Eye of the Beholder (Stone Springs Book 1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

  Copyright © 2020 Gracie Ruth Mitchell

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: The Red Leaf Book Design

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Shameless Plea

  1

  Mina

  You know that strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to complete her?

  Well, that is not me.

  I’m not strong. I’m not all that independent.

  And I need a man.

  I mean, okay, not need. I don’t need a man, aside from the Man Upstairs—and He and I are doing all right. And it’s not like getting a man is my only goal in life. I’m smart, and I think I’m nice overall. I have a lot to offer to the world. I want to go to college. I want to be a florist, or maybe an interior designer. So I want other things.

  But…a boyfriend would be nice, too. Or just a friend who’s a boy; at this point I’m not picky. It would be nice to go to a school dance—because let’s be honest; I’m not going to go by myself. It would be nice to not feel a stab of envy whenever I see my sisters’ significant others. It would be nice to get a certain football player out of my head.

  It would be nice, but as things stand, it’s unlikely. I know this because I just walked past three guys from my grade, none of whom I would consider attractive or popular, and even they didn’t give me a second glance. One of them was the guy from my history class who makes farting noises with his hands.

  The farting-hand guy is not interested. Ergo, I am doomed.

  As I leave the school’s front office, I try to be excited about the fact that my new student ID card now reads “senior,” but I can’t quite manage it. Because my full name is also stamped on said ID card, and therefore this card will now join the gauntlet of cards in my wallet that I would love nothing more than to burn.

  The cards, that is. Not the wallet. The wallet is cute. It has a cheery floral pattern—my all-time favorite—but floral can’t make up for the cards inside. I slip the ID card in and zip the wallet again, looping the cross-body strap over one shoulder and making my way to my car.

  My parents named me Wilhelmina Dorcas Perkins.

  Because they hate me, I guess? Or because by the time they got through my four older siblings—yes, four—they’d run out of good names? All girls, by the way, so you’d think at least a few of them would share my burden, but no. No Hildegards or Gertrudes or Berthas. I am the only one with a terrible name.

  And the thing is, my parents are really nice people. And they’re usually very normal. Boringly so, even. Functional and ordinary. You wouldn’t look at them and think, “You know, they look like the kind of people that would name their daughter something life-scarringly horrific.”

  But you’d be wrong. They wanted to use family names—both my grandmothers had died by the time I was born—and I got the brunt of those passings: the names.

  My parents could have at least spread out those names over two kids. I don’t know why I had to get both of them. And really, should anyone be named Dorcas? They could have let that one go. I mean, Wilhelmina is bad. But Dorcas?

  Ugh.

  By the time I wised up and realized I needed a nickname, it was too late. There’s something uniquely disconcerting about that moment when you understand the implications of a name like mine.

  It was seventh grade. Seventh-grade me was awkward in every respect. I mean, senior-year me is awkward in every respect, too. But seventh-grade me hadn’t yet filled out in the chest region, and she still had braces. I look back on her and feel a mixture of sympathy and deepest mortification.

  I was in the lunch room, of course, because all middle-school horror stories take place in the lunch room. I was sitting by myself, eating a chicken salad sandwich—a food I cannot eat to this day, although I’m pretty sure that’s just because I fundamentally reject the idea of celery. One minute I was taking a bite of sandwich, and the next thing I knew, Virginia Cook’s wet fingers were in my ears—which is just so gross and unsanitary and gross and gross.

  Virginia shouted, “Wet Willy! Wet Willy!” (I’m still annoyed that she came up with such a good pun for my name.) And because Virginia Cook was pretty even in seventh grade—when no one should be pretty, I might add—everyone laughed. The whole cafeteria. I thought that was something that happened in movies, you know? The whole cafeteria laughing at the kind of bullying you see only in fiction?

  But I guess not. Apparently it is a thing that happens in real life too—people stick their fingers in other people’s ears, and everyone laughs about it. Middle schoolers are the worst.

  The crowning moment was when Virginia’s friend Marie dumped her expensive bottled water on my head and did her own chorus of “Wet Willy! Wet Willy!”

  It was sort of traumatic. I try not to think about it.

  So even though I insist on Mina now, my fate has already been sealed. I will always be thought of as “Wet Willy” by my peers. People like Virginia and Marie would probably still call me that to my face if they ever had cause to acknowledge my existence. I try to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  But my eyes make that difficult. I am the only person I’ve ever seen with two different-colored eyes, aside from my mother. My older sister Violet has a little patch of green in her otherwise brown eyes, but it’s barely noticeable.

  Mine are definitely noticeable. My left eye is a pale blue; my right eye is dog-poop brown. I try to play it down, but there’s just not a lot I can do. I tried colored contacts for a very brief time before realizing my eyes are passionately opposed to contact lenses. I do wear glasses, and I stay away from eye makeup, but that’s about it. I’m stuck with the eyes, just like I’m stuck with the name. Wilhelmina Dorcas Perkins, the brown-and-blue-eyed freak.

  In my wildest daydreams—and I do mean wildest—I would have the nerve to hope that Jack Freeman doesn’t mind girls with weird eyes and weird names. I’ve had a crush on him for years, which I can’t really be blamed for. He’s tall, dark, and handsome, a cliché he brings to life beautifully. He gets a little dimple in his right cheek when he smiles, and his teeth are really white.

  I know this not because I’m a stalker but because we’ve had most of our classes together for the last three years.

  Unfortunately, I am not the only person who notices the aforementioned dimple and white teeth and tall, dark handsomeness. Plus Jack plays football. He smiles a l
ot. He even seems genuinely nice.

  The time Joanna Towers, obese and socially stunted, broke a desk chair just by sitting in it? Pretty much everyone laughed. It was horrible. But Jack didn’t laugh. He just helped her pick up her books and then went back to his seat like it was nothing—like he did that every day. I was impressed.

  When you factor all those things in, you’re not surprised that he’s pretty popular. There are a lot of girls in my senior class, all of them with two eyes that match, and Jack Freeman could have his pick of any of them.

  So, yes, someone like Jack is out of my league even in my wildest daydreams. In my more realistic daydreams, I make accidental eye contact with him and manage to smile rather than trip over my own feet—this has happened in real life—and turn as red as a strawberry. But that might be asking a bit much of myself. Daydream Mina is a lot more put together than Real-Life Mina.

  In fact, Real-Life Mina should be paying attention to the road rather than reliving embarrassing middle-school experiences. I follow an ugly red sedan as it pulls onto my street, and as I turn into my driveway, the red sedan pulls into the driveway of the house next to mine. It’s Cohen; we’ve been neighbors our whole lives. We’re not particularly close, but I like him and his sister, Lydia, well enough.

  We’re the same age, and Cohen started driving his beat-up old car at the same time as I started driving mine, except where my drivers’ license has my embarrassing multicolored eyes on it, Cohen’s shows a large, crooked nose and a lopsided smile that’s a little misshapen—he was attacked by a dog when he was a kid, and along with a broken nose, he also got a scar that runs straight from just beneath his nose all the way to his chin. You’d think a scar like that might make him less handsome, but somehow all it does is lend him an air of ruggedness. Like he just got done fighting a bear or something. I thought he was cute when we were kids, and he was always nice to me.

  He’s nice to most people, really. So when Jack floated into the popularity scene, Cohen just kind of got pulled along with him, because he’s pretty funny, too. He’s got an easy smile, which is something I like about him, although that smile is maybe less easy now than it was before his dad moved out.

  We turn off our cars and get out in tandem, our eyes meeting briefly as we nod in acknowledgment, just like we have for years—other than when he has football practice or some other manly activity.

  I’m so glad I’m not athletic. It sounds terrible.

  I hoist my bag over my shoulder—it’s way too heavy, but I guess my history teacher just had to have the biggest textbook—and trudge inside the house, closing the front door quietly behind me.

  “I’m home,” I call.

  “Hi, baby girl,” my dad calls from the living room. I smile at the name that only he calls me.

  “Hi, Pops,” I say, stepping into the living room briefly and leaning against the door frame. “Did you get off early today?” He’s stretched out on the couch, doing a crossword puzzle, his work clothes still on. He works at the only bank in town. It sounds boring to me, but he seems to like his job, so who am I to say any differently?

  “Sure did. Good day?” he says, smiling at me. His hair is starting to silver, and he’s got wrinkles around his eyes, but somehow he still doesn’t look old.

  “Yep,” I say.

  I hear my mom’s muffled voice from somewhere in the basement—she’s probably working on the arrangements for the Hughes wedding—so I slip my shoes off, grab an apple from the kitchen counter, and make my way down. As I descend the stairs, I’m slowly overcome with the smell of flowers.

  Sure enough, there she is, standing in front of our ping-pong table. It hasn’t been used for ping-pong in a very long time, because ping-pong is boring and difficult. Now it just serves as a workspace for my mom.

  She’s a florist, and I love it. There are always flowers in our house, but when she gets hired to do a wedding, the flowers multiply—like right now. There are over a dozen vases on the table, each holding a mix of red roses and white baby’s breath.

  “Red roses again,” I say, smiling. We always joke about red roses, because they’re the most cliché wedding flower imaginable. I get it, though. They’re pretty, and they’re romantic.

  If I ever get married—which is on the to-do list but is not looking especially likely, considering my complete inability to talk to 99 percent of the male population—my bouquet is going to be wildflowers. I haven’t done much daydreaming about the actual wedding, but my bouquet is planned. Pale pink ranunculus, some moonshine, some blue thistle and pink gomphrena, and, of course, lots of greenery—all mixed in a sort of dreamy, colorful chaos.

  You will not find me drooling about a bride’s dress or shoes or ring. You will find me drooling about her bouquet.

  Hopefully by the time the whole wedding thing happens (speaking optimistically), I’ll have access to all the flowers I could want, and I’ll be able to do all my own arrangements. That’s the plan, anyway.

  “Red roses again,” my mother agrees, smiling slightly.

  My mother is beautiful. Her eyes are roughly the same colors as mine, but on her they’re intriguing rather than bizarre. I’m not sure how that works, but it does. Her hair is almost the same color as mine, too, just a little darker—light blonde rather than white blonde. Mostly, though, she just has this way of carrying herself that makes her seem almost regal. She’s confident and composed.

  I want to be her when I grow up.

  She looks over the table in front of us, tapping her chin with one finger, and she narrows her eyes in contemplation. “Tell me what you think of these. Here?” she says, sticking a sprig of something dainty and pale green into a bouquet. “Or here?” She moves the sprig slightly. It looks much better now.

  “That one,” I say.

  “I agree.” Then, changing the subject, she says, “Do you have much homework?”

  “Some,” I say. “I’m heading up to do it.” I turn and start up the stairs again.

  “Good. I’m making spaghetti for dinner,” she calls, almost as an afterthought.

  “I work at five,” I say in response. I’m not sad to miss the spaghetti, though; meat sauce isn’t my favorite.

  I go up to my room to do my homework, just like I do every day. I spread my books out on my soft, downy bedspread—floral—and pull open my homework planner—also floral. I have a total of three bouquets of flowers in my room. This is my flower haven. It’s my safe haven in general. It’s a warm, inviting space—I’ve gone out of my way to make it that way. I thrive in warmth. Warmth and bouquets of flowers. And in the corner, there’s a picture of Jesus—it’s been there forever. In the picture he’s sitting with a little girl; I always used to pretend she was me. I even colored her eyes in; one is blue, and one is brown. It helped me feel better when I was lonely or scared. These days that takes more than just a picture—because these days I feel like I’ve got a bit of a “damsel in distress” vibe going on—but I like it where it is.

  I open my homework planner and pull out the college pamphlet that’s been calling to me like a beacon all day. It’s to a university in Massachusetts with a great interior design program; I haven’t told my parents I’m considering it yet, mostly because I doubt I’d work up the nerve to actually apply in the first place. But for a moment, I let myself dream. I let myself think about going, about experiencing life so far away, in a place so different from Stone Springs. Then I sigh and put the pamphlet back in my planner.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  2

  Cohen

  I try to ignore the phone buzzing on the table next to me. First I turn it on silent. Then I push it away, all the way across the table. Then I restrict my gaze to the bowl of cereal in front of me.

  But it’s no use. I know my phone is still ringing, and I know it’s my dad. Why does he keep calling? He doesn’t call my twin sister, Lydia, all the time. He probably doesn’t call my older brother, Ian, either. Just me.

  I don’t want to talk to him. I d
on’t have anything to say, and I can’t imagine he has anything to say that I want to hear. What could he say that will make this situation okay?

  I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I gave up trying to make things work. I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough to stay.

  “Sorry” won’t cut it. Not now; not ever.

  I haven’t spoken to him since he left about a year ago. How could I? How can I speak to him? Look at what he’s done to my mom.

  I glance at her from my spot at the kitchen table. I’ve always had the same seat at the table; we all have. But the woman who sits in my mom’s spot isn’t the same anymore. She’s lost weight. Not much, but enough to tell. There are dark circles under her eyes, although given that she’s raised three kids, those have probably always been there.

  But she hasn’t always done it alone. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that the dark circles have gotten darker in the last year.

  Her brown hair is grayer, too, and her mouth more perpetually turned down. She’s just not herself anymore—except that she is. This is her now. The post-Dad her. The deteriorated-marriage her. I can’t say she looks heartbroken, which is painful to admit, but I’ve never seen her look so emotionally exhausted.

  “Are you going to answer that?” she says, her voice gentle as she nods to my phone.

  “Nope,” I say, shoving another bite of cereal in my mouth—a big one, so that I can’t say any more.

  My mother eyes me for a second, and I look away.

  “All right,” she finally says, and I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Well, hurry up. You’re going to be late for school.”

  I’m not upset about that, honestly, but I nod. “I’m done.” I take my bowl to the sink and rinse it quickly, yanking my hand out from under the hot water, and then heft my backpack over my shoulder. I shove my phone into my back pocket and kiss my mother on the cheek.

  “Have a good day,” she says, and I try to ignore the worried look she gives me. She always worries about me. But I’m fine.