((Note: Coda and Rose gave me permission to post this up. Because they are awesome.))

She was smiling again.

Stop smiling, Genevieve told herself for the fourth time that afternoon, burying her nose in her book. She pressed the cartilage against the open page between scenes one and two and inhaled the scent of old paper and dust. While other students possessed copies of Hamlet on glossy textbook pages, her nose was buried in a smaller copy which, to Genevieve's young mind, must have been as old as the play itself. The pages were yellowed, the cover faded, and it smelled like she imagined Hogwarts library would smell like.

However, it was neither the broken spine or the roughed up edges that had Genevieve grinning until her jaw hurt and her cheeks burned red. It was the fact that this book said in bold, handsome black letters inside of the front cover:

Ray Gordon.

Genevieve didn't know letters could even be handsome until he had handed her that book.







What Ray Gordon was looking at might have been the most pathetic thing anyone had ever seen after letting someone out of their own locker.

Genevieve Prideux was sitting in front of his desk with a red nose and equally red-rimmed eyes, wringing the toilet water out of one of her braided pigtails. She was damp from scalp to clavicle, and the ribbons that she had always fussed over keeping in place were now stained with something he didn't care to specify. Out of decency, she was wearing his jacket over her soaked school uniform.

Why did their uniforms have to be white?

“I didn't-” she hiccoughed, making an embarrassing half-snorting sound that resulted from trying to breathe in after a nice, long cry, “I didn't do anything, Mr. Gordon,” She rolled up the sleeve of his jacket and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, “I wa-,” sniff, “I wa-was reading in the bathroom and they took my Badtz Maru backpack and they took my book and.. and...”

Then she was tearing up again, making a face that no teenage girl should ever make over the loss of their English textbook.

“And now I can't be Horatio tomorrow,” she finally choked out, and it was quite obvious that this was the very definition of A Big Deal.

Ray looked at her for a moment, his fingers steepled in front of his lips, before shaking his head in confusion. He stood and lifted up her bangs, staring intently at her forehead. After a moment he shook his head again and lifted up one pigtail by the end, looked under it, then repeated the process with the other. He walked a circle around her and her wide blue eyes followed him in confusion. Eventually he stopped in front of her, folded his arms across his chest, and exhaled in a blunt, “Huh. That's odd.”

“What's odd?” She asked with a sudden hint of panic in her voice, “Is there something in my hair?” She patted the sopping, half-undone buns on each side.

“You said you couldn't be Horatio tomorrow,” Ray replied matter-of-factly, leaning in to turn her head to one side. He squinted to look into her ears, “But I don't see a single 'Not Horatio' sign anywhere on you.”

The change of expression was like the sun breaking through rainclouds. Her red eyes creased as a smile nearly split her face in two. Genevieve watched as he grabbed the small, worn copy of Hamlet he'd been reading from all week from his desk and held it out.

Her heart all but skipped a beat.







Somewhere in the back of the room she could hear Charys Murphy reading.

“In your mother's eye, Ho-Ray-tio,” she said, and the improv was punctuated with a chorus of quiet snickers. Mr. Gordon looked as unamused as anyone who was secretly amused could possibly look.

“Swing and a miss, Cherry,” he said, swinging his arms as though he was knocking one out of the park. He even followed through by lifting a hand to his forehead and peering into the distance for a moment, as though watching to see where the fictional ball would land. Judging by the way his gaze followed a smooth, invisible arc up through the ceiling and down onto her desk, it had landed on her base.

Several seconds too late for it to actually be funny, Genevieve raised her hands and faked a catch. It didn't even look like a catch. It looked like someone swatting at a fly, grabbing it with both hands, and then carefully peering in to see if the fly was in there. By the time Mr. Gordon's gaze had landed on her, Genevieve was staring blankly at her cupped palms.

“Throw it back, Jenny-V,” he punched his fist like a catcher's mitt and waited for her to read the line.

She stared.

She stared more.

She stared until someone coughed politely into their fist.

Cheeks burning red, she turned her face back to the book and lifted it up until it covered her eyebrows. She mouthed the line silently once through before clearing her throat and mumbling a quick, nervous: “In my mind's eye, Hora-”

She was cut off as a finger was thrust between her face and the book, hooking between the pages and pulling it several inches from her face. “Pretty girls don't hide their faces, Jenny.”

“Illegal in fourty-seven states,” Charys commented in the same casual tone of voice she might have used if she were announcing that the sky was blue.

Mr. Gordon gave her a 'look'.

Genevieve didn't get it, but made a mental note to ask Charys about it after class. It had become almost daily ritual for Genevieve to linger outside the classroom until Charys emerged – often after a short conversation with Mr. Gordon – and barrage her with questions. The reaction was always the same; an arm around her shoulders, a slight broadening of her world view, and an agitating tug on one of her pigtails before she was sent off to Algebra.

Talking with Charys turned out to be like one continuous episode of Lost. She always left the conversation with more questions than answers.