CHAPTER TEN

The Hotter Chad

I stepped off the hoverbus onto a platform full of perfect-looking high-school models. It was like someone had thrown me into a movie with actors all in their twenties playing well-developed and self-assured teens.

No one had a zit. No one.

Where was the geek squad with the thick glasses? The band nerds with their saxophones and flutes strapped to their backs? The tall, gangly kids with braces?

Ridgewood Prep had turned into Buffy meets Gossip Girl.

I remembered Len saying it was the best school in New England. Even when I went to it hundreds of years ago, the price tag was staggering enough to think twice. I couldn’t imagine what it was today. I was looking at all of the richest kids in New England. Did they have bioengineered features, enhancements to make them see perfectly and have their teeth grow straight?

I followed the crowd, feeling like the smallest, dorkiest has-been the world had ever known. The bell rang and I checked my miniscreen for my schedule, my fingers fumbling over the keypad.

Period 1: Homeroom 504D.

Okay, homeroom. I could deal with that.

I followed the classrooms until I reached 504D and stepped in. Of course, I was majorly late. Everyone stared at me as I walked in, even the teacher. You’d think I’d grown two heads.

“Jenny Streetwater?” The teacher finally found her voice after a long, awkward silence.

“Yes.”

“Third screen on the right. Aisle two. I’m Mrs. Rickard.”

Everyone sat behind what looked like large, sideways TV screens. What happened to desks? An unoccupied screen sat between a girl that looked like she’d win Miss Universe and a guy who looked so familiar I almost lost my half-digested soycakes on the floor.

Chad?

It couldn’t be. He’d be over three hundred years old. My heart leaped up to my throat. Was he frozen, too?

As I rounded the corner of screens, I got a better look. My stomach pitched. This guy wasn’t Chad. Although he had Chad’s features, he was way hotter, like times one hundred to infinity squared. His features were sharper and more proportional, his body was more muscular, and his hair shone like black midnight, smooth and silky to the point I wanted to run my hands through it.

“Look, it’s Neanderthal girl,” Miss Universe announced.

I took my seat behind her and in front of the hotter Chad.

Snickers and giggles filled the room, making my cheeks blaze. I slumped forward until my pale hair covered my face.

“Enough, Exara.” Mrs. Rickard pressed a panel and a screen flashed on behind her. “Principal Hall has something for all of you to hear.”

An older man with gray streaks in his hair, wearing a golden tunic with a fake tie embroidered on the front, held up a miniscreen. “Welcome to another great year at Ridgewood Prep. As you embark on your individual learning journeys, keep your goals in mind at all times and persevere against adversity.”

My brain glazed over with all the generalizations. Yadda yadda. Sounded like he was giving a graduation speech, and we hadn’t even started classes.

Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned around to face the better-looking Chad.

He leaned in, dark eyes gleaming. “Are you really from the past?”

I paused, not knowing if he was interested or if he would tease me like Miss Universe. I decided to play it safe. “Yeah.”

The principal still gabbed in the background. I cast a glance over to make sure the teacher hadn’t noticed me talking. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Just cuz. I think history’s cybertopic.”

“Cyberwhat?”

“Jennifer, is there something you want to share with the class?”

I whirled around. The first day and I’d already gotten into trouble. “I’m sorry. No, ma’am.”

Exara whispered under her breath, “No, ma’am? What is this? The Plymouth Mayflower?”

Mrs. Rickard gave Exara a cold stare and then returned to me. “Good.” She pressed a panel on the wall and the principal’s announcements resumed.

“Psst.”

I couldn’t believe it. Hotter Chad wanted to get me in trouble again. I steeled myself and pretended not to hear him.

“Jennifer.” My name sounded odd on his tongue, like he hadn’t said the name Jennifer before. It caught my attention. I eyed Mrs. Rickard and turned around slowly. “What is it?”

“What year?”

I shook my head in confusion.

“What year are you from?”

A light tinkling of music came on the intercom and everyone jumped up from their screen desks. Everyone except for me and Chad’s look-alike.

“Two-thousand-twelve.”

“Wow.” He shook his head like he didn’t believe it and gawked as if I’d just won the lottery. “What kind of car did you have?”

“A pink Lexus.” I pushed down a wave of homesickness. Even though I’d grabbed his attention, it made me feel like a circus freak.

“No horse and buggy, heh?” Exara shot back from in front of us, holding her miniscreen up to her very large breasts.

Hotter Chad ignored her. “Did it run on gas or diesel?”

“Gas. 35 miles per gallon.”

“Per gallon…that’s right! They had gallons back then. Was it a Lexus HS?”

I stared at him. “How did you know that?”

“Maxim’s a history whiz.” Exara pushed her way between us.

“Maxim?” It was hard not to call him Chad.

He stuck his hand past Exara’s curvy waist, offering it to me. “Yup. Nice to meet you.”

Before I could reach for his hand, Exara moved in front of it. “Come on. Let’s get to class, hon.”

Maxim glanced at me. “Gotta go.” He linked his arm in hers and they walked out together. I stood there and stared with my mouth so far open that a frog could have jumped in. If one still existed.

What had I gotten myself into? It was the first day and I’d already fallen for the beauty queen’s boyfriend. There was a big box of “sucker” with my name on it.

“Jennifer, is everything all right?” Mrs. Rickard called to me from over the screendesks. I realized I was the only one left besides her.

“Yeah, I just don’t know where I’m going.” I fumbled with my miniscreen, not even remembering how to turn it on.

“Press the button on the upper right side.”

“Oh yeah.”

My schedule popped up like some chart on a video game. Period 2 was General Relativity and Cosmology. That was Einstein stuff, right? I knew about him. I could do this. Stumbling out of homeroom, I found my next classroom in less time and wasn’t as embarrassingly late. In fact, a few others trickled in after me as light techno music signaled the beginning of class.

I clicked on my miniscreen, proud to remember how. A younger man, maybe in his forties, with a few gray hairs on his head stepped in front of the main screen.

“Click your screens to page twenty-three in your text.”

Everyone’s fingers flicked over their screendesks. I ran my hands over my screendesk and nothing happened.

The boy next to me whispered, “Plug your miniscreen in, bothead.”

“Oh yeah.” I acted like I’d just forgotten and reached for the thin wire by my feet. He watched me with a suspicious glare as I ran my fingers along the side to figure out where to put the plug in. The teacher, to my utter embarrassment, came over and plugged my miniscreen in for me. He gave me a wink as if someone had already told him I was a hopeless prospect from the past. I sank into my chair, feeling like a kindergartener in a high-school class.

“This is a review of special relativity and the motivation for considering gravity in terms of curvature of spacetime.”

What? He hadn’t even introduced himself and he was talking about how spacetime curved. My brain just short-circuited.

The teacher didn’t seem to care. He kept babbling nonsense. “Through Riemannian geometry, general relativity, and Einstein’s equations, we’ll explore an application of general relativity in the study of black holes, gravitational waves, cosmology, as well as recent results on inflation and quantum gravity.”

Cosmology? Wasn’t that beauty school?

While the others in the class began typing furiously on their screendesks, I sat back and thought about Angela at old Ridgewood Prep. She made faces at me from across the room if the teacher said anything we didn’t understand. I missed her so much that my chest hurt and my stomach felt like I’d eaten battery acid.

As period two ended, I was already overwhelmed.