Tucked away in a quiet, residential corner of downtown Atlanta, Collinsworth Academy had instructed and groomed privileged southern youth for generations. Alexandra was the first in her family to attend the prestigious and affluent symbol of the new South, and she worked like mad every year to keep the scholarship that paid the school’s hefty tuition.
Its campus sprawled across a handful of magnolia-lined, ivy-covered acres at the end of Tangle Wood Lane in southwest Atlanta. A low, stone wall marking the border between Collinsworth and the rest of the world stretched the length of the school’s perimeter. All students entered through the main campus gates on Tangle Wood Lane, and Alexandra lurched along in her Jeep in the usual thick backup of cars and buses clogging the street.
While Alexandra waited patiently in the traffic, her phone hummed inside of her book bag, which was on the passenger seat. Trying to keep her eyes on the younger students’s school bus in front of her, Alexandra fumbled for the phone.
The early morning sun cut through the sterling-blue sky above the city, and the thick, muggy heat made Alexandra resent every stitch of the uniform that the school forced students to wear.
When her fingers finally found the phone in her book bag, she answered without looking at who was calling. She already knew.
“Where are you?” asked Taylor impatiently.
“I can’t find my sunglasses,” said Alexandra as she leaned over and flipped open her Jeep’s glove compartment. Hurriedly, she rummaged through a stack of fast-food napkins.
With her head bent down, Alexandra heard a crossing guard’s shrill whistle and looked up just in time to see the bumper of the school bus looming in her windshield. Alexandra’s tires squealed as her foot slammed against the brake pedal. Her phone flew out of her hands to the floorboard under her seat, and she threw the car into park.
“Are you all right?” she heard Taylor yell through the receiver.
Ahead of her car, the idling school bus spewed a heavy, black, diesel cloud steadily toward her as she searched for her lost cell phone. As the dark cloud billowed into her face through the open windows, Alexandra regretted spending her birthday money on a stereo system instead of repairing the Jeep’s air conditioner.
When she finally wrestled the phone from under her seat, she snapped back at her friend, “Oh, I’m just fine, Taylor.”
“Well excuse me for asking,” Taylor’s sarcasm bit into the phone.
“Argh,” Alexandra growled. “I’m sorry. I can’t find my sunglasses. It’s hot. Traffic is backed up on Tangle Wood. Should I go on for you?”
“Okay. Calm down. But just so that you know—I can’t hold this parking spot forever. I’ve almost gotten run over twice standing here. And did I mention how hot it is? I simply cannot sweat before first period. Where are you?” Taylor demanded to know.
“I’m close. Tangle Wood is backed up while the little kiddies cross the street,” Alexandra explained as she watched a stream of eager parents drag their young and slightly frightened children across the road. “Can you hold on a sec?”
Alexandra put the phone down on the passenger seat to remove her blazer and unbutton several top buttons of her blouse. As she picked the phone back up, she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a black car with deeply tinted windows and a government license plate on its front bumper. The car’s driver honked the horn when her stare lingered too long.
“I’ll be there in just a few, Taylor,” Alexandra promised as the bus lurched forward in front of her toward the open gates of Collinsworth.
As promised, Taylor stood in one of the last empty spaces in the student parking lot, which happened to be next to her silver Mercedes. She waved Alexandra into the space and hardly waited for the Jeep to come to a complete stop before she opened the door and dragged Alexandra out of the driver’s seat.
“Good morning to you, too,” Alexandra told her as Taylor slammed the door shut.
“It’s about time. Now we only have a few minutes before assembly starts,” Taylor complained. She suddenly inspected Alexandra’s collarbone area, visible beyond the shirt’s opened top buttons. “Do I see a bruise near your shoulder?”
“It’s too long a story to go into now, and I’m not even exactly sure what happened. I was my usual uncoordinated self. I’ll tell you later,” Alexandra said, walking as fast as possible.
Taylor was already pulling a cigarette from her backpack as they walked hastily past their classmates. The other students were lazily making their way toward Drake Hall for morning assembly. Their fellow seniors seemed more concerned with finding their friends the first morning of the semester than paying attention to where Taylor and Alexandra were headed in such a hurry.
As they reached Drake Hall, the girls walked past the front door and made their way to a faint trail. The trail had been nearly suffocated and obscured over the summer by tall weeds.
“Can you believe it, Alex?” Taylor said excitedly as they went down the trail. “We’re seniors. Hallelujah! Nine more months and we’re outta here.”
Alexandra pushed aside a low-hanging limb and let Taylor pass in front of her down the narrow, weed-covered path. “Taylor,” she said, “do you remember what you said to me on our first day of class when we were freshmen?”
They had arrived at their destination, a hidden alcove behind the building. A few windows dotted the high, ivy-covered rear wall, but the girls knew that they still had solitude because the windows were only for storage rooms.
Their secret retreat overlooked a patch of trees and a low, stone wall (the one that ran along the entire length of the campus perimeter). On the other side of the wall sat a cemetery. Though nestled close to campus, most students ignored the cemetery, and Alexandra and Taylor preferred it that way.
Alexandra and Taylor knew that Drake Hall had been built originally as a church before the school converted the building into a meeting hall. Its wooden pews and stained glass windows remained intact.
“I say a lot of things,” Taylor answered, her long, blond hair bouncing down her back. “Remind me.”
“We had to share a locker,” Alexandra reminded her.
“Oh yeah,” Taylor said, amused, swatting at a bug from the tall weeds. “I tried to hide my cigs in there, but you threw them out on the ground. And then when I picked them up and tried to toss them back inside the locker, your face got so red that I thought you were going to spontaneously combust right there in the hallway.”
Alexandra grinned, remembering the shock on Taylor’s face that a frizzy-haired, freckled-face scholarship student had stood up to her. Alexandra said, “That’s when you told me, ‘I’m going to keep them in our locker, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’”
Taylor swept her hair over her shoulder, the golden locks cascading down the front of her blazer. “I think you yelled back at me, ‘I couldn’t possibly care less about what you want.’”
“That’s right,” Alexandra agreed. “And then you said that we were going to be best friends, whether I liked it or not.”
Taylor giggled and grasped Alexandra’s wrist to expound on the latest gossip. “Did you hear?” said Taylor. “We have a new student in our class this year.”
“There are new people every year,” Alexandra replied, unsurprised.
“We don’t get ones like this every year,” Taylor said.
“What do you mean? Who is it?” Alexandra’s curiosity heightened Taylor’s interest. Most people bored Taylor immensely.
“We were introduced at Daddy’s golf club yesterday. His name is Benjamin Lawson,” Taylor revealed.
Taylor stared at Alexandra as she waited for her reaction. The name sounded familiar to Alexandra; but to Taylor’s dismay, Alexandra did not know why.
“Please don’t tell me you don’t remember who he is,” Taylor said condescendingly. “His mother is that television star, the one who married senator what’s-his-name this summer. It was all over the news.”
“That explains the limo in line behind me on Tangle Wood this morning,” Alexandra said, flushing faintly as Taylor lit her cigarette.
“He rides to school in a limo?” Taylor said, incredulous, as she tried to smoke the cigarette quickly before the bell rang. “He is so going to be my boyfriend by the end of the week.”
“Does he know that? Besides, I thought Antonio was your boyfriend?” Alexandra asked.
“He’s really more of a friend,” Taylor explained. “I don’t think I can handle a long-distance relationship right now. I mean, look at me—I’m going to be stuck at this place.” Taylor exhaled the last drag of her cigarette before dropping it to the ground and extinguishing it with the red sole of her black high-heel. The bell tower high above their heads rang out. Squinting into the sky, they rolled their eyes together. Morning assembly was beginning, and they were going to be late unless they hurried back.
“Come on, Alex. Let’s go find Benjamin. I want to introduce you,” Taylor smiled, and her mood brightened. Suddenly in a hurry to attend assembly, she rushed ahead of Alexandra back toward civilization. Her voice trailed off behind her.
Alexandra inhaled a deep breath and started down the trail after Taylor. But a glance down to her feet froze her in place. A snake slithered across the path directly in front of her, making its way toward the stone wall by the cemetery.
Lifting her gaze from the ground, Alexandra stared at the quiet field of headstones resting on the low hill that rose gently upward and away from the Collinsworth campus. At its peak, a grand magnolia kept a dignified watch over the grounds.
She stared harder. One of the tree’s lower limbs swayed gently, even though the air was hot and still.
“How is it doing that?” Alexandra asked herself aloud, until she realized that a figure was sitting on the limb.
Closing her eyes, she counted to three. When she dared to open them again, the figure had disappeared. Straining her eyes, Alexandra took a step forward toward the stone wall. Suddenly she felt a hand reach around from behind her back and grab her arm.
“Alex, what are you waiting for now?” Taylor whined. “Do you want to get your first demerit before classes even start today?” Taylor yanked Alexandra down the path toward campus. Alexandra stumbled along behind, craning her neck for a look back at the cemetery.
“Maybe I imagined it,” she said as she rubbed her tired eyes.
“Imagined what?” asked Taylor.
“Nothing,” said Alexandra. “I don’t know. There was something.”
Taylor rolled her eyes.
Alexandra asked, “You didn’t notice anything strange back there, did you?”
“No,” said Taylor as she dragged her friend through the doors of Drake Hall, just as the bell tower stopped ringing. “Follow me.”
Behind them the entrance doors slammed shut with a wailing thud, leaving no chance for them to sneak in unnoticed. The round and balding academy headmaster, Dr. Sullivan, already stood behind the podium at the front of the assembly hall, welcoming students back for another school year.
“Pleased that you could join us,” he said, narrowing his gaze directly at the pair.
“Good morning, Dr. Sullivan,” Taylor boldly replied as she scanned the room for Benjamin Lawson. She actually managed, like a hawk, to spot the back of his blond head sitting at the opening of a pew halfway up the assembly hall’s center aisle. She strutted toward him nonchalantly, all eyes in the room watching the tall blonde stalking her prey.
“Hey, stranger,” she bent down to coo in his ear. He quickly scooted over to make room for her on the wooden seat. Nestling into the pew beside him, Taylor glanced back down the aisle for Alexandra, but her painfully shy best friend had already ducked into an empty spot in the last row.
If he only knew what he was in for, Alexandra thought to herself as she spied
Taylor put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. The headmaster tapped on the microphone for the students’s attention.
Dr. Sullivan did not stray from the same somber welcome and truth-or-consequences warning he recited every year. He was proud and honored to be their headmaster, he droned. Do not do anything to make him change his mind, he warned.
Staring at them from behind, Alexandra thought Benjamin and Taylor could have been mistaken for brother and sister. Both sat tall and upright in their seats and shared the same flaxen-shade of hair color. Alexandra assumed Benjamin did not have to pay for root touch-ups every four weeks, though.
Or maybe he does! she thought to herself.
He wore his hair as long as the academy’s dress code allowed, and Taylor ran her paws through it before Benjamin playfully swatted her hand away from the back of his head. As he did, Taylor leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear. As he started to turn his head around toward Alexandra, she averted her eyes to give her full attention to Dr. Sullivan.
A few minutes of Dr. Sullivan’s speech passed before Alexandra dared to look at Benjamin again. Hello, handsome, she thought as he turned around and met her bashful eyes from across the room.
When Taylor noticed Benjamin looking so long at Alexandra, she turned toward Alexandra with a wry smile on her face.
Don’t worry, Taylor, Alexandra thought. He’s probably not my type. We’re probably not even the same species.
While Dr. Sullivan continued his announcements, Alexandra pulled her class schedule from her bag. Her favorite class—history with Mr. Frost—fell to last period, and she knew the day would drag until then. She thought of all the reasons she liked Mr. Frost. He was eccentric, gifted, and fun. He was voted teacher of the year by the students five years straight. He painted the walls of his classroom with the flags of all the countries where he traveled. Routinely, his lectures often ended up off-track with some tale of adventure in a foreign land. Had Mr. Frost paddled among piranha in the Amazon? Nearly frozen to death hiking the Himalayas? Tossed a water balloon from the Eiffel Tower? The answer was always yes.
Just then she heard, “Regrettably, our beloved faculty member Mr. Frost has taken a leave of absence from Collinsworth Academy this semester.” Dr. Sullivan had swiftly announced this tragedy with nonchalance, as if he had revealed that the cafeteria would be substituting hot dogs for pizza at lunch. Gasps of disappointment filled the room.
A voice from somewhere in the middle of the mass of stunned students shouted, “Why? Where’s Mr. Frost?”
“Unfortunately,” continued Dr. Sullivan, with all eyes in the room on him, “Mr. Frost has taken a leave for family matters. I am not at liberty to discuss it any further.”
Raised whispers of speculation dispersed through the crowd as Dr. Sullivan tried to regain his students’s attention. Suddenly the door behind Alexandra burst open. A young gentleman strode past her down the center aisle toward the podium where Dr. Sullivan stood. More gliding than walking, the tall figure breached the distance quickly. He was a blur of dark hair and black, tailored suit.
Dr. Sullivan calmly stepped away from the microphone and took the man’s outreached hand to shake it vigorously. The stranger stood quietly beside him while the headmaster spoke into the microphone.
“Please allow me to introduce Dr. Sean Callahan,” said Dr. Sullivan with great enthusiasm. “He has agreed to teach Mr. Frost’s classes this semester, and it is an honor for him to be here. Please make sure to welcome him to our Collinsworth home when you see him on campus. Dr. Callahan is an Oxford University professor, and he has interrupted a research trip to come here as a personal favor.”
The headmaster stopped speaking and looked at the assembly of astonished students in front of him. Sitting in stunned silence, the students did not seem to feel as comfortable with the turn of events as Dr. Sullivan.
The hint of an Irish brogue skipped from the lips of the mysterious stranger as the assembled students stared openly. Callahan scanned the room from side to side as he assured everyone how glad he felt to be teaching at Collinsworth. To Alexandra, his eyes seemed to fixate on her at the back of the room.
He said, “I am looking forward to meeting every one of you. Your youth and bright minds are a treasure. Now let us prepare for many adventures together.”
High above the assembly, the ringing bell tower startled the students.
“You are dismissed,” said Dr. Sullivan, regaining the microphone. “Please exit slowly now and have a tremendous day.”
Bodies pushed against Alexandra as she squeezed into the wave of students all trying to rush out the doors of Drake Hall at the same time. She made her way through the doors and into the sunshine to wait for Taylor, who appeared, guiding Benjamin behind her by the hand.
“What was that all about?” Taylor asked. Without giving Alexandra a chance to answer, Taylor officially introduced her to Benjamin. “Alexandra, this is Benjamin Lawson. And no you cannot have him. He’s mine.” She giggled, pleased with her audaciousness.
Benjamin dropped Taylor’s hand to shake Alexandra’s. “It’s nice to meet you, Alexandra. Call me Ben.”
As he smiled at Alexandra, she felt her cheeks blush. His eyes are as blue as the sky, she thought to herself. His golden hair sparkled in the bright morning sun, and his smooth, tanned skin glowed like sweet caramel.
Taylor caught Alexandra staring and coughed beside her. “Alex, Benjamin just moved from California,” she said as she put her arm around his waist. “He’s a surfer.”
“Cool,” stuttered Alexandra, her face flushing red. Well that went just great, she mused.
Sliding his hips from Taylor’s grasp, Benjamin focused his blue eyes on Alexandra’s cheeks. “I’m glad you don’t cover those up,” he told her.
“Cover what?” Alexandra asked as she stared at her black Mary Jane shoes shuffling against the cement sidewalk.
“Your freckles,” he said.
“I have to go make potions in chemistry now,” Taylor interrupted. “What do you have for first period, Alexandra? Let me see your schedule,” she demanded and ripped a piece of blue paper from Alexandra’s fingers. Disappointment registered across Taylor’s face while she silently read the schedule.
“Look, Ben. You and Alexandra have first-period German class with Frau Stunkhaus.” With that fact revealed, Taylor turned her nose up and pranced away to class.
Alexandra stood still, tongue-tied.
“Do you mind showing me where class is?” Ben asked. “I’m totally lost here.”
A shy grin eased across his handsome face while he waited for her to answer.
“Are you okay?” asked Benjamin. Unnerved by him, her fingers twirled her hair unconsciously.
He pulled a rumpled class schedule from his pocket. “Which way is Mitchell Hall?”
Struggling to regain her composure, Alexandra pointed her finger past his head to the ivy-covered, red-brick, two-story building straight behind him. “It’s that one,” she mumbled. “Not hard to miss,” she added.
“Let’s go, then,” said Benjamin eagerly, leading the way. He paused and waited for her to catch up so that they could walk together. Alexandra thought surely that the eyes of every student in the quad were upon them.
Reaching Mitchell Hall, they climbed a staircase to Frau Stunkhaus’s second-floor classroom. Ever the gentleman, Benjamin held the door open when they’d arrived at the right room. Alexandra actually paused for a moment in the doorway, not realizing he was holding the door open for her.
“Does she bite?” Benjamin joked patiently, propping the door open with his arm, waiting for Alexandra to enter.
She looked at him, puzzled. Not accustomed to shy, polite teenage boys, it took her a moment to grasp his gesture.
“Thank you,” said Alexandra, smiling. They walked toward the back of the room.
Cramped and drab Mitchell Hall was one of the oldest buildings on campus. Its uncomfortable classrooms showed their age. Students often had difficulty concentrating when the sun baked or the wind howled outside the building. This was because in Frau Stunkhaus’s second-floor classroom, the radiator broke down in the winter, and the air-conditioning sputtered off and on until fall.
Alexandra also found her concentration thin today in that room, but for a different reason. Except for the row of windows and the blackboard at the front of the class, every inch of wall space in the classroom was papered with posters of the European countryside. There were fairy-tale castles, majestic Alpine mountains, and quaint villages nestled in deep valleys. Alexandra’s eyes traveled over the scenes as she took her seat. For a fleeting moment, she let herself imagine that she lived in one of the faraway scenes.
Careful to choose the desk closest to the bank of windows lining the room’s entire exterior-facing wall, Alexandra planted herself on the hard, wooden chair and reminded herself not to complain about how cold it would be once winter arrived. Wanting to stick close to Alexandra, Benjamin chose the last seat in the row directly across from her.
“Guten morgen, y’all,” Frau Stunkhaus greeted her seated students as others still wandered into the room.
Alexandra giggled, and Benjamin smiled at her. With her cheeks blushing, she noticed how warm the room felt. Stifled by her blazer, Alexandra again removed it and hung it securely on the back of her chair.
Remembering that her ponytail holder sat at the bottom of her book bag, Alexandra pulled her long, auburn hair into a loose pile on the back of her head. Running her fingertips over the birthmark on the nape of her neck, she sensed that someone was watching her and turned around to meet Benjamin’s gaze.
“I would cut it,” she admitted, “but it’s the only thing that keeps me from looking like a twelve-year-old boy,” she said, giggling.
“Hardly,” he responded. Her stomach flipped. A moment passed while Benjamin dug inside his book bag for a pen. “What’s that mark on the back of your neck?” he said finally.
“It’s a birthmark,” she tried to explain. “Taylor says it looks like I have eyes on the back of my head. That’s why she never does anything behind my back that she wouldn’t do in front of me.”
Benjamin leaned over for a closer look and reached his hand out to brush her hair aside for a close look. “I agree with her,” he said. “That’s kind of freaky.”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Alexandra said flatly, momentarily horrified. As Frau Stunkhaus approached them with her heels clicking on the linoleum, he pulled his hand away from Alexandra’s neck.
“Guten morgen, Miss Peyton,” her teacher said, smiling. She proceeded to open the window beside Alexandra’s desk. A breeze ruffled the notebook pages on Alexandra’s desk, and she sucked in the fresh air greedily as Frau Stunkhaus walked back to the front of the room, ready to begin class.
Frau Stunkhaus was petite, ash-blond, and she still possessed striking good looks, though long past her youth. Aside from her name, she seemed the epitome of a southern belle, with a refined demeanor and saccharine voice. Of course when she stepped in front of a class of students to teach the German language, the sounds that came out of her mouth were hard and guttural. She practically spit the German from her mouth.
During the lesson, Alexandra found it difficult to concentrate because her nervous, sideways glances at Benjamin throughout class confirmed her fear: he’d become preoccupied with her birthmark. Rubbing at her neck, Alexandra tried to keep the mark covered with her hand. Finally she gave up and let her hair down from her ponytail.
“You should have left your hair up, Alex,” said Benjamin as he leaned over the aisle between their desks. “It was cute that way,” he told her.
“Thanks,” she stuttered, her cheeks the same color as Frau Stunkhaus’s flaming-red lipstick.
The bell rang out from the hallway outside the classroom, and Frau Stunkhaus dismissed class. Benjamin pulled his crumpled schedule from his pocket. Casually spying the schedule Alexandra held in her hands, Benjamin asked, “So what’s next? It does look like we have lunch together later.”
“Taylor will be there, too,” Alexandra added. “We usually grab something quickly and sit outside to eat.”
“Cool,” he said enthusiastically, flashing a wide smile.
There were two hours until lunch. Alexandra promised herself that she would be able to regain her composure by then. As they left class, they saw Taylor waiting for them at the foot of the staircase. Alexandra and Benjamin descended from the second floor.
“Later,” Benjamin said, bypassing Taylor and hurrying to his next class.
“Humph,” grunted Taylor, her ego bruised. She yanked Alexandra outside and wrapped her arm around her so she could not escape as they walked through the grassy quad. “So, what did you two talk about without me?”
“Not much. Ben didn’t have much to say. He is very observant, though,” Alexandra said, blushing at the thought of Benjamin Lawson staring at her neck.
“I saw that,” Taylor said accusingly, but the ringing of the bell reminded her to hurry to her next class before she could ask any more questions. “I’ll see you at lunch,” she said as she ducked back into Drake Hall for drama class, leaving Alexandra to walk to calculus class by herself.