“Randall Carpenter, can you answer the question or not?” 

Mrs. Hozicki’s sharp voice cut through Dallas’ daydreams and startled him back into reality. The rest of his junior’s English class was turned in their seats to stare at him, some of them not even hiding their smirks.

“Well Randall? I’m waiting.” Mrs. Hozicki was tapping her toe expectantly.

Dallas sighed. Why bother lying when the truth was so much easier?

“No ma’am, I can’t answer it,” he said gruffly.

“I didn’t think so,” the teacher said. “You really ought to pay more attention, maybe then you wouldn’t be failing so many of your classes. Lizzie, could you please explain what Randall doesn’t seem to know?”

There were snickers from his classmates as Lizzie Barbuck obediently answered the question; Dallas didn’t pay attention to her either. Mrs. Hozicki was the only person at Cooper’s Creek High School who called him by his first name – most of the other teachers were too afraid of Dallas or his father to risk pissing him off. Needless to say, Mrs. Hozicki was Dallas’ least favorite teacher and she didn’t care.

Dallas couldn’t understand how he’d earned such a bad reputation at school - it wasn’t like he was failing any of his classes. He just hated being in school and didn’t bother talking to anyone. School seemed a waste of time, where he had to read things he’d never need to know about or solve math problems that didn’t have a point. Dallas knew he wasn’t stupid – he understood the concepts well enough, he just preferred to be working with his hands. All the math and science stuff made more sense if he could see how it worked, instead of filling out worksheets or taking pop quizzes. As for English, well, he couldn’t see Mrs. Hozicki talking about any of the science fiction books HE liked to read, so what was the point of trying?

Dallas suspected his appearance really was the reason for his reputation as a ‘delinquent’. His pissed-off face and his clothes were one thing; he was also pretty bulky for a sixteen-year-old, which was scary considering that he didn’t participate in any sports. The scars and marks on his hands that came from working on the family cars and the lawnmower were another thing. Dallas knew he looked like he picked fights in his spare time, when the reality was he enjoyed lifting weights and fiddling with mechanical things.

“I don’t think I could punch someone even if I wanted to,” Dallas thought.

But Dallas didn’t let his undeserved reputation bother him for long. If anything, it made him feel closer to his family, who all had something said about them in Cooper’s Creek. His father, Rob Carpenter, was supposedly a sleazy lawyer who liked to sue honest hard-working people and who’d driven off his first wife with a ton of torrid affairs. His stepmother, Rosalie, was a gold-digging hussy who’d stuck her nails into a married man by getting pregnant and now she was living the high life off his ill-gotten gains. Even talkative little Rico was “a bit of a handful, bless him.” But worst of all, the Carpenters didn’t go to church and in a town like Cooper’s Creek, that basically meant you were Satan worshippers.

Dallas stared out the classroom window at the football field, where the P.E. class for honors juniors were running laps around the track. He immediately spotted Nathaniel Westerson; besides his angelic curls, Nathaniel was the only person wearing a long-sleeve gym shirt. Before Dallas might’ve said it was because Nathaniel had some religious complex about the impurity of showing off too much skin, but now he thought better of it. Even Roy Kearns, the popular jock whose family was at the center of the New Life Church crowd, had taken his shirt off.

“Although,” Dallas thought with a scowl, “that might just be because Roy Kearns is a narcissistic ass-hat who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world.”

As Dallas watched Nathaniel dutifully run around the field at a steady pace, he was struck again by the memory of the other teen’s unbridled laughter in the grocery store’s parking lot. He never would’ve expected that Nathaniel Westerson had such a loud, joyous laugh. All his smiles before that moment were polite and gentle, so practiced that they were perfect. But Dallas had seen Nathaniel’s real smile while he was laughing and it was nothing less than beautiful. Dallas’ stomach started to hurt.

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