At first, I thought Griffin was talking about my sister, but I turned to see Lex jogging toward us with a broad smile on his face. I could see why my sister would be drawn to him. He stood out from the rest of the crowd by his height alone, and his smile came off as genuine, like he was happy to run into us in the hallway.

“Well, they’ve already changed my classes,” he said, drawing out his paper schedule and waving it in front of himself like a flag of surrender. “You’d think they would have figured this out earlier. I mean, I took a placement test for French before the start of the year, but in spite of that, they screwed things up in the counseling office. They had me in one of the bilingual French classes.”

I hadn’t spotted that on his schedule before.

“Damn,” Griffin said. “That’s not gonna work. Unless… are you bilingual in French?”

Lex laughed. “Yeah, no. Not even close. Luckily, the teacher took pity on me partway through class and sent me to the office. I’ll be in the right class tomorrow. The other courses seem okay, though. Anyway, they had to switch things around. I’ve got English sixth period now, so they can get me in the first period remedial French class.”

“It’s not remedial. It’s just not the bilingual strand,” I said.

Griffin nudged me with his elbow. “Sounds like you might have a client soon for your private French tutoring sessions.”

Lex shook his head. “No. I’ll be fine, I’m sure. Now that I’m in the right class, everything should fall into place.”

“Sixth period English? Who do you have?” Griffin asked.

Lex squinted at his schedule. “Jasper?”

“You’ll be in class with me then,” I said.

We’d be together for art and English. That would give me double the chances to keep an eye on him and get a good read on his true character.

“You’ve got class with both of us,” Griffin said. “I’ve got Jasper too.”

Lex, Griffin, and I sat together for Ms. Jasper's class. Nobody bothered with assigned seats for seniors. They figured we could behave ourselves by the time we were seventeen and eighteen years old and about to leave the school as quasi-adults.

It was the last class of the day, and I was having an unusually hard time keeping my eyes open. I wasn’t sure why I was so tired at the end of the first day. Art was the only class we’d actually done anything in. Most of the other classes had just looked at the syllabus and had us do getting-to-know-you activities. Although, doing nothing could be surprisingly tiring.

Ms. Jasper did the usual syllabus thing and had us go over our preferred names and pronouns, but then she had us do a writing sample. The prompt was about where we saw ourselves in five years and then in twenty-five years.

“I’m much less interested in what you write than how you write,” she said. “In this new world of AI, it’s important to ensure that students aren’t cheating. I have many different ways of checking to be sure your work is your own. There are programs, of course, but one simple method I use to determine whether your work is original is having a current writing sample on hand to compare. This is as much for your protection as anything else.”

Where did I see myself in five years? I knew she didn’t really care, but I took the writing assignment seriously for some reason.

In five years, I would be done with college. Living on my own? Living with a roommate? A girlfriend? I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to study yet. Maybe I’d go straight to work. Maybe I’d be in grad school.

My mom had been engaged to my dad when she was a senior in college. They’d gotten married right after graduation. That hadn’t turned out very well.

In twenty-five years? That was easier to imagine for some reason. I saw myself with a home, a family, a job. Kids? Maybe. I’d be forty-three. That was older than my mom. I didn’t see myself divorced with two kids at that age. Maybe no kids.

“Seems like you’re taking this awfully seriously,” Griffin said.

“Yeah. You’re writing a full novel there,” Lex added.

“At this rate, Jasper will have plenty of source materials to prove that I haven’t used ChatGPT or whatever to write the essays for her class,” I said.

Griffin nodded. “So what are these amazing plans of yours that you’re writing about with such diligence?”

I shook my head. “In so many words? I have no plan and have no idea where I’ll be in five, ten, or twenty-five years.”

Lex laughed. “How can you use so many words to say IDK?”

“It’s a gift. How about you?” I asked our newcomer.

Lex shrugged. “Five years? Grad school here or in the States. I’m not sure where. I don’t know much about colleges in Canada. In twenty-five years? I’ll be fabulously wealthy with a winter home in Arizona and a cabin in the woods up north somewhere.”

“Where does this fabulous wealth come from before the age of forty-five?” Griffin asked. “And are you sharing it with anyone?”

“I either invent something very lucrative, or I win the lottery. And I have no plans to be alone,” he said.

I nodded. “Of course.” I didn’t picture him ending up with my sister—people didn’t usually stick with their high school boyfriends—but I couldn’t imagine him single after all that time.

“How about you?” Lex asked Griffin.

I waved my hand in the air and answered on his behalf. “Oh, I know that one. Five years from now, he’s playing hockey for the Montreal Canadiens. And in twenty-five years he’s long since retired. Maybe he owns a team. Or he’s a coach.”

“Good call,” Griffin said. “Although the Canadiens? Really? You couldn’t come up with anything better?”

I shrugged.

Ms. Jasper collected our writing and filed it away before giving us our first assignment. We were reading The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. I’d never heard of it before. At least we weren’t starting with Shakespeare. For whatever reason, I really couldn’t stand Shakespeare, not even when we read the “cool modern retellings.”

I didn’t mind ending the day with English. It was usually one of my better classes. Writing came fairly easily to me, and while I didn’t read a lot of books for pleasure, I didn’t mind the readings either.

After class, my sister met us in the hallway.

“How was your first day?” she asked Lex.

I frowned. “Don’t you want to know how my first day was?”

“No,” she said.

Lex laughed. “At least she’s honest. It was pretty good. Apparently, French will not be my best subject. Other than that, nothing is giving me much cause for concern.”

Nadine made a face. “I am not fond of French myself.”

Lex’s eyes widened. “I thought you and your brother were naturals.”

She shook her head. “Theo, yes. Me? No.”

Nadine had been younger when my dad moved out, and she didn’t have much of an ear for languages. In fact, she’d switched to American Sign Language for her world languages requirement the first year of high school rather than continue in French.

“I’d better go if I’m gonna catch the bus,” Lex said.

I was surprised when he said that. Not many people rode the bus unless they were freshmen. Most people were close enough to walk or carpooled to school.

“Oh, don’t bother,” Nadine said. “My brother can give you a ride. You’re on the way home.”

He was. Kind of.

“Right, Theo?” she asked, looking expectantly at me.

“That’s all right. I don’t want to impose,” Lex said. And before I could say anything, he was off. Heading for the bus.

“Why are you such an unwelcoming jerk?” Nadine asked, punching me in the arm.

“What are you talking about?” I rubbed my arm.

Nadine folded her arms over her chest. “That look on your face when I offered him a ride.”

“What face?” I asked.

Griffin chuckled. “It wasn’t so much that you made a face. You had no reaction whatsoever.”

Then I did make a face. I lowered my eyebrows. “Well, I can’t help that. What reaction was I supposed to have?”

Nadine sighed. “Smile? Agree with me? Volunteer to drop him off? Honestly you are making a terrible impression on your newest classmate.”

“And why should I worry about what kind of impression I’m making?” I grumbled.

But I felt like an ass. How hard would it have been to offer him a ride?

“Let’s go,” I said, shouldering my backpack.

My sister looked at me as if I were insane.

“What?” I asked.

Nadine crossed her hands over her chest. “I told you this before. Anjali and I are going out for soccer. I won’t be home until dinner time.”

“I thought practice started for that last week or something,” I said.

Nadine shook her head. “It did. But I didn’t. They needed more players to fill out the bench, so the fact that I’m not the best player isn’t necessarily the worst thing. I figured it would look good on my college applications.”

“Fair enough,” I replied.

For some reason, the fact that I’d be driving home alone made me feel even more guilty that I hadn’t offered Lex a ride.