GREY

The same guy, the one I'd seen pacing through the courtyard earlier—he was walking through the doorway, trudging across the hardwood, sliding sheepishly into the desk beside me that'd somehow been passed over by the students who'd piled in before him.

I expected Mrs. Cabot to read him the riot act as he slid his backpack underneath his chair, fishing out the same composition book that the rest of us had. But with both eyes trained intently on him, she simply smiled, waited for his eyes to meet hers.

"S-sorry," he said. "For being late. I was just—"

"Don't worry, dear," Mrs. Cabot deigned, pointing a single index finger at the clock suspended from the side wall. "It's only seven fifty-nine. You're not even late." She smiled, lifted her eyes to address the rest of the class. "My apologies, everyone. It seems I've gotten ahead of myself already—and on the first day, no less." She turned and sashayed over to her desk, where she retrieved the roll sheet pinned to a wireframe clipboard. "Why don't we take attendance?"

A low chuckle flitted into the air beside me as Mrs. Cabot began reading out the names.

I turned to Cody, a snickering grin plastered on his face as he whispered, "Affirmative action at work, ladies and gentlemen."

"Dude!" I heard Dash rasp from beside him. "Not cool."

"Bro, chill. Come on—"

"Ahem," Mrs. Cabot's cleared her throat. "Unless you'd like to be marked absent, I suggest you answer the roll when your name is called, Mr. Ashford."

It was my turn to chuckle. "Busted," I whispered, Cody scowling all the while.

Mrs. Cabot continued through the attendance sheet until all the names had been called, smiling again as she called out the final entry on the list: "Jacquarious Whelan."

"Here," Jacquarious said, though his eyes never left his desk.

"Wonderful," Mrs. Cabot spoke up. "And now that we're all present and accounted for, why don't we get right into your first assignment for the semester."

A throaty chorus of groans erupted, the entire class almost seeming ready to protest.

Seriously? It's the first day.

"Now, now, settle down. You've had a full two weeks to rest and relax. It's time to start stretching those literary muscles again." She reached inside the podium and retrieved a thin and varnished paperback book, then leafed it open to a bookmarked page. "'A story must be told, or there'll be no story. Yet it is the untold stories that are the most moving.'" She looked up at us and closed the book. "J.R.R. Tolkein said that. A beautiful paradox to mull over, if you ask me—the way people just clam up and shutter these powerful stories away, never to be shared with the world."

Oh, gosh. I could see where this was going.

"For your first assignment, I want each of you to write out an untold story. It can be something private, something personal. Something public, something surreal. Something fictional, something true. But it has to be something—something none of us would imagine you'd write. A story we've never heard before, told in a way it's never been told." She turned to the board again, this time grasping a bright green marker with which to streak the white. "This is my e-mail," she announced as she wrote. "I want your essays in my inbox by 11:59 tonight."

What!?

"And don't get any ideas about cutting corners when it comes to content. You'll have a much larger assignment focused on this later in the semester, so don't you dare slack off tonight. This is a first draft, but it certainly won't be the only draft."

I slumped in my chair, felt suddenly like the weight of an elephant had been deposited across my shoulders. Who gives an entire essay to write on the first day!? I hazarded a quick glance to my right, where Jacquarious sat with his eyes still clinging to his desk. I wondered if he'd even heard Mrs. Cabot as she'd rattled off the assignment.

I know I shouldn't have, but I kept staring, kept looking him up and down, examining him. I noticed his hands were shaking against his thighs, and beads of sweat had condensed behind his neck.

Was he in trouble? What was that he'd said about the cops earlier in the courtyard? Did he think he was going to get arrested, that the police would storm the classroom any minute and haul him off to jail?

His thin frame shivering under the weight of something—What was it?—I watched as finally, slowly, his neck craned upward to face the front of the room. But then his eyes, smoothly brown and groggy, darted suddenly left...suddenly toward me.

A sputtering cough ripped from between my lips as I quickly angled my head away, instinctively lifting a hand to shield the side of my face.

Crap. I gulped hard, eyes finding my composition book, those white pages now more inviting than they'd been all morning.

I pressed pen to paper, pretending to write but only managing to scratch down my name. Grey Matthews.

My own hands now shaking, I hazarded a glance back to the right, where I was sure Jacquarious would be returning my intrusive stare with curious eyes—demanding eyes.

But he did nothing of the sort.

His body faced forward, rooted, listening as Mrs. Cabot droned on about literary vocabulary and the PSAT, which she so dutifully deigned to remind us was "less than a year away."

I gulped again, tried swallowing back the nervous energy.

But try as I might, I just couldn't shake the feelings, the eeriness of it all.

There was something different about Jacquarious. Something mysterious, fearful, draped in terror—something that seemed to coat him invisibly as he sat, elbows flat against his marble-topped desk.

"Who is this guy?" I whispered to myself.

****

It was two more class periods before I saw Dash again, and we didn't get to reunite with Cody until the period after that—American History.

I'm pretty sure Cody dozed off at least three separate times throughout Mr. Cordoba's dive into the sociopolitical implications of the Seven Years' War. Had the desks been spaced closer together, I would have tried squiggling a Sharpie unibrow across his face while he snoozed.

Two desks over, Dash spotted me as I held a black marker in my hand, teetering it back and forth across my palm as I stared toward Cody.

Dash grinned and shook his head. "Grey, don't," he mouthed.

I glanced back to the front of the room, where Mr. Cordoba carried on without even stopping to take a breath. Then I turned my attention back to Dash, who sat writing feverishly to keep up with lecture while a groggy but rousing Cody finally managed to peak a single eye open.

But it was the empty chair four desks away from me that really gave me pause. I knew it was probably just my imagination; after all, it's not like Mr. Cordoba'd called the name Whelan when he read out the roll.

Still, though...just seeing that abandoned seat made me wonder again about Jacquarious.

What was his story? What had brought him to Goldengate? How was he getting on, having started a new school right smack in the middle of his sophomore year?

I gripped the black Sharpie marker tightly in my hand, then stole another glance at Cody and Dash. I held my mind firm for the rest of the class as I waited for the bell to ring, for Mr. Cordoba to dismiss the class, for everyone to pile in the hallway and throng toward the cafeteria for lunch.

My eyes pored over the sea of navy uniforms streaked in white, of apricot skin and cascading hair, of North Face backpacks pinned with metallic buttons. But the one face I couldn't find—the one body absent from the revelry—was one much quieter, much more reserved.

Jacquarious. The name echoed inside my brain. Jacquarious Whelan.

****

"Grey, slow down," Dash said once he and Cody and I had found a spot to sit in the cafeteria. "You want to do what after school?"

"Go on...like...an expedition. A fact-finding mission kinda thing."

"Okay, but...what facts are you hoping to find?"

I hesitated. "That new guy, the one in our English class. I was wondering if maybe we could try learning more about him."

"Wait, that black guy?" Cody asked. "Dude literally shows up late to every class he's in. Probably hates school. Case closed."

"Come on, man," I said. "It's his first day, and it was one class..."

"Bro, I'm in his math class too—same story. Guy strolls in right as the bell's ringing and slogs off to the back of the classroom."

Dash sighed. "Cody, ease up, alright? Like Grey said, it's his first day."

"Yeah," I added. "Plus, I...I think I might've overheard something this morning in the courtyard."

Dash quirked a brow. "Wait, was this before Mrs. Cabot's class?"

I nodded. "I, um...I saw him. Outside. He was on the phone, talking to somebody about the cops." My throat tightened. "Guys, I think he might be in trouble."

"Shocker." Cody rolled his eyes as he grabbed at his pizza slice. "Look, Grey. It's none of our business, and we've got basketball practice today anyway."

"Just an hour—that's all I'm asking. Right after we finish seventh-period athletics, we go find out where he lives. Maybe even introduce ourselves."

Cody snorted. "Is this a joke? We've never even met this guy."

"Yeah, man, I don't know," Dash added. "Look, I get that you're trying to help. But turning the new kid into your personal pet project might not be the best way to make him feel welcome."

"I...I'm serious," I tried. "He could be in danger; he's not a project—"

"No," Cody cut in, "but I bet he lives in one."

"Dude!" Dash barked.

Cody chuckled. "Come on. You know that was a good one..."

"Please, guys," I mused, the words barely feeling like they'd left my mouth at all. "One hour." I lowered my head. "Please."