Thresholds Read Online Free Page B

palm.
    Carnation and cinnamon.
    Fairy dust! Tiny gold glints still gleamed in the lines of her palms, though she had washed her hands before breakfast. Or had she?
    Was there really a strong enough scent left to make two different guys accuse her of wearing some perfume she’d never heard of? She stared at Benjamin, and he stared back with dark, serious eyes.
    Maybe fairy dust had made her hand tingle when she touched the guy in the hall.
    She reached toward Benjamin, wondering what would happen if she touched him . Then she thought, No, this is way too weird.
    He held out a hand, though. Her hand moved toward it.
    “Miss Andersen!” yelled Mr. Ferrell from the front of the room.
    She jerked her hand back.
    Everybody turned to stare at her.

FIVE
    “Yes, Mr. Ferrell?” Maya said.
    “You should know my policy on note passing. When I observe notes being passed, I confiscate them and read them aloud to the whole class. Since this is your first offense, I’ll let you off with a warning, but I want everyone in this room to understand I’m serious about this.”
    She felt her face heat. She stared down at her notebook.
    The blond guy on her other side grabbed the note off her desk, wadded it up, and stuck it in his mouth.
    “Mr. Finnegan!” Mr. Ferrell yelled.
    The boy chewed.
    Mr. Ferrell sighed. “Welcome back, Mr. Finnegan. It seems you haven’t changed since the last time you were in seventh grade.”
    The boy swallowed. “Thanks, dude.” He turned to Maya, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.
    She tried to smile back at him, but the truth was, she was mad. She’d been let off with a warning. She could have kept her note. She liked how Benjamin wrote: his letters were spiky and close together, but they were all there. Her first note. If something dire happened and nobody liked her after this morning, it might be her last friendly communication at Hoover.
    “One more stunt like that, Mr. Finnegan, and you will visit Principal Clark,” Mr. Ferrell said. “Does anyone have any legitimate questions?”
    Maya raised her hand.
    “Miss Andersen,” said Mr. Ferrell.
    “Is there a map of the school? I got lost trying to find this room.”
    “You were supposed to get a map at Orientation,” he said.
    “We didn’t move to town in time for Orientation.”
    “Oh, that’s right.” Mr. Ferrell riffled through a short stack of papers. “I have a note here from the counselor’s office. You’re to stop by at the end of the day to pick up some paperwork from Mrs. Boleslav. She’ll give you a map.”
    Great. She got to spend her first day without a map.
    The big blond note-eating kid next to her burped and said, “I’ll show you around.”
    “Gee,” she said. “Thanks.”
    “No prob, dudette.”
    Dudette?
    She glanced at Benjamin and Gwenda, wondering if they would save her from the blond kid. Benjamin waggled his eyebrows and shrugged.
    “What’s your name, anyway?” she whispered to her new guide. “Or do you want me to call you Mr. Finnegan?”
    “Travis,” he whispered back. “Who are you?”
    “Maya,” she said.
    “Nice to meet you.” Travis smiled, yawned, and slumped in his seat, then closed his eyes and started snoring. It sounded really fake. How could anybody fall asleep that fast? She leaned forward and studied his face. All the muscles had gone slack, so maybe insta-nap was one of his superpowers.
    “Come up when I call your name and I’ll give you your locker assignment. You’re responsible for your own locks,” Mr. Ferrell said.
    While she waited for Mr. Ferrell to call her name, she doodled in her notebook. A picture of Travis’s sleeping face. Quick sketches of Gwenda and Benjamin—then she flipped the page over so they wouldn’t see. Another of Gwenda and Rowan fighting, drawn from memory. A sketch of Rowan’s face, obscured by hair. She was going to start folders of sketches of the new neighbors when she got home. Sketch them anytime she could, then move on to paint at some