For a boy who took everything so seriously, Tobias Howard was always running late, and Sam was always waiting on him.
It was the first day of school, and Samantha Josephine Ingram was thrilled that her mom and Tobias’s mom had arranged for them to walk to school together now that they both attended junior high. How proud she would be, a measly seventh grader being escorted by the handsomest eighth grader in town. But now that Tobias was running late — again — she wondered about the prudence of the idea. Maybe she should just start walking.
Sam hummed to herself, kicked at a pebble, and watched it skitter across the pavement. She huffed impatiently. Her insides started to squirm. If he made her late on her first day of junior high…
Behind her, she heard the Howards’ front door open. She whirled to see Tobias hurry out, his mom standing in the doorway behind him. Tobias wore a scowl, as usual, but his mom smiled and waved at Sam.
“Enjoy your first day!” Tobias’s mom called.
Unsure whom she was addressing, Sam nevertheless waved back and said, “Thanks, Mrs. Howard!”
Tobias didn’t even look at Sam as he marched right past her toward the alley that cut between houses. Sam scurried to keep up and fall in step beside him. His legs were so much longer than hers.
“Good morning!” Sam tried to sound cheerful, but it came out rather breathless as she worked to keep up with Tobias’s long and impossibly fast strides.
“Sorry I’m late,” he muttered. He still wouldn’t look at her.
“That’s okay. I was getting pretty nervous, though. I almost started walking without you, but then I didn’t think I could find the school by myself.” It was a lie. She had a precise map in her head.
Tobias didn’t respond.
He was like that sometimes, but Sam didn’t mind. She figured it was because he had such a large family, and he had probably grown used to just listening while everyone else did the talking.
Thinking he needed encouragement to participate in the conversation, she decided to ask him a question: “Are you excited? About being an eighth grader, I mean?”
She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.
“Well, I’m excited,” Sam said, deciding that Tobias might feel more comfortable opening up if she did first. “To be in junior high, I mean. Not about being in eighth grade. I mean, how could I be excited about being in eighth grade when I’m only starting seventh grade?”
Still nothing.
Sam tried a new tack: silence. Maybe he would grow uncomfortable with the silence if she said nothing at all. And that’s how the rest of the walk to school passed.
In silence.
Sam had lied.
Even though she was more than pleased to walk to school with Tobias, she was not at all excited about the prospect of school itself. She was brilliant — so brilliant, in fact, that she had started to pretend that she was a terrible student. Well, maybe not terrible. Average. Or maybe just a tiny bit above average. She couldn’t hide her brains altogether.
The teachers deemed brilliance reason to assign extra work. And the other students… Not that Sam cared what the other students thought. She had no interest in being well liked among the masses. But the bullying at previous schools had been inconvenient at best, painful at worst.
And so, ever since they had moved to this school district three years ago, she had played dumb. Sort of. She still wasn’t well liked among the masses, but at least she could fly under the radar this way.
Starting a new school year meant re-establishing herself as just an average student. It took effort — more effort than one would think — but teachers and bullies alike were all about first impressions. Sam really only had to sell her average-ness for a week or two to be left in peace for the whole term.
Tobias reminded Sam which direction to go to reach the seventh grade wing when they arrived at the school, but he said nothing else before heading toward the eighth grade wing. Sam, happy to get any words out of him, let him believe that she was lost and overwhelmed. He didn’t know about her big brains either. In fact, Sam had memorized the entire layout of the school months ago when sixth graders had been invited to follow a junior high student for a day.
Sam was a little sorry about hiding her brains from Tobias, but she knew some boys were intimidated by girls with big brains. She figured she would reveal the truth someday, but by then he would be madly in love with her and would be delighted to find that his ladylove was, in fact, a genius.
Sam smirked at the ridiculous thought. As if Tobias would ever fall in love with her. Ha!
But a girl could dream, couldn’t she?
* * *
Sam didn’t hate her first day of junior high. But she didn’t love it either.
Of all her classes, Sam felt sure she would like band the best. Most of the time, her parents left her to her own devices, but one thing they insisted on doing as a family no matter where they lived (and they hadn’t always lived in nice neighborhoods like they did now) was music. Although neither of her parents played an instrument, they took Sam to symphony and chamber and jazz concerts two or three times a month. They had even gone to a handful of operas last season, which were enjoyable if not a little indulgent.
Sam had taken piano lessons as long as she could remember, and the opportunity to learn a new instrument excited her. She had chosen to learn the trumpet. It was hard — much harder than she had anticipated — but the challenge of it made her feel that band would be the only class worth her time and effort.
She successfully flew under the radar in all her academic classes except one: English. All because of that stupid icebreaker. Mrs. Gordon asked to go around the room, everyone saying their name and their favorite book. Sam, trying to be honest, declared that her favorite book was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Mrs. Gordon’s face lit up like Times Square, and Sam knew she should’ve said something about that boy wizard instead. Mrs. Gordon spent the remainder of the class throwing winks and Jane Eyre references Sam’s way. She even started to call her Adèle, which Sam found more than a little insulting.
But the nickname wasn’t the worst of it. By the end of class, Sam pegged the greasy-haired meathead in the back row as the primary threat to her desire for anonymity. Mrs. Gordon had unwittingly put a target on Sam’s back, and she practically felt the meathead — Jason was his name, and he’d named a porn magazine as his favorite book — zeroing in. His height and bulk and sporadic patches of facial hair made Sam wonder if he’d been held back a grade or two, and he smelled like day-old sweat and onions. The thought of Jason cornering her in some dark alley made Sam shudder, and she thanked her lucky stars that Tobias would be walking her to and from school everyday.
Speaking of which… He was running late again.
Sam waited outside the front doors of the school and watched as the steady stream of kids spilling out turned to a trickle. Finally, Tobias emerged with another eighth grade boy Sam recognized as a frequent visitor to the Howard house. They laughed and joked together, and seeing Tobias smile immediately brightened Sam’s mood.
“Hey, Tobias!” she called and waved as she skipped up to them.
“Oh, hey, Sam,” Tobias said. “Ready to go?”
“Been ready for, like, ten minutes.” She meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out right.
“I know. I’m sorry. I had to talk to one of my teachers.”
“There’s my mom. See you tomorrow, Toby,” the other boy said as he trotted off toward a car parked at the curb.
“See ya.” Tobias turned to Sam and raised his eyebrows as if saying the words Are you ready out loud would be too much effort.
“Toby?”
“Only my friends call me that.” Tobias’s scowl returned.
Oh. Did that mean he didn’t consider her a friend? Ouch.
Sam bobbed her head as if it didn’t bother her, and they started the walk toward home.
“So,” she began, determined not to let him see her bruised feelings, “how was your first day?”
Tobias shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
Sam waited. This time her patience was rewarded.
“Yours?”
She shrugged and tried to mimic his tone. “Okay, I guess.”
Tobias gave her a sidelong look and grinned.
She grinned back.
And they walked the rest of the way in silence.
* * *
“Samantha, is that you, honey?”
Sam’s mom always asked this question when she came home from school. Sam had almost forgotten about this daily ritual over the summer. Now it struck her as curious, and she wondered if her mom expected someone else to come barging through their front door from time to time.
“No, it’s the FBI,” Sam called out blandly.
Her mom appeared from her hobby room. Sam had no idea what her mom did in her hobby room. Every time Sam went in there, she failed to find any trace of any kind of hobby. Nothing but an empty desk, a chair, and a locked file cabinet. What she wouldn’t give to find out what that cabinet contained.
Sam’s father had an office in the basement instead of a hobby room, but he was equally private about it. More, actually. Sam never understood what her father did for work — he was what they called a businessman, but like her mother’s hobby, her father’s business was a mystery to her. Whenever he left for work or traveled for business, which was often, he locked the door to his home office. Even when her father was in his office, Sam dared not enter. She’d learned that lesson early on, having walked in without knocking once. It was the only time her father had ever laid a hand on her. It was the last time she’d given him reason to.
“That’s not funny, Samantha.”
Sam shrugged and dropped her backpack by the door.
“That doesn’t belong there,” her mom reprimanded before she disappeared again into her hobby room and shut the door.
Sam rolled her eyes, picked up her backpack, and trudged toward her room. She mimicked her mom’s voice: “How was your first day of school, honey?” In her own voice: “It sucked, thanks for caring.”
The door to the hobby room whipped open as she was passing it, startling her.
“Mrs. Howard called to invite you to Tobias’s birthday party on Saturday.”
“Really?” Sam was genuinely shocked. And pleased. Maybe he did think of her as a friend after all.
“It starts at four. He’s having some boys over, too, that are going to stay the night, but obviously you’re only invited for dinner and cake and presents and all that.”
“Well, right.”
“Do you have homework?”
“On the first day? Please.”
Sam’s mom rolled her eyes (Sam thought at least she came by it honestly) and huffed indignantly. She muttered to herself as she turned away and closed the door once more. “Twelve years old and already giving me teenage attitude.”
Sam shrugged at her mother’s antics. She could never make up her mind whether she truly got on her mother’s nerves or if it were all for show. If she’d had any siblings, Sam would’ve had some other Ingram kid’s experience to compare with her own. But she was her parents’ only child.
Sam sometimes imagined having a big family like Tobias’s. He was the youngest of four — one girl at the top followed by three boys. Tobias’s mom only rolled her eyes at her children in good fun, and an Oh, brother and a laugh always followed. Truthfully, Sam kind of wished her mom were more like Tobias’s mom. More relaxed and happy and wanting to hear all about Sam’s day.
The door opened again. Sam hadn’t moved.
“Don’t forget to practice for your piano lesson.” The door shut.
Sam sighed and went to her room.
She didn’t practice.
And her mom didn’t notice.
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