It was going to be one of those weeks.

Jonathan bolted out of bed and through his morning routine, showering in record time and brushing his teeth twice in a frenzied rush even before he grabbed something to eat from the smiling maid. The air was electric. He could taste the static in his mouth and felt jolts run up his arm with every contact he made with a metal surface.

Bursting out of the house, he finally took a bite out of his pastry and immediately spat it out, tasting the bitter poison. Normally this might have made him a tad angry, but he was too energetic to care much. He would shout at the maid another time. Jonathan ignored the humid air making his hair fan out impossibly. For a moment he wavered, glancing between the gleaming, dented car in the spacious driveway and the road, debating. He at last sighed and opened the door of the convertible. He had enough energy and stamina to jog the six miles from his house to school, but not the time. And although he suspected that one of his friends might have snuck over and cut the brakes of his car while he was asleep, he didn't have the patience to check it out before he left.

Several minutes and two not-accidents later he was swinging open the double doors to the school's main entrance, shocking both palms in the process. The teen proceeded calmly down the hall to homeroom with half an hour to spare. He appraised the hallway with a critical eye, taking in the wooden doors and smooth grainy tile of the ground. One or two other students were strolling along, but by and large the hall was deserted—most students were either going to come later and barely make it to class or were already there, chatting with their friends before the school day officially started.

Next to a row of lockers a male teacher he vaguely recognized was strangling a dark-haired girl.

Walking calmly past, Jonathan edged around them and reached for the doorknob of room 616, as he had done for the last ten days or so. It was the second week of his junior year of high school, just long enough for the tendrils of routine to begin creeping around their ankles. Ignoring the jolt of static he proceeded in.

He surveyed the classroom. Dylan was telling an apparently amusing story to Ashton and Rick, who were both grinning as though part of some greater joke on the universe. They had all leaned over the latter's desk, upon which a metal ruler sat, inconspicuous except for anyone smart enough to notice the sharpened edges.

Aside from them only Callie and Mindy—the only transfer he knew of this year—were in the room already. Mindy looked enthused about the conversation but Callie was speaking quietly in her always calm voice, strands of her red-brown hair fluttering under the scrutiny of the air conditioning unit.

He was only mildly disappointed that none of his friends had arrived. This meant that he had time to study.

"Hi, Jonathan," said Lana, grinning as she strolled into the room. There were prominent bruises on her arms.

Or not study. He glanced up from the book he'd just taken out and promptly put it away. "Hey," he said simply, running his eyes over her. He'd known Lana for eight years, though never particularly well. They did have a lot of mutual friends, however, so they were often hanging out in the same group of people. And he couldn't deny that she was attractive. "Have fun this morning?" he asked, pointing out her arms. The bruises hadn't been there yesterday.

"Oh, yeah," she said matter-of-factly. "My mom asked my brother to wake me up and he used a baseball bat." She grinned even wider, exposing two rows of perfect teeth. "I managed to break his leg and lock him in the closet."

"Cool," he said. He hadn't really been interested.

Apparently Lana seemed to realize that as well, for she left a few seconds later while he watched her retreat warily, making sure there were no sharp objects like pencils in her hands. She flounced more than walked, and as her strawberry-blond hair bounced he thought he could see the gleam of a concealed knife. It made him nervous, but he supposed it wouldn't matter once class started, when he couldn't watch her, or anyone else. It really sucked to be sitting in the front row of desks. But the teachers were normally irritated with students who caused interruptions during a lesson, and even the stronger kids had no real chance against the strength of the adults.

Twenty minutes later most of the teens were seated, alphabetically. He could hear Ashton whining about it to one of his friends, four desks to the right. Jonathan rolled his eyes. Sure, it wasn't an ideal situation, but if the faculty allowed the students to pick their own desks fights would break out over the better spots. Callie, who was sitting in the far back corner of the room, was smiling to herself complacently. Diagonally opposite to her, Sarah looked half-terrified, half-defiant, facing threats from both the exposed window she was seated next to and her classmates behind her. If he had been capable of pity, Jonathan would have had sympathy for her. Instead he simply felt glad that he wasn't in the same situation.

The teacher walked in, at ease even in a room of potential enemies. The relatively young oriental woman was small and thin, with narrow eyes that stared them over icily. In her arms she clutched a calculus book that was probably as thick as her waist. The chatter quickly died down. Jonathan had heard that last year Miss Lǚ snapped the neck of a girl who was talking in her class. After that, no one had really bothered with conversation in her presence.

"Take out your assignments," she said flatly, leaving no room for argument. The class complied, even though the bell hadn't rung yet.

She walked around mechanically to every desk, taking thirty or so seconds to read over the problems and highlighted answers, making sure that everyone had shown their work. Apparently they were all to her satisfaction, for she finished within ten minutes and walked back to the front of the room, where she faced them with a sour expression on her admittedly pretty features. Opening her book, she began to speak, her voice sharp, words concise.

Jonathan listened raptly for about ten minutes before, against his better judgment, he began to let his thoughts wonder. It was a terrible idea to not pay attention during Miss Lǚ's lecture—he'd seen her break the hands of teens that answered her randomly spouted questions incorrectly. Duncan had done so on the second day, and had already shed his wrist brace, though Megan was still wearing hers from last Friday. Both were staring at the teacher with all the attention they had, a subdued fear covering their faces like a thin film.

He knew this, but couldn't muster the focus to stay engaged with the lesson, not with electricity almost visibly crackling in the air and disturbing his inner calm. He wanted to move around the classroom, bolt through the hall and into his car, race down the highway until he crashed. Instead Jonathan let his mind move freely, picking up thoughts where he could find them. Predictably, most were about girls. He frowned slightly. He felt certain that his physique, wealth, and personality were enough to get the affections of almost any he might have been interested in. The problem was his lack of interest.

Most of the girls he knew were lean, strong, and fearless. It was necessary for survival. Many of them were also decently pretty, some even gorgeous. And Jonathan did like all of those traits. So maybe he just hadn't found the right one.

Of course, there were exceptions to every rule. Callie, for instance. He'd known the girl since his elementary school years, and had never seen her instigate a fight or even any kind of violence. His frown deepened. She really was strange. While the other kids fought for what they wanted all throughout their childhoods, be it the desirable crayon colors or the companionship of their popular classmates, Callie had always seemed content to watch the brawl from the sidelines, and settle for less. Jonathan never witnessed her confront anyone for anything she wanted. It was weird. Why would anyone let people walk all over them like that?

He had barely reached this train of thought when Miss Lǚ's voice cut through the fog in his mind: "Jonathan, simplify the expression I just read."

He hadn't heard the question, but wasn't stupid enough to ask for her to repeat it. But the problem remained that he had no idea what the answer was. The teen panicked, his hands instinctively grasping the edges of his desk. Her piercing gaze made him frantic, and he breathed in raggedly as she moved from the front of the room to approach his desk in a fluid walk that was like liquid steel. She was going to snap his wrist if he didn't do something.

He opened his mouth to spout a random answer, but before he could make a sound Ashton suddenly blurted out, "The answer is x cubed over y to the fourth power!"

Stunned, Jonathan tore his eyes from the teacher to stare at the other boy, who looked pale and mortified by his own actions. Jonathan had probably never seen anyone do something that idiotic—did the boy wish for a painful death? What was wrong with him?

"That answer is correct."

In his surprise he'd forgotten Miss Lǚ and was startled by her sudden movement. Quicker than anything Jonathan had ever seen, she lunged to Ashton's desk, grabbing the metal ruler off Rick's in a blur of her arm. She cracked it viciously across the side of Ashton's face, sending him sprawling out of his chair and onto the tile floor.

"And you will never speak out of turn like that again. You have detention."

The boy stared up at her, terrified. There was a nasty cut that looked fairly deep on the side of his face, but he paid it no mind, fear outweighing the pain. His blood dripped onto the floor as he nodded, looking faintly numb, and clambered back into his chair.

Jonathan's mind reeled. Detention…that seemed incredibly cruel, even for Miss Lǚ. He shuddered. Why had Ashton acted so stupid? Still, he was grateful that the outburst had saved his hand. The teacher wasted no time in asking Jonathan a similar equation; however, being fairly bright, he managed to get the right answer even though he hadn't been paying any attention to the lecture.

She proceeded with the lesson. Even after his narrow escape, or perhaps because of it, Jonathan couldn't focus. His mind turned over the question of Ashton's outburst, but no matter how hard he thought about it he couldn't find any reason for it. Maybe Ashton was just stupid. But then, if that were the case, he probably wouldn't even be alive. This made no sense.

He turned his head slightly to look at the other boy. Ashton was trying to remove strands of his dirty-blond hair from the wound on his face, which stretched vertically from the top of his forehead to several inches below his cheekbone. It was still bleeding profusely. He caught sight of Jonathan looking at him and smiled weakly.

Bewildered, Jonathan turned away, confused by the gesture. If he had been in the same situation he certainly wouldn't have felt much like smiling. Baffled beyond measure, he decided to confront the other boy about it after class or whenever he got a chance.

It was only later that he realized Callie had been staring at Ashton as well. Her expression had looked almost happy, but that wasn't it at all. More like she was pleased, but there had been horror in her face as well. It was like some kind of warped admiration.

After the lecture had finished, about three minutes before the bell rang signaling the end of first period, Miss Lǚ turned to Ashton with a malicious little smile. "Stay after class and clean that blood off the floor. I refuse to do it myself."