His friend laughed. ‘Dude, seriously, she’d be all, like, “Nope.” Plus she’s not that hot.’

‘Naw, man, are you crazy? I’d rape that so fast –’

Before I knew what I’d done, I had spun round, my tightened fist planting itself right at the edge of Boyce Wynn’s mouth. His head jerked back a little with the impact and his eyes went wide with shock. By instinct, I knew better than to stop there, but suddenly there was a circle of guys chanting, ‘Fight! Fight!’ and my limbs froze while his whole body rolled forward, preparing to pound me into the cement floor.

Before either of us could move, Silva gripped us both by the upper arms, separating and immobilizing us. ‘What the hell are y’all dumbasses doing? Trying to get yourselves expelled?’

I didn’t take my eyes from Wynn, and he stared back with murder in his eyes. A trickle of blood glistened at the lower corner of his lip.

‘What’d you do, Wynn?’ Silva growled, shaking him. Our shop teacher was two hundred and fifty pounds of pissed off.

Wynn’s eyes narrowed, still glaring at me, and he seemed to come to some sort of vindictive conclusion. He shrugged his free shoulder, as if indifferent. ‘Nothin’, Mr Silva. Everything’s cool.’

Silva whipped his gaze to me, and Wynn slowly raised his free hand to smear the bead of blood from his face with a knuckle. The churning adrenalin sent a tremor through me.

‘And you – Maxfield? That your story, too? What happened here?’

I shook my head once and echoed Wynn. ‘Nothing. Everything’s cool.’

Silva ground his teeth and rolled his eyes up to the corrugated ceiling, as though God might peel it back and tell him what to do with us.

Jerking our arms once more, harder, he almost popped them from their sockets. ‘There will be no fighting. In. My. Shop. Is that understood, men?’ He spat the word men as though we were anything but.

We nodded, but he didn’t drop either of our arms. ‘Do I need to talk to Bud about you causin’ trouble?’ he asked Wynn, who shook his head, eyes widening. Whoever Bud was, his name inspired fear in the guy who inspired fear in most of the student body.

The bell rang, and our audience scrambled belatedly to the oversized aluminium sinks. Silva released us but didn’t budge, crossing muscular arms over his beefy chest and staring holes into the backs of our heads while we scrubbed up. I grabbed my backpack from its cubby and made for the side door as Wynn exited the front with two friends.

My escape was temporary. That much I knew.

In an effort to torture her students, my world geography teacher announced a team project as soon as we returned from winter break – during which everyone who had remained in town for Christmas had enjoyed an unprecedented half foot of snow covering the beach, palm trees, resort hotels and fishing boats.

In Alexandria, winter began before Christmas and continued into March – surprise bouts of rain, sleet and occasionally snow – piles of it ploughed into corners in parking lots, shifting from white to grey if left to melt rather than bulldozed into trucks and hauled away. By February, everyone was sick of scraping frost from windshields, sick of shovelling sidewalks and driveways, sick of waking to the rumble of gravel trucks or snow ploughs, sick of the constant wet cold.

Here, snow was a dusting, if that. Any measurable quantity of it inspired awe. Six inches was deemed a miracle. People walked around oohing and aahing, shaking their heads. Parents sent kids out to build snowmen and make snow angels with socks on their hands, because no one owned gloves or mittens.

‘In light of our “Christmas Miracle” – we’re going to miraculously team up to examine the effect of climate shifts on environments and people.’ Mrs Dumont’s tone was much too cheerful for the second period of the first day back. No one wanted to be there, and no amount of enthusiasm would change our minds after two solid weeks of sleeping in and doing nothing. ‘In the interest of showing how people adapt to unexpected change, we’re all going to pick a letter from the hat and pair off.’ She beamed, as if the knowledge that fate was choosing our partners would improve the assignment.

As one, we all groaned. Unperturbed, she handed an upside-down baseball cap bearing the school mascot – surprise, it was a fish – to Melody Dover, who drew a slip of paper and passed it to the girl behind her. From the last seat of Melody’s row, I watched the cap come nearer. I drew an F. Appropriate.

When the cap reached the last row, Dumont called over the din of voices, ‘Now – find your partner, and move seats! You’ll be sitting with that partner for the first three weeks of class this semester, at the end of which we’ll be presenting our projects to the whole class!’

You’ve got to be kidding me. I’d only been assigned one class presentation, last spring – on which I took a zero. Oral presentations were painful to do, and painful to witness others doing.

I considered standing up and walking out the door. Then I heard, ‘Okay, what lovely lady has an F?’ from the opposite side of the room, and I couldn’t move.

Boyce. Wynn.

Oh. Damn.

He got up and started snatching the bits of paper from students to find out who his partner was. ‘You got F? Who the f**k’s got F?’

‘Mr Wynn,’ Mrs Dumont said, scowling darkly.

He shrugged. ‘I can’t find my partner, Mrs Dumont.’ His eyes lighted on Melody, who sneered a little. ‘Is it you?’ He snatched the paper from her hand as she objected.

‘No.’ She snatched the paper back, raising her chin. ‘I got Clark.’

Her boyfriend was already sitting next to her. They didn’t even have to move from their front-row seats to work together. So I got stuck with Boyce-fucking-Wynn, while privileged Clark Richards gets stuck with his hot girlfriend. Naturally.

‘Oh, no no no – that won’t work.’ Mrs Dumont rushed over, her eyes on Melody. ‘You can’t be paired with your … er, friend. I want us to all experience a shift in culture and environment! Relocation diffusion in action!’ As the three of them were trying to figure out what she meant, she grabbed Boyce’s and Melody’s slips of paper and swapped them. ‘There. Now Clark, run along with Boyce. I’ll be passing out project assignments in a moment!’ She seemed to think this would soothe Clark from having to replace a hot girlfriend partner with a hulking bully partner.

‘What the –’ He scowled, clamping his jaw. ‘Why can’t Mel and I work together?’