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in agreement. “I think we have only the Flintstones to blame for the common misconception that cavemen wore bones.”
    He glanced at his watch. “Why, it’s not even eight o’clock, and I’ve had my first caveman debate of the morning.” There were two little lines creasing the side of his crooked smile. “I’m Seth.”
    “I half expected you to tell me your first name was Count.” I glanced in the direction the blonde ape had lumbered.
    “Hank thinks my family is a group of Satan worshipping vampires.”
    “Are they?”
    Seth shrugged. The tips of his long black hair curled up on his shoulders. “I’m not really that crazy about blood,” he said. “And the whole goat sacrifice thing sort of turns my stomach.”
    I smiled. “My name’s Brazil.”
    “I know.”
    “Don’t tell me I look like a Brazil.”
    “No, I saw it on your schedule. Actually, you look more like a Monaco. Must be kind of tough starting a new school this late in the year.”
    “I tried to convince my mom of that, but at the moment she’s only interested in her life.”
    A bell startled me. “Is that the tardy bell?” The throng of teenage bodies was beginning to move in scattered directions.
    “No. You’ve got three minutes.”
    “It’s nice to meet you, Seth. Room 24?” I asked.
    “First hall on the left,” he said.
    I headed in the direction he pointed. Then I glanced back over my shoulder. He was still watching me. “Why Monaco?” I asked.
    “A classy adventurer with a princess edge,” he called back. In my mental catalogue of guys, he was going straight to my S page for Smooth.

 

    Chapter 5
    The outside eating area at Pelican Bay High was much smaller than the one at my old school. But the dynamics were basically the same. The poopulars, as I liked to call them, were all sitting together, as were the stoners, the bookworms, and the let’s start a band type people. The teachers I’d had for the first four periods were similar to my old school too. It seemed that every principal had the same two pools of people to choose from for their teaching staffs. There were the normal, easy to talk to, occasionally even cool teachers, and then there were the control freak, wacko, straight out of hell teachers. Apparently every principal was mandated by law to choose half their staff from the second group.
    I had spent the entire morning trying to fade into the wobbly desk in each classroom. Obviously, people noticed me because I was a different face in the crowd and at such a small school, it was easy to spot the new person. Julie, the girl with the falling wallet, was in my chemistry class. She sat near me and started filling me in on some of the school trivia, which I had no interest in but pretended to listen. She was big into gossiping, it seemed. But since I didn’t know any of the people she gossiped about, my mind wandered as she talked.
    Making new friends in Pelican Bay seemed like a tedious and impossible chore. It took years to create the group of friends I’d had in Boston, and I didn’t have the energy or the urge to start the stressful process over again. Mom acted like it was no big deal to start my teenage existence from scratch but she was wrong. Plus I was still seething about my best friend’s betrayal. Although admittedly, the more I thought about Blake, the more I decided Jenny got the raw end of the deal. It made the burn cool a bit, but I wasn’t ready to talk to Jen yet.
    Seth, the one face I’d hoped to see, wandered into the eating area. He searched around for someone then sat on the wall and ripped open a bag of chips. I’d found an empty corner in the shade of a big tree. I sat munching my grapes and watching the entire lunch scene.
    Seth popped a chip into his mouth then spotted me across the yard. He waved. I waved back and watched as a skinny girl with a punk meets vampire look of solid black hair and heavy make-up sat next to him. The way she nearly sat in his lap made it obvious that