Since I obviously have not been able to upload any new chapters, and ideas aren't just sprouting from my mind at random times, I have decided to rewrite this story in a desperate attempt at keep my fans happy. I accept criticism--as long as it's the constructive kind. I will take away the old chapters, and move them into a new story in case anyone wants to read them. Thank you, and enjoy the story! I really hope you like the new version of Nothing to Lose. I spent so much time on making it more intriguing and awesome.
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“Excuse me, do you know where I can find room 831?”
I whirled around in surprise, and when I found out that the low, husky voice belonged to a good looking and assumedly new student, my eyes went wide along with my slightly ajar mouth.
“I—uh,” I stammered, clutching the strap of my backpack. “It’s, er, straight—I mean, to the left, uh..”
“Why hello there,”
I spun around again, my hair flying into the new student’s face. “Oh,” I relaxed once I saw the familiar light blonde ponytail and bright eyes. “Hey, Hannah. How was your summer?”
But Hannah’s gaze was transfixed on the new student as she lifted her shoulders and smiled.
“Pah.” the new student made a face, swatting my hair away from his face. “Your hair practically whipped me.”
My cheeks reddened as I turned to face him. He shook his head. I quickly pulled my hair into a side ponytail and patted it down. “Sorry,” I tried hiding the tint of red growing on my cheeks. “I—um, the weather was really humid today, and my hair—my hair frizzes up in hot weather, so—“
Hannah pushed me aside and smiled up at him, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. “You were saying?”
“Oh. Um, can you tell me where room—“
“831!” I chimed in, glaring at Hannah once I recovered from her harsh shove. “I was just showing him the way.” Then, turning to the new student, I explained, “It’s just down the hall from here, and then you take a—“
“Left,” Hannah interjected with a smile, pointing down the hallway. “And it’s the third door on the right.”
“Okay.” He said. “So it’s straight, left, right, right?”
“Right.” I assured him, narrowing my eyes at Hannah. “Wait. Room 831?”
“That’s what I said.”
I grabbed my schedule out of my backpack and looked it over. “Hey,” my eyes lit up as I glanced at him. “Calculus is my first class too.”
He smirked, raising an eyebrow. “Looks like we’ll be seeing each other.”
“Um!” Hannah chewed on her lip, trying to steal the conversation away once again. “I have Calculus seventh period. Do you?”
“Actually, I do.” He responded in amusement, glancing between Hannah and I.
“Me too!” I blurted quickly, thrusting my schedule in his face. “I have it first and seventh period! We’ll see each other two times every third day!”
“Interesting.”
“Hey, are you new here?” Hannah inquired, tapping her chin curiously.
“I am, in fact.”
“That’s what I thought!” I laughed. “I’ve never seen you around before. Where are you from?”
“I’m not far from here, actually. I lived in Cambridge for a few months before this.”
“Did you have a girlfriend in Cambridge?” Hannah blundered.
“Actually—“
“Um, I think it’s time for the new student to get to class,” I interrupted quickly, trying to stop Hannah from overwhelming him and scaring him away.
“Fine.” Hannah crossed her arms, then nudged me and murmured, “Dibs.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to be late for class,” the new student added, raising his eyebrows.
“Shoot!” Hannah exclaimed as the final bell rang, and fled down the hall.
“Oh, um,” I scrambled inside my locker, sliding my backpack off my shoulders and into the small storage area. “Sorry for making you late. You should probably head to cla—“
My binder slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor, several miscellaneous papers from last year tumbling out.
Expelling a long string of curses through my teeth, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and bent down to pick up the binder. Suddenly, I shot back up, realizing that the new student was still here.
My feet flew out from underneath me as I slid on a stray piece of paper, but the new student caught me before I fell to the ground.
I glanced down at his hand on my waist, and felt tingles fly up my spine.
He chuckled, steadying me on my feet. “Careful,” he said, crouching down to help me push papers back into my binder. “You really are clumsy.”
“Thanks.” I muttered sarcastically, sighing. I lifted my watch to check the time. 8:45, the sparkly pink screen read.
“You’re welcome.” He answered as we both stood back up.
I looked at him questioningly, but then realized he probably thought I was thanking him for helping me pick up my binder mess. “Oh,” I said dumbly. “Yeah.. thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He repeated, furrowing an eyebrow curiously.
“Um,” I skillfully fastened my notebook and binder in my arms and shifted awkwardly. “Look, you’re probably a new student, so I’m really sorry I made you late on your first day.” When I saw his eyebrows arch, I quickly added, “—But I’m really good at getting around late slips! That’s how I’ve managed to perfect my clean detention record. I mean, the one reason I would get detention is because I’m late a lot, is what I mean. I’m not like a bad kid or anything, like I have really good grades, not to sound conceited and all, but I guess my one flaw really is that I tend to be late to class. Not that I’m flawless or anything! I’m not flawless at all, since, like you said, I am really clumsy sometimes and I lose my phone often. But I don’t lose things that much! Only my phone, since, you know, they’re so small because this generation seemed to have the need of small phones. Back then they were really big, right? I’m not saying that’s bad, though! I think it was really smart of them to invent the cell phone, I mean.”
He zipped his lips into a line, obviously confused.
“Sorry!” I gushed, realizing that I was rambling. “Sorry, I do have a habit of going off-topic. That’s another flaw I have!” I laughed dumbly. “See? Not that flawless after all!”
He smiled, then turned it into a smirk and looked at me with twinkling sapphire eyes. “I’m not a new student.”
My smile faltered. “Oh,” I said brilliantly. “Then… what are you?”
His smirk broadened as he shrugged, amusement clear in his voice. “Your new Calculus teacher. It’s nice to meet you, Amanda Montgomery.”
“Mr. Stone?” I squeaked.
He nodded, smiling slightly.
I raised my eyebrows and said in shock, “Oh my gosh! I am so sorry about Hannah, she has a habit of hitting on guys that are hot, and—“
“You think I’m hot, huh?”
Blushing, I shook my head violently. “N-no.. my friend does. I mean, you’re, erm, good looking? And everything, but not hot. I wouldn’t say—“
“You think I’m hot.”
“Yes,” I admitted in defeat, nodding slightly as my shoulders deflated. “I do.”
“Mhm. They all admit it sooner or later. You admitted it sooner.”
“It’s a weakness.”
“Ah. Another flaw, I assume?”
“It’s unfortunate.”
He laughed, running a hand through his tousled dirty blonde hair. “Well, I better get to room 831. That class isn’t going to teach itself.”
“Me too,” I quickly added, trying not to seem too disappointed that he was my teacher. “Sorry once again for making you late, Mr. Stone.”
“Call me Rick.” he said, sauntering down the hall like he knew it by heart.
“Um, Mr. Stone, the Calculus classroom just passed.”
Mr. Stone paused, furrowing his eyebrows, then caught sight of the room labeled 831. “Ah,” he said like he knew it all along. “There it is.”
He opened the door for me, and I walked in, but the classroom was empty.
“Why is no one here?” I inquired, pulling my schedule out once again.
Mr. Stone turned to look at me, puzzled. “What do you mean? I don’t have a class until second period.”
“But…“ I glanced back down at my schedule. “It says—“
“ –that you have a free period now. Calculus is second period.”
“Oh.” I muttered, backing away slowly. “I wish I had realized that earlier. I could’ve slept in.”
“But you didn’t, so for your free period,” he handed me a stack of papers on top of my binder, making me stagger backwards slightly. “You can help me prepare.”
ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ• ᴥ
I grunted, taking down the last plastic blue chair from the top of a desk and setting it on the floor.
“Done?” I sighed, watching as my Calculus teacher sat back in his large, rolling chair, looking obviously relaxed and comfortable. “Are you going to do something now?”
“You know, I am doing something. For instance, I’m sitting. I’m breathing. I’m looking. I’m blinking. I’m being handsome.” He smirked, then continued, while I just stood there like an idiot. “I’m waiting for you to get out of a daze from my oh-so good looks. I’m knowing you’re thinking how gorgeous I am. I’m—“
“Alright, I get it! I get it!” I interrupted as I shook my head vigorously, putting a hand up to stop him before his ego got any bigger. “God, you really are one strange, egotistical, narcissistic, conceited Calculus teacher.”
“Don’t forget self-absorbed!”
“Right.” I pursed my lips, sighing. “That too.”
He smirked, leaning forward at his desk. “I don’t think that’s a way to speak to a teacher. After all, I am the one that grades you, and your GPA is dependent on me. If you want to fulfill your dream of attending MIT, I suggest you cool it with the attitude.”
I froze, my hand halfway on one of the chairs. “How do you know I want to go to MIT?”
Mr. Stone rolled his eyes and flicked his hair to the side and answered, “Oh, please. You’ve wanted to go to MIT since middle school. All your teachers say so.”
“Oh.”
“So,” he quipped, standing up. “Wanna help me unload the textbooks?”
“Um, not really—“
Before I could finish my sentence, Mr. Stone wheeled out a rack full of thick, polished textbooks.
“Okay, then.” I blinked, hovering over the rack. All the textbooks were titled, ‘Calculus – Grade 12 Level’.
I began wheeling the rack towards the decks, but Mr. Stone set a hand on the rack and stopped me.
“No, no,” he said. “The rack has to stay here.”
“Why?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a rack. It would be much easier to just bring the rack over.”
He shook his head, rubbing his chin. “Try taking the textbooks on your own. Maybe ten at once, to save time?”
I stared at him and responded, “You’re kidding, right?”
Smirking, my teacher put a hand on his desk and leaned back on it. “Why? You’re not strong enough to do it on your own?”
“I am!” I protested, my shoulder deflating slightly. He seriously expected me, a girl of average strength, to carry out ten heavy, large textbooks, three times?
He raised his eyebrows, the smug smile still on his face. “Then why aren’t you?”
Harrumphing, I sighed through my nose and began piling textbooks in my arms. I struggled my way over to the windowsill, and set them down.
Mr. Stone sauntered over, furrowing his eyebrows in an unimpressed way. “Actually, can you move those over to the corner of my desk?”
“Sure,” I said huffily, blowing a stray strand of hair away from my face. I grunted and lifted the ten textbooks once again, and set them on the floor by his desk. Once they hit the floor, I nearly sprinted over to the rack of textbooks and struggled another ten into my arms.
I wanted to get this done as soon as possible, so that I could stop basically doing my teacher’s job for him and start studying again. I had been staring at last year’s Calculus textbook the whole summer. I just barely passed Calculus last year, and I wanted to make up for it this year by not procrastinating and doing my work on time. Even though junior year is the most important year in this high school, I hoped to make it up during my senior year.
I noticed that Mr. Stone had disappeared; probably back in the supply closet to get something. Huh.
I dropped the textbooks down next to the other set of ten textbooks, and whizzed back to the rack, where only seven textbooks remained.
I paused, pursing my lips. No… I was sure there were ten before. I glanced back at the twenty textbooks on the floor, and even counted twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Twenty at Mr. Stone’s desk, and seven on the rack. Twenty seven textbooks. I was absolutely positive there were thirty textbooks to start with. What happened to the other three?
There were definitely only twenty by Mr. Stone’s desk, and the lack of three textbooks on the rack was obvious.
What was I going to do?
Returning to the supply closet, I chewed on my lip nervously, panicking slightly. This wasn’t exactly the first impression I wanted to make on my new (and handsome) Calculus teacher. What would he think of me? I wasn’t particularly one to lose things. Well, except for my phone. But I always had everything intact, everything in order and I never lost anything. Except my cell phone. iPhones are easy to lose.
But textbooks aren’t! And it’s not like I actually lost them, because I hadn’t even touched the last three books. Mr. Stone couldn’t be mad about that… could he?
When I entered the supply closet, Mr. Stone was crouched down by a small box labeled, ‘Templates’. He began taking the templates out, one by one, and placing them in neat stacks.
“Um, Mr. Stone…” I squeaked, and immediately bit my lip to keep myself from talking. What would he think of me? I didn’t want him to get mad, especially because, like he said, I needed to get accepted into MIT, and if my teacher is upset with me and gives me bad grades, that’s not going to happen….
But if I lie, he might find out, and get even angrier. That would be worse. My mom always told me to tell the truth first, before the lie got any bigger.
Should I tell him, or act like nothing happened? Surely he would know something was up, when he would realize that three textbooks are missing from his collection.
Before I had a chance to make a decision, my tongue reacted. “I can’t find the last three textbooks.” I blurted, cursing myself silently.
Mr. Stone looked up from the textbooks, obviously upset about something else since he didn’t hear me correctly. “What is it?” he asked in an irritated tone through his nose.
“Um…” If he was already upset, wouldn’t this news made him even more mad? Was it a wrong time to tell him? Maybe later, when he calmed down… He seemed like the kind of guy who had anger management issues. He probably already had a lot on his mind, it would be better to wait for later when he’s relaxed…
I inhaled sharply, tottering on my heels. “I can’t find the last three textbooks.” I repeated slowly, unsure about this in my mind.
Mr. Stone shifted, so that he was facing me. I couldn’t help but notice how his shirt tightened and his eight pack began visible through his shirt.
Eight pack? Why was this guy even a Calculus teacher? He should be like a freakin’ Calvin Klein model or something.
“What do you mean?” he drawled, snapping me back to reality.
I blinked rapidly, trying to come up with something that wouldn’t make me sound really lame and idiotic. “Umm,” I said after a moment. “Well, there were thirty textbooks in the beginning, when you first brought them out.”
“I’m aware.”
“But now there’s only twenty seven…” when Mr. Stone didn’t respond, I added, “So that means that three textbooks are.. gone.”
“Gone? You lost them?”
“N-n-no! Of course not! I didn’t even touch them, but when I came back from the second set of textbooks, there were only seven. I don’t know where the three went.”
“So you lost them.”
“Kind of? Sort of? I don’t know, they’re just gone and I don’t know where they are but I told you, I normally don’t lose things like textbooks! I have all my school papers in order from kindergarten to last year in my bookshelf, and I’ve never lost a single thing other than my phone, and—textbooks just aren’t the kinds of things someone loses! It’s not my fault!”
Mr. Stone stood up with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. “Alright, okay.”
“So…”
“There’s nothing we can do. If you lost them—“
“I didn’t….”
“—they’re lost. That’s it. You’ll just have to find them.”
My shoulders deflated. “But I don’t have another free period until three days, and the break we have between classes is barely enough time—“
“It’s enough time.”
I jerked my head backwards in surprise, not quite knowing what he was saying. “Wh-what?” I stammered. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re going to have to stay back—“
“Oh no!” I exclaimed, burying my face in my hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please don’t make me stay back a year! I really wanna graduate this year, and I’m sure being held back a grade doesn’t look good on college applications!”
Mr. Stone chuckled, shaking his head. “Amanda,” he laughed. “I mean, you’re going to have to stay back after class to find them.”
“Oh.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, with Mr. Stone sitting still and looking at the templates, and however much I tried to deny it, my gaze kept drifting towards his eight pack.
Eight pack! Honestly, could this guy get any hotter?
I slapped a hand over my mouth, then realized that I hadn’t said it aloud and blushed. Why would I even think of such a thing? He’s my Calculus teacher. I’m sure he has no interest in me and never will. It’s not like I wanted to date him anyways. I barely knew him, and the only thing I was interested in in him was his good looks. I wouldn’t admit that, though, to his face. Mr. Stone already seemed like the type of guy who was good looking and acknowledged it himself. I mentally rolled my eyes.
I couldn’t have him even if he liked me, anyway. Hannah had already called dibs, and even though I always thought that was childish, if I told that to Hannah, she would have a fit. She has this thing about guys, where if she dibs them, she gets them. Even when I dibs first, she gets around it somehow.
That’s the kind of thing I don’t really like about Hannah. She always gets everything. I’m just the follower. I mean, of course I was more popular than Hannah, she wasn’t the nicest person in the world to people she wasn’t familiar with, but we both weren’t ranked very high on the popularity scale. That would be Izabelle Briunnos, a major suck up and teacher’s pet. I didn’t really care much about her, apart from the grudge I held against her boyfriend, Byron McMahon. He pushed me in the fountain during freshman homecoming, and I never forgave him for it. I never forgave Izabelle for it either, since it WAS her idea in the first place.
“You should probably get your stuff ready for Calculus.”
I snapped out of it, and blinked at Mr. Stone. “Oh,” I muttered. “Yeah. I will.”
Sighing, I shook my head and slid into the empty desk where I had placed my things. I propped my chin in my hand and transfixed my gaze on my blue toenails, bored.
The blue nail polish was chipping off. I had only put it on for a weekend in San Francisco with my cousins. They were holding some nerdy family reunion, and since the family “color”—I don’t even know what that is—is navy blue (my great-great grandfather was in the navy, I think?), everyone had to wear blue clothing. I had thrown on a pair of jeans and my favorite sparkly Aeropostale shirt, but they had insisted I put on blue polish as well.
My thoughts drifted back to Mr. Stone. I seemed to have a peculiar crush on him, since the usual crushes I have on guys don’t require this much thinking. Maybe it’s because Mr. Stone is a teacher, and I know we will never be together. I don’t want to be with him, though, so why am I thinking this? He’s a freaking teacher, and Hannah was the one who was usually crazy about guys.
The bell for second period rang, and students filed into the classroom, the usual “first day of school” chit chat filling the room.
Mr. Stone strode to the front of the room and perched himself on his desk, managing to silence the class. He cleared his throat, and once he got everyone’s attention, he smiled.
“Welcome to Calculus.”
This was going to be a long year.