This whole thing happened because I sat next to her in English class.

I didn't want to draw attention to myself, so I sat in the back left corner next to a window. No easy escape, but maybe I could escape notice from back here.

She came in late and glared at me, which was the first inclination I had that something was different about this place, this girl.

I sunk down in my chair and pretended extreme interest in the flagpole, from which the flag hung limply at half-mast. It was hot as hell, even though it was September, and as soon as I got out of school I was going to take my shirt off and go sulk in the open space out behind my house.

The teacher hurried in, blonde hair captured in a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She was fairly young, and spared a smile for us as she dropped her purse and several binders on the desk up front. Maybe I'd finally have a teacher who wasn't a total burnout.

She flipped through the binder on top of the stack, then let it lay open on the desk and turned to the whiteboard. She was left-handed, and her handwriting was very neat.

She turned back to face us and capped the marker. "Hello, class. I'm Miss Walker and I'll be your English teacher this year. I hope you're all in the right room."

I'd showed up early specifically to be sure I could find all my classes.

"Let me just call roll and I'll pass out your syllabus for the year." She smiled and picked up her binder, setting it down on the lectern that stood at the front of the room just before the whiteboard.

"Nicola? Nicola Aloisi?"

I stuck my hand up in the air. She'd mispronounced my last name, but pretty much everyone did. "Here. Call me Nick."

She glanced up from her binder. "Nick? Okay."

Only a few people were staring at me, but it felt like the whole class, and I stared out the window, trying to seem all James Dean-like and mysterious rather than embarrassed. Every year. Every year I had to correct people about my name.

Why couldn't my dad just have named me Leonard or something? Hell, I would have put up with Ashley instead of Nicola. "It's a family name". "Your great-grandfather was a Nicola too".

I was in high school, for the love of fuck.

I wasn't really paying attention for the rest of roll, until (of course) the girl next to me answered. She was good-looking, I noticed -- or probably was, under the plaid flannel shirt and loose jeans. She had a good face, that much I could see. Not conventionally pretty, but... character. She had character.

I missed most of her answer being an awkward nerd philosophizing about a girl I barely knew, but I heard her first name loud and clear when she corrected Miss Walker.

"Max," she said her name was. I could like that. We could start a "cursed with strange names" club.

And for whatever reason, I didn't just forget about her. She interested me. What was with the name? Why was she so attached to the corner seat? And why did her fashion sense match mine?

I had a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers -- but then again, such is life.