Ami 17
Rei 18
Jaden 19
Zach 17
Love at Fifth Sight
Part 3-1
Ami’s senior year was off to a rough start. The same classmates who had teased her about wearing glasses, the big words she used, and being a teacher’s pet had grown up, but only in the sense that they had progressed to ignoring her existence entirely or looking at her with dislike, pity, and sometimes utter incomprehension.
She hated the whispers behind her back about how it wasn’t humanly possible to get such high grades and how sad her life must be since she studied all the time and had no friends who weren’t equally nerdy and depressing.
The giggles, stares, and harsh words crept after her no matter how quickly she walked past their source, twining thickly around her ears and lodging in the vulnerable spots of her heart. Even when they didn’t say anything to her, the lonely feeling of not belonging stayed with her.
Still, one didn’t go through twelve years of public education without learning to cope with its sundry unpleasant aspects. Ami knew how to get through the days with her head held high.
Her two main worries this year were that Rei was off to college and that she herself would be undergoing the college application process. With Rei had gone her small group of friends who had accepted Ami’s company at their outings and who she had felt fairly comfortable around, leaving her with only a few friends in her own year. She would miss their companionship and Rei’s particularly, since they were as close as sisters.
Rei was attending the state college, which was not far from home, but she was living on campus and Ami had little expectation of seeing her often. Rei’s fall semester had begun three weeks ago, and she seemed to be settling in without any trouble – aside from fending off all the guys who wanted to flirt with the freshmen girls at parties on the assumption that they would be “easy.”
Ami smirked slightly as she recalled her last phone conversation with her cousin, in which Rei had detailed her annoyance with drunken frat boys and exactly how she had put them in their place.
“What are you so cheerful about today?” a voice right by her ear asked.
She turned to see her friend Leah, a slender brunette who was almost perpetually gloomy and just a little neurotic about her grades. “Nothing really.”
Leah’s expression was skeptical, but she only said, “Come on, we’ll be late to class.”
As they navigated the crowded hallways, Ami tried to remind herself that there were worse things than having AP European History first thing in the morning. Like AP Calculus BC. Or maybe chemistry lab, where being half-asleep was likely to lead to poor results in the best scenario and serious accidents in the worst.
“Did you hear the news? There’s a new guy who just transferred here, and it seems like he’s in our year and in some AP classes as well. We’ll probably seem him sometime today,” Leah predicted.
Ami glanced at her, always surprised at how well her friend picked up fresh gossip even though she was as ostracized as Ami was. “No, I hadn’t heard. It’s strange that he would be transferring in his senior year. Don’t you think it would hurt his application? He won’t be in any leadership positions here…unless in his school, more juniors had leadership positions.”
“Well, it’s bad for him, good for us,” Leah said almost cheerfully. “Don’t talk about college apps anymore, it makes me feel sick.”
“Sorry,” Ami replied. “You don’t happen to know his name, do you?”
Leah frowned in concentration. “I think his first name is Zachary, and his last name is something like… Corona? Corian? Coruni? Yeah, that’s it. Zachary Coruni. I heard Lydia gushing about how cute he was to all her friends – apparently she had to show him around yesterday.”
“Zachary Coruni…that name sounds familiar, but I can’t figure out where I’ve heard it before.”
“He’s not famous or anything, is he?”
“I don’ t know. I can’t remember.”
They entered their classroom, and Leah gave Ami a significant look when they noticed an unfamiliar student with strawberry blond hair surrounded by a knot of their curious – and mostly female – classmates. As they took their customary seats, Leah muttered, “He doesn’t look like an honors student. He looks more like a skater or someone in a band. I think his hair is longer than mine.”
Ami laughed softly until her attention was drawn by the entrance of the teacher, who set down her coffee mug and took her place in the front of the classroom.
“I’m sure you’ve all noticed that we have a new addition to our class,” she said briskly. ‘This is Zachary Coruni–”
“Call me Zach,” he interrupted boldly, seemingly immune to the shocked stares he was receiving.
Unfazed, Ms. Nichols said, “That’s fine. You have a bit of catching up to do – if you can stay for a moment after class, I’ll give you the make up assignments and your textbook. I suggest that you consult one of the students in this class to help you catch up with the material. Ami, for example, has the highest grades. Raise your hand, please.”
Ami obeyed, flushing as some of the other students shot her dirty looks or murmured about favoritism. Zach looked over and nodded politely at her. “If you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate your help.”
“Sure,” she mumbled.
“Excellent. Why don’t we go on with today’s lesson now. Yesterday we left off just before the unification of Prussia….”
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At the end of first period, Ami and Leah left for their next class while Zach stayed behind to speak with the teacher. As it turned out, Ami had two more classes with Zach. She watched him nervously during them, wondering if he would approach her or if he had just asked her to help him because Ms. Nichols had expected him to.
He didn’t make eye contact with her at all, just slouched in his chair lazily and spoke when he was spoken to. When he answered the teachers’ questions, his language was formal and polished, but his tone was just on the edge of a drawl. When he spoke to his fellow students, he used the same slang terms and gestures that they did, but his voice held the same slightly acerbic tone.
For much of the first quarter, they had no direct interaction whatsoever. Ami continued to watch him, intrigued by this newcomer who seemed to blend in perfectly yet held himself aloof. He rarely volunteered to answer questions in class and more often than not, he didn’t do his homework. The mystery of how he wasn’t dropped from his classes was solved by a quick perusal of the exam scores.
They were listed by student number, and most of the time, Ami’s student number was at the top, although there were two or three other in her year who she competed with. It hadn’t been difficult to figure out their student numbers.
Since Zach’s arrival, a new student number had appeared at the top of the lists. He consistently scored in the top three on each exam and occasionally beat her in science courses, which she considered her forte.
It was a sore point, particularly since he never seemed to keep up with the reading and assignments the way she did. The fact that his overall grades were lower because of his missed homework assignments and lackluster class participation was no comfort – it only confused her further, that his test scores were brilliant but he didn’t seem to care about how he was doing.
While most of the other top students were caught up in the mayhem that was high school, college applications, and extracurricular activities, Zach always seemed laidback and just a bit amused at the world. He didn’t play an instrument, he didn’t join any of the sports teams, and he didn’t attend any after school clubs.
According to Greg Urawa, who was also in the Chess Club, Zach had challenged all the players during one of the meetings Ami had missed due to a Math League competition. He had walked out at the end of the meeting, having beaten even their best player in record time, and hadn’t returned.
“It was pretty humiliating,” Greg admitted to Ami during their match one Wednesday afternoon, “but if you ask me, I’m glad he didn’t stick around.”
“Why?” Ami asked offhandedly as she debated between moving her rook or her queen. “Was he a sore loser?” She hated people who made an issue of losing, and she had dealt with more than her fair share in all aspects of her life.
“Well…no…” He blushed slightly as he ran a hand through his untidy brown hair and messed it up even more. In truth, Greg just didn’t like the guy. He envied Zach’s steely confidence and had felt like a cockroach under that assessing emerald gaze.
“He’s just arrogant. He needs to be taken down a notch.” Greg smiled at Ami even as she took one of his knights. “Wow. Great move. If you had been here that day, Ames, you’d have beaten him for sure.”
She smiled weakly at his extravagant praise. “Thanks, Greg. But from what you said, if he beat Marcus so easily, I’m not sure I would have had much of a chance, either.” Marcus, the club president, was not particularly likeable, but he was an excellent chess player.
Greg glanced nervously at the clock, wondering if he would have time to fit in a casual inquiry about Ami’s Homecoming plans. Just as he had gotten up the courage, she checkmated him.
“Oh – good game,” he said blankly, feeling the adrenaline rush fall away.
Noticing how crestfallen he was, Ami wondered if she should have wrapped up the game more slowly. “Yes, good game. That fork you used in the beginning, with your knight, was quite good. I’m sorry, Greg, but I have to run.”
“Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow!” He watched her go, then hit himself on the forehead.
“Good going, Urawa.”
He looked up to see Marcus shoving his thick-lensed gloves further up his pointy nose. “Shut up.”
With a slight feeling of panic, he scanned the other students’ faces – did they all know he had had a crush on Ami since freshman year?
________________________________________
The next day, Ami and her lab partner prepared to run their gel in biology lab. Ami watched Maya load the dye with some trepidation – Maya was sweet, even if they didn’t hang out with the same people, and she did her share of the work, but she tended to get very nervous in lab situations. Nerves all too easily led to klutziness.
Today, however, her hands seemed to be steady and sure, so Ami glanced over at the next lab station, where Zach and his partner, a blond-haired girl named Christy, were working. “Zach? Is this how you do it?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said carelessly. He was more tired than usual, slumping against the counter as he watched her work with hollowed eyes.
“Zach!” she wailed. “You didn’t even look!”
Ami watched avidly as an irritated look passed over his face. Lab partners were assigned and she had been wondering how he would handle the shrill-voiced girl who hardly seemed to evince the intelligence required to enroll in the class. In the next second, however, his expression was as bland as usual and he straightened up to help her.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Here’s how we do it.”
In the meantime, Maya had finished and signaled the teacher to come check over their apparatus before they proceeded. She whispered to Ami, “That’s the fifth time he’s had to read the instructions to her, and they’re right on the page!”
It was a marker of how much Maya disliked Christy that she was saying this, because the petite brunette was usually nice to everyone. Ami was about to make some standard reply to this remark, but it froze in her throat when Zach lifted his head suddenly and stared right into her eyes. She felt the blood beat loudly in her head and was sure she was blushing, but she couldn’t look away from those piercing green eyes until she heard the teacher’s voice right by her ear.
“This looks fine, girls. Go ahead and run the gel.”
“Thank you,” Ami muttered, hoping she wasn’t too red.
The teacher moved on to examine Zach and Christy’s progress. “Your gel looks fine but you have the nodes hooked up incorrectly.”
Zach felt another sliver of impatience worm its way under his skin even as he fixed the mistake quickly.
“Okay, great. You’re good to go.”
“Zach? Can you help me with some calc homework while we’re waiting?”
He sighed inwardly, wondering why she was taking calculus when it still took him a good fifteen minutes to explain the process of opening the parentheses for multiplication. At least she was in Calc Honors instead of an AP course. “Sure.”
Christy listened with half an ear, having learned to make the appropriate noises, nod, and copy down what he was saying at certain points. Mostly, she snuck covert glances at him.
The consensus among her friends was that he was extremely hot, even though he wasn’t built like the football players and wrestlers. She and her girl friends had invited him to some of their parties, the movies, and some of the college parties they went to, but he always declined – politely but firmly, and he always refused to tell them what he would be doing instead.
Zach was popular with the girls because he could talk about almost anything, even though he didn’t start conversations on his own. And he would help them with their homework, even if he never did his own work. Most of the guys left him alone after he had told he couldn’t throw a football for his life. He was pretty good at basketball, though, and he would play with some of the guys in his development if they asked him.
Christy looked at him from under eyelashes heavy with mascara. She decided to make getting him to ask her out the goal of her senior year. There was something mysterious about him, maybe the persisting allure of the “new guy.” Besides, she wanted him to keep helping her pass her classes.
________________________________________
Ami arrived home one evening after a particularly long club meeting, feeling completely exhausted and wondering how she would handle things once the winter sports season began. Her mother had wanted her to quit swimming since it cut into her time so much, but she loved swimming and had been convinced she could handle it. As she juggled the armful of mail under one arm and unlocked the door, she wondered if her mother had been right.
Kira still wasn’t home from the hospital yet, so Ami took a long, hot shower and then fixed herself a sandwich. She sat down at the table to eat it, sorting through the mail with her free hand. Her stomach clenched when she noticed the envelope from her first-choice school. ‘Today is the notification date for early applications… how could I have forgotten?’
She rose slowly to check the answering machine – sure enough, the blinking red number 4 alerted her that her friends had probably received their decisions and were calling her to find out about hers. Ami’s figure hovered over the button for a minute before she curled her hand into a fist, letting the nails bite into her skin. The envelope was too slim and too small to be one of the large acceptance packages that Rei had received.
She left a note for her mother, grabbed her jacket, and turned off the lights again. The note read, “Gone to study at Leah’s. Back soon.” Ami walked away from the dark apartment with the letter hidden in her jacket pocket, took the stairs down to the ground level, chose a random direction, and started walking.
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Love at Fifth Sight
Infinite Ice
