Of Poseidon

acknowledged me in the first place: Chloe is dead.
    They all lost their track star. Their bragging rights. In a few weeks, they won’t even realize something’s missing. They’ll just move on. Forget about Chloe.
    I shake my head but know it’s true. A few years ago, a freshman riding on the back of her older brother’s motorcycle died when he ran a stop sign and careened into a car. Flowers and cards were taped to her locker, the student body held a candlelit vigil in the football stadium, and the class president spoke at a special memorial the school arranged for her. Today, I can’t for the life of me remember her name. She was in a few of the same clubs as me, some classes, too. I can see her face clearly. But I can’t remember her name.
    I test the combo to my new locker. It opens, third try. I stare into it, feeling as hollow as it looks. The hall takes awhile to clear out, but I wait until it does. When it is quiet, when the classroom doors ease closed, when the hall stops smelling like perfume and cologne, I slam the locker shut as hard as I can. And it feels good.
    Because I am late to class, I’m forced to sit up front. The back row is ideal for spacing out or for texting, but I have no one to text. Today, I could space out on a roller coaster, so the front row is as good a seat as any. I glance around the room as Mr. Pinner passes out a class-rule sheet. Model airplanes hang by strings from the ceiling, timelines stripe the walls, and black-and-white pictures of the Egyptian pyramids adorn a nearby information board. History used to be my favorite class, but in view of my new vendetta against time, I’m just not feeling it.
    Mr. Pinner is on Rule No. 3 when he looks up and to the back of the class. “Can I help you? Surely you’re not already violating Rule Numero Uno! Anybody remember that one?”
    “Arrive on time,” chimes in a do-gooder from the back.
    “Is this world history?” the presumable violator asks. His voice is even, confident, nothing like it should be, given that he’s violated Numero Uno. I hear a few people shuffle in their chairs, probably to get a look at him.
    “The one and only,” says Mr. Pinner. “Unless, of course, you mean the one down the hall.” He chuckles at his joke.
    “Is this, or is this not, world history?” the student asks again.
    A rash of whispers breaks out, and I smile at the timeline I’m looking at. Mr. Pinner clears his throat. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said this is world history.”
    “I did hear you the first time. You didn’t make yourself clear.”
    Even the do-gooder snickers. Mr. Pinner fidgets with the leftover rule sheets in his hand and pushes his glasses up on his nose. The girl behind me whispers, “Gorgeous!” to her neighbor, and since she can’t be talking about Mr. Pinner, I take the bait and turn around.
    And my breath catches in my throat. Galen. He is standing in the doorway—no, he’s filling up the doorway—holding nothing but a binder and an irritated expression. And he is already staring at me.
    Mr. Pinner says, “Come have a seat up front, young man. And you can sit here for the remainder of the week as well. I don’t tolerate tardiness. What is your name?”
    “Galen Forza,” he answers without taking his eyes off me. Then he strides to the desk next to me and seats himself. He dwarfs the chair meant for a normal adolescent male, and as he adjusts to get comfortable, a few feminine whispers erupt from the back. I want to tell them that he looks even better without a shirt on, but I have to admit that a tight T-shirt and worn jeans almost do him justice.
    Even so, his presence sends me reeling. Galen has been a key player in my nightmares these past weeks, which have been nothing but a subconscious rehashing of the last day of Chloe’s life. It doesn’t matter if I sleep for forty minutes or two hours; I smack into him, hear Chloe approaching, feel embarrassed all over again. Sometimes she asks him to go to Baytowne with us and he agrees. We all leave together instead of getting in the water.
    Sometimes the dream gets mixed up with a different one—the one where I’m drowning in Granny’s backyard pond. The events run together like watercolors; Chloe and I fall in the water, and the school of catfish materialize out of nowhere and push us both to the surface. Dad’s boat is waiting for us, but I taste saltwater instead of fresh.
    I would rather have the dream with the real ending,