“Sicilee?” prompts Mrs Sotomayor.

Sicilee takes her new seat. She is still smiling.

This, of course, is not further evidence of the indefatigable human spirit. It is simply to stop her from groaning out loud.

Chapter Six

This is how stalkers are made

Within minutes of her first sight of him, Maya Baraberra decided that it wasn’t a 747 that brought Cody Lightfoot to Clifton Springs, but Fate. They were destined to meet. Didn’t she have a feeling that this year was going to be seriously significant? Didn’t she say? It made total sense.

But when Cody didn’t materialize in her homeroom or her first class of the day, Maya realized that if she wanted to get him into her group before someone else claimed him, she was going to have to give Destiny a hand.

Which is why, at this very moment, she and Alice are slouching away from school in the rain, following the figure in the old army parka (winter issue), hood up, several yards ahead of them.

“I can’t believe that I let you talk me into this,” grumbles Alice. “I feel like a stalker.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. We’re more like spies. We’re having an adventure.”

Alice isn’t really the adventurous type. “What if he turns around and sees us?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Unlike Sicilee, Maya doesn’t feel she always has to smile. “I don’t think he’d notice me if I was wrapped in Christmas lights.” Wrapped in Christmas lights and holding a flaming torch between her teeth. “Besides, what if he does? We just happen to be going in the same direction. It is a free country, you know.”

Alice’s sigh is drowned out by someone shouting behind them. “Cody! Cody, man! Wait up!”

Cody stops and half turns around, and Maya stops breathing. If proof was needed that either she is invisible or he is blind, he waves amiably at someone behind her. Maya’s heart resumes beating as Clifton Springs’ two token goths splash past them.

“He may be seriously gorgeous and charming and charismatic and everything,” says Alice, summarizing the general opinion of a large percentage of the student body as they resume walking, “but he sure isn’t picky about who he hangs out with.”

“Maybe he’s a true free spirit, you know?” says Maya. “I mean, it’s kind of Christ-like, isn’t it? He hung out with whoever he wanted to, too.”

“I guess.” Alice’s shrug suggests that she isn’t convinced. “But, he’s new here. Aren’t you supposed to try and fit in when you’re new?”

And, as Maya knows only too well, the people Cody Lightfoot should be trying to fit in with, of course, are Maya and her friends.

But Cody has changed schools before, and fitting in – even with the hippest and coolest group in the school – is not his way. He prefers that things fit in with him. Although Clifton Springs is a school with a social hierarchy slightly more rigid than that of feudal Europe, he has already made it clear that he has no intention of aligning himself with any one group. He is friendly to everyone in a laid-back, effortless way – as likely to eat lunch with the Emos as the jocks, as likely to walk down the hallway with the class president as the class clown. This is a method that has always worked for Cody in the past, and, on the whole, it is working now. The girls like him because, despite his break-your-heart good looks, he is neither arrogant nor aloof. The boys like him because, despite the several ways in which he stands out (he’s into qigong, t’ai chi, all-weather climbing, yoga, swimming and white-water rafting – not football, basketball, baseball or wrestling), he is neither competitive nor threatening.

Indeed, the only person who has had a negative word for Cody is Jason Coombs, until a few days ago probably the hippest boy in their class. Jason thinks Cody’s a little weird because of the yoga. All that standing like a tree and omming, said Jason, is pretty much a girl’s thing. Maya, who has been on the brink of dating Jason for the last few months, said nothing but eyed him critically, noticing new flaws.

At the end of the road the goths turn left and Cody turns right, away from town.

“What did I say?” Maya’s nails dig into Alice’s arm. “Didn’t I say I had a hunch he was going home?” Maya has it all planned. As Cody reaches his front door, she’ll suddenly call out, Hello? Excuse me, but my friend and I are lost. And then he’ll turn around, eager to help, and she’ll act all surprised and say, Hey, don’t you go to Clifton Springs? Haven’t I seen you at school? He’ll hurry back to the sidewalk to talk to her, amazed that he doesn’t remember seeing her before. Yes, he’ll say, I just moved to town. She’ll hold out her hand. Well, welcome to Clifton Springs. She’ll smile. My name’s Maya. He’ll say that his name’s Cody and invite her in.

“I just hope it isn’t too far,” mutters Alice. “My feet are already soaked.”

But, as so often happens in life, Alice’s hope is not to be fulfilled. Block after block goes by, but Cody never turns up a path nor breaks his stride. Instead, he marches straight through puddles in his vintage galoshes like a man on a mission, but the girls, whose footwear is less rugged, have to scurry around the larger pools and leap across the smaller – all while trying to keep him in their sight and them out of his. Maya, warmed and protected by her fantasies, is oblivious to the distance and the weather, but as the blocks become a mile and then another, their adventure loses the little interest it had for her friend.

“This is ridiculous. Where the hell does he live?” Alice gasps. Her feet are so wet now that she feels like she’s wading. “In the next town?”

Maya, deep into imagining Cody asking her if she’d like a cup of coffee, smiles into the distance.

“Maya!” Alice’s voice is far too loud for surveillance work. “Did you hear me? Where is he going? To visit his mother in England?”

Maya comes back to the moment with a scowl. “Shhh!” she hisses. “He’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care any more.” Alice comes to a stubborn stop under the relative shelter of a large tree at the kerb. “I’m tired of this. I want to go home.”

“But we’re almost there,” pleads Maya. “I’m sure we are.” She tugs on Alice’s arm. “Come on, he’s crossing—” What she was going to say was that Cody is crossing the road – something Alice could actually see for herself if she weren’t staring forlornly at her feet – but the realization of what road it is that he’s crossing cuts the flow of words. “Gott im Himmel…”

“What?” Alice has added shrillness to the volume. “Now what’s wrong?”

“Look. Can you believe it?” Maya points beyond the traffic to where a sprawl of venerable grey buildings rise from a tree-lined lawn. Students fill the paths that wind between the buildings and the quad. Cody Lightfoot has already disappeared among them, just another hooded figure with a book bag hurrying through the rain.

Alice’s frown deepens. “Is that the university?” This is an accusation, not a question.

Maya nods. “I guess he wasn’t going home after all.” Fate is toying with her. If she hadn’t been so busy jumping over puddles and trying to keep out of sight… “He must be meeting his father.” But maybe all isn’t lost. She’s sure the senior Lightfoot teaches history or sociology – or, possibly, anthropology – something like that. If they can find the right building, there’s still a chance they could run into Cody. She could stumble and twist her ankle in front of him. Probably his father would offer them a ride home…

“Forget it, Maya.” Alice straightens up, adjusting herself in the manner of someone about to jump ship. “There’s no way I’m wandering around that campus for the next hour looking for him. I’m out of here.”

“But we’ve come so far. If we just hang around a little longer—”

Somewhere not far enough away to be reassuring, a dog starts to bark in a way that even someone less close to tears and exhaustion than Alice would describe as ferocious bordering on hysterical.

Chapter Seven

There’s a chance that reality begins in dreams

Sicilee and Maya are both convinced that once they catch Cody Lightfoot’s attention they are as good as on their first date with him, if not actually engaged. These assumptions, of course, are based on who they are (the most popular girl in the most popular group and the coolest girl in the coolest group) and what they look like (model pretty, and attractive in an alternative, arty way). In contrast, Waneeda – who doesn’t even register on the radar screens of popularity or cool – is a large, ungainly girl with runaway, tumbleweed hair and the instantly forgettable kind of face that would only be an advantage if she decided to commit a crime. She’s not a fool. Waneeda knows that the only way she could attract Cody Lightfoot’s attention would be to dump her lunch on his lap. But she still can dream.

Waneeda’s dreams used to centre around her favourite TV shows and arguments with her mother, but now she dreams about Cody every night. In dreams, she walks with him and talks with him and sometimes even holds his hand. In these dreams, Cody is the funny, kind, sensitive and intelligent boy she imagines him to be – and Waneeda is someone else. Instead of shambling the way she does in real life, she sashays; instead of dragging her heels and always complaining, she is energetic and always laughing. She looks different, too. Prettier and brighter – her hair like a dark cloud around her head; her smile like the sun.