Chapter 1
The bell rang with that tragic school-buzzer noise that makes you feel like you’re in trouble even when you aren’t. Chairs scraped. Mr. Talley said something about chloroplasts and “read the chapter or suffer,” which sounded personal. Jamie flipped the worksheet over and snapped his notebook shut like he was hiding state secrets.
Riley lingered just long enough to peek: the dinosaur had sunglasses now, plus a speech bubble—“I am photosynthesizing, bro.” She snorted before she could stop herself.
Jamie slid the page half an inch away from her. “No touching the art.”
“It’s not art,” she said. “It’s a cry for help.”
He tapped the corner of the page with the broken pencil she refused. “You’re welcome to keep your commentary to the margins.”
“Your margins are already chaos.” She shouldered her bag, then realized the strap had looped around the leg of his chair. Of course. She tugged; the chair didn’t budge.
“Hold up.” He stood, freeing the strap with one quick lift like he has done this exact rescue mission fifty times. “There. I charge a small fee.”
“For what? Being in the way?”
“For saving your bag’s life.” He handed the strap back with mock ceremony. “You can repay me with… I don’t know. A better pencil?”
She almost smiled. “You already took my better pencil.”
“I’m borrowing it.” He tucked it behind his ear like he was about to grade papers he had not read. “I’ll return it when you admit the dinosaur is funny.”
“It isn’t.” It absolutely was. “And sunglasses are lazy.”
He leaned in, just enough to read her face. “Okay, critic. Name’s Jamie.”
“Didn’t ask,” she said automatically, then sighed. “Riley.”
“Cool. See you tomorrow, Riley-who-sits-in-my-seat.”
“Your seat?” She arched a brow. “That was mine, actually.”
“Bold claim for a person who arrives third act.” He slung his backpack on one shoulder. “I’ll allow you visitation rights.”
Riley decided not to reward that with a response. She headed for the door and nearly ran into Zadie, who had been hovering in the hall like an excited raccoon with gossip.
“Hi,” Zadie said, eyes flicking from Jamie to Riley to the pencil behind Jamie’s ear and back to Riley. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Riley said.
Jamie, hopeless, gave a tiny salute with the broken pencil. “Bye, critics.”
He was swallowed by the tide of bodies in the hallway, tall enough to be easy to track for exactly three steps before he vanished behind a tangle of varsity jackets.
Zadie’s mouth curved. “So. New lab partner?”
“No. Random dinosaur boy.”
“You smiled.”
“I smirked,” Riley said. “Different species.”
Zadie began walking with her, weaving through the traffic toward lockers. “What’s with the pencil?”
“He has mine. Long story.”
“It’s been eight minutes.”
“Long enough.”
At her locker, Riley spun the dial, pretending the combination required full emotional focus. The locker door squealed like it had complaints. Inside, an avalanche of notebooks leaned like a modern art sculpture. Zadie, patient menace, waited.
Finally Riley said, “He drew a stegosaurus that said it was photosynthesizing.”
Zadie tried to keep a straight face and failed. “That’s… solid content.”
“Don’t encourage him.”
“Encourage who?” came a voice from the other side of the locker door. Miguel, all elbows and good intentions, popped into view with a bag of chips he definitely shouldn’t be eating between classes. “If it’s Jamie, do not encourage him. He’s like a gremlin. He’ll multiply.”
Riley shut her locker. “Great. He has a hype man.”
Miguel pointed at her with a chip. “Not a hype man. A cautionary tale. Avoid the chaos.”
“Thanks for the PSA,” Riley said. “I was planning on transferring schools anyway.”
The warning bell screamed again. Zadie groaned. “Math. Pray for me.”
“Denied,” Riley said, already backing away. “Sinners math only.”
They split. Riley cut through the stream of freshmen who moved like they’d never seen hallways before, then stopped short—Jamie had reappeared at the end of the corridor, talking to a teacher. He said something, laughed, then absently reached up and found the pencil behind his ear, like it belonged there.
She told herself she wasn’t looking.
He glanced over, like he felt being looked at, and caught her eye. Not a full smile. Just a half—quick, automatic, a look you give someone you recognize before you realize you’re doing it.
Riley turned away first because she’d rather die than be the one who kept looking.
In English, the only seat left—again—was the back row, merciful. She took it, pulled out a notebook, and—without deciding to—sketched a quick line: a tiny dinosaur in sunglasses, saying “Chloro-what-now.” The line came out too easy. Her hand betrayed her.
She frowned at it and crossed the speech bubble out hard enough to dent the paper.
The teacher droned on about thesis statements. Ballpoint pens squeaked. Someone behind her ate something that crunched like a threat to her sanity. Riley kept her eyes forward, then slid the notebook closed and replaced it with the actual English notes because she was, at minimum, a functioning student when she wasn’t being taunted by reptiles.
Her phone buzzed once in her pocket, the soft vibration of a notification. She didn’t check. She had rules about mid-class temptations: obey none of them. But then it buzzed again, and the second time had that specific double-tap rhythm that meant Zadie or disaster. She flicked her eyes toward her bag, then up at the teacher, who was elaborating on the difference between a claim and an opinion as if those weren’t synonyms in high school.
When the bell finally freed everyone, she walked out into the hall and let the human river carry her toward the stairwell. She checked her phone.
Zadie: did dinosaur boy steal ur pencil or ur heart
Zadie: pls confirm for science
Miguel: DO NOT FEED THE JAMIE
Zadie: riley? hello?
Riley typed: he borrowed a pencil. i am not a habitat.
Zadie: lol liar
Riley: get rabies
She slid the phone back away, which obviously was when fate decided to make a joke of her, because Jamie was right there at the landing, leaning on the rail like he’d evolved from hallway furniture.
He held up the pencil. Her pencil. “Return policy?”
She stopped two steps above him so they were eye level. “Did it help your dinosaur’s literacy?”
“Immeasurably.” He turned it in his fingers, then offered it with an overdone bow. “For you, critic of margins.”
She reached for it. He didn’t let go right away—not in a weird way, just enough to make the moment feel like a tiny tug-of-war, then he released, palms up, like he’d been polite the whole time.
“Congrats,” he said. “You just sponsored art.”
“Congrats,” she said. “You just admitted it wasn’t art before.”
“Wow, she’s quick.” He looked genuinely pleased, which was disarming. “Hey, question. Are you always late to Bio, or is it just when a teacher says the word ‘quiz’ out loud?”
“I’m never late. The clock is wrong.” She started down the stairs. He matched her pace without asking.
“Rebel.”
“Time is a social construct.”
“So is seating,” he said. “And yet you were territorial.”
“I value structure.”
“I value chaos.”
“I can tell.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs where the hall split left for gym and right for the cafeteria. He pointed left. “I have gym. Where we pretend walking in a circle is sport.”
She pointed right. “I have lunch. Where we pretend cardboard is pizza.”
He hesitated like he might say something else, then just tapped the pencil behind her ear this time, light, a punctuation mark. “Try not to be late to being on time, Riley-who-claims-my-seat.”
“Try not to draw crimes,” she said.
He walked backward a step, still facing her. “No promises.”
“Figures.”
“See you.”
She turned into the cafeteria line, which was thirteen people long and three decades slow. The room smelled like ketchup and dreams that gave up. She grabbed a tray anyway and made eye contact with a square of pizza that looked like geometry class had won.
“Do not,” Zadie said, materializing at her elbow. “I brought you granola.”
“I brought me pizza-flavored regret.”
“Same thing.” Zadie slid a granola bar onto Riley’s tray. “How’s your soulmate?”
“Dead.” Riley peeled back the wrapper. “Buried behind the bleachers.”
“Say ‘Jamie’ without smiling,” Zadie challenged.
“Jamie,” Riley said, not smiling.
Zadie made a face. “You cheated.”
“I did not.”
“You smiled with your eyes.”
“I have resting friendly eyes.”
“You have resting court summons energy,” Zadie said, then bumped her shoulder. “It’s fine. You can think he’s funny.”
“I don’t think he’s funny,” Riley said, chewing. “I think he’s… present.”
“Mm.” Zadie’s eyes twinkled. “So is a fire alarm.”
“Exactly.”
They found a table by the window. The light made the dust in the air look like glitter, which was rude because nothing deserved to look magical in this cafeteria. Miguel dropped his tray across from them like an anvil.
“Important update,” he said, mouth full. “Jamie wants to know if you’re mad he stole your throne.”
“I don’t have a throne,” Riley said.
Miguel lifted both hands. “I’m just the messenger.”
“Tell him,” Riley said, carefully bored, “that he can keep the seat warm, since he’s clearly powered by hot air.”
“Ooh.” Miguel winced in admiration. “I won’t tell him that. He’ll enjoy it too much.”
“Good,” Riley said. “I’m not doing his cardio.”
Zadie propped her chin in her hand, watching Riley like a nature documentary. “You know what this is?”
“Lunch?”
“Foreshadowing.”
“Gross.”
Across the room, someone laughed loud enough to snag Riley’s attention on instinct. She looked up—of course. Jamie, at a table with two guys from her bio class and a girl she vaguely recognized from theater, hands moving as he told some story, the pencil she’d given him now between his fingers like a prop he couldn’t put down.
He glanced over again at the exact wrong moment, like fate had gotten bored and wanted to make a point. Their eyes caught. He raised the pencil by a fraction, a tiny salute.
Riley looked away, deliberately, and took an aggressive bite of granola that tasted like responsible choices.
Zadie kicked her under the table, gentle. “Ow,” Riley whispered.
“Just checking you’re conscious,” Zadie said. “Because you have ‘first-page-of-a-book’ face.”
“I hate you.”
“Mutual.”
By the time the lunch bell released everyone to the whirlpool again, Riley had convinced herself that today was just a collection of dumb coincidences: a late arrival, a stolen seat, a borrowed pencil, a dinosaur with sunglasses, and a boy who smiled like he knew he should apologize for existing and decided to do it with charm instead.
In the hall, she zipped her bag and almost tripped over her own shoelace. The pencil slipped from behind her ear and skittered across the floor.
A hand caught it before it could vanish under a locker. Jamie, of course, crouched, offering it up like a knight with a sword.
“Careful,” he said. “That’s premium graphite.”
“Wow,” she said. “You know a big word.”
He stood, close enough that she could smell his laundry detergent, something clean and harmless. “I know two. ‘See you.’”
She took the pencil. “That’s actually three.”
“Counting doesn’t count.”
“Great logic,” she said, but her mouth betrayed her with a small, traitor smile.
He stepped backward into the current of bodies again, palms up like what can you do, then turned and was gone.
Riley tucked the pencil into the spiral of her notebook, where it fit too perfectly, and told herself it was nothing, obviously nothing, absolutely a normal hallway interaction between two people who were, at most, temporary desk neighbors.
The next period’s bell screamed. She headed to class.
Behind her, in a trash can by the stairwell, she noticed a crumpled scrap of paper half sticking out, white against gray. She shouldn’t have looked. She looked anyway.
The stegosaurus peeked up at her from the fold, sunglasses crooked, bubble ripped. I am photosynthesizing, bro.
She didn’t fish it out. She didn’t need to.
She kept walking, the pencil tapping against her notebook with each step—tap, tap, tap—like a tiny metronome keeping time with a song she didn’t know yet, and wasn’t going to learn, because obviously this was nothing.
Obviously.
