so easily?

"Hey, Caleb," the girl next to me whispers to the boy sitting in front of me. The boy turns in his seat, meeting her eyes. "What'd you get for number six?"

The boy named Caleb glances down at his paper. "Battery polarity."

"What about question seven?" The girl whispers.

I hover my pencil over the blank space next to the question, waiting for his response. "Fourteen." I scribble it down.

Mr. White calls me to his desk about ten minutes after we hand the papers in. The students chatter loudly, so we don't talk in the hall. He shows me my grade. I read the score. 54%.

Shit.

"I also noticed Caleb and Miss Penny over there got all the same answers that you did. Right and wrong."

He flips the paper so that he can read it. "There are eighteen element groups, not fourteen. The rarest element is Astatine, not Bismuth. The first chemical element discovered was Phosphorous, not Helium. Shall I go on?"