WILO Wednesdays

(Where I Left Off Wednesdays)

So I am deeply into revisions on SUPERSTITIONS, my YA contemporary novel due out in July. This is where I left off on Chapter 4 where we finally meet the elusive Alexander.

A week into school, a kid with disheveled clothes and mussed up hair wandered into Biology as though he was a vagabond. He arrived in the middle of Mr. Simms’s lecture on cellular growth. A blue backpack with a coming-off patch that read, “Keep on Stepping” hung off his shoulder.

“May I help you?” Mr. Simms stopped in mid-sentence.

The boy looked around the room as if waiting for someone else to answer the question.

“No. You there. Standing at the door. I’m talking to you.”

Giggles erupted. I simply watched this eccentric guy with total curiosity.  

“I think I’m in this class,” he finally answered.

A crumpled schedule was squeezed in his hand. He ironed it out on his shirt then examined it. Mr. Simms waved him forward, taking the tattered paper and reading it. “Well, we’ve been wondering where you were.”

Again, the new guy searched the room. “You have?” He actually sounded simultaneously surprised and puzzled by Mr. Simm’s statement.

“The mystery man—Alexander Coons the second,” said Mr. Simms’s as if introducing someone famous to the class. And in a sense, I guess the new guy was—famous, that is. So it was him: my Biology partner in the flesh.

“Alexander is fine,” he corrected.

More snickers. Alexander studied the crowd, wondering where the joke came from.

“Well, Alexander,” Mr. Simms replied. “You can have a seat right there.” He motioned to the spot next to mine.

Alexander hesitated, scanning the faces in the room one more time. He seemed suspicious of us all, but slipped into the chair beside me.  His backpack remained attached to him, pushing him forward away from the chair back.  He didn’t seem to mind.  As a matter of fact, he focused on a stray thread that attempted to break loose from his already-fraying jacket. 

I looked back at Kyle who paid our new classmate a quick glance then rolled his eyes to me. I ignored Kyle and Mr. Simms, too. Instead, I watched as Alexander Coons II tugged at, and finally freed, the wayward strand from his jacket.

While I was intrigued by his eccentricities, I also felt sorry for him. As I glanced down, I noticed his Converse sneakers were a bit dingy had a few holes; the bottoms of his jeans were coated in age-old dust and frays; his fingernails desperately screamed for a scrub brush and a clipping. The pulled thread was wrapped tightly around his index finger, cutting off circulation. As I ventured beyond the threadbare jacket from where the strand had come, my eyes fastened on his. Dusky brown and filled with quiet suspicion, they met me in a showdown. When I smiled, he immediately backed down and returned to his experiment with circulation. While winning the staring contest seemed like a triumph, I still had a whole year of experiments to conduct with my new partner: Alexander Coons II. It was sure to be eventful.

What are you working on now? Where did you leave off?