Eye of the Beholder (Stone Springs Book 1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

  She comes back a few minutes later dressed like a skeleton. Her hood is pulled up over her head, and a few wisps of hair have escaped and are hanging around her face. She’s looking at me with an unreadable expression. She sits down on the bed, the springs creaking, and then she says in a serious voice,

  “I have tibia honest; I have a bone to pick with you.”

  I stare at her and lean back in my chair, processing what she’s just said, and then I try not to smile because I will not reward such horrible jokes with any response.

  She stares back at me, her face still deadly serious.

  But I see a twitch at the corner of her lips. Then another. And then she snorts and starts to laugh.

  “Get it?” she says, her laughter ringing through my room. “Tibia? Bone?”

  I prop my feet up on my desk as I smile, amused. “Those are the worst jokes I have ever heard in my life.”

  She’s still laughing. She thinks she’s hilarious. It’s kind of cute. “I looked up skeleton jokes after I changed,” she says. “I couldn’t resist. They’re funny!”

  I grin, shaking my head. “They are not.”

  “You’re smiling,” she says, wiping tears—actual tears because she’s laughing so hard—from her eyes. “You think they’re funny.”

  “No,” I say, holding up a finger. “I think you’re funny. The jokes are bad.”

  “Your smile is getting bigger,” she says, sounding triumphant. “It was funny. Admit it. It was funny.”

  I’ve never seen her laugh this much or this hard. And all it took was two bad puns.

  I fold my arms across my chest. “So do all puns do this to you, or is it just skeleton puns? Do you have preferences?”

  Her eyes light up in a way that makes me apprehensive. “I do have preferences. My favorite are hamburger puns.” And she’s laughing again, so hard that she actually flops back on the bed.

  This time I grin. “That one was better. Still not great, but better.”

  “I heard that one a long time ago, and it’s always stuck with me,” she says, finally taking a deep breath and calming down. She sits up. There are dark smudges under her eyes, and she wipes at them with her pinky fingers. She sighs, still smiling.

  “Well, I’m glad you amuse yourself so much,” I say, my grin lingering. Then I sit up straighter. It’s time to get down to business. “But moving on. Tonight you will be interacting with people in a social setting.” She starts to object, but I speak over her. “You agreed this was a good idea.”

  She sighs but just nods for me to continue.

  “We’re going to work on confidence. I know this outing is just to judge where you are already, but we already know you’ll need to be more confident. So we’re going to start now.”

  “Right,” she says, taking it in stride. “Confidence.” Her face falls. “How do I do that?”

  “It’s simple, really,” I say, shrugging. “You fake it.”

  Her brows furrow as she frowns at me. “That sounds like a terrible plan.”

  I shake my head, but I smile. “It’s not. The root of confidence is completely mental. Mind over matter. I’ve been looking up how to be more confident, and—”

  “You have?” she says, looking surprised.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m your teacher. I prepared. So anyway, one thing a lot of people suggest is visualization. So I want you to close your eyes.” When she just looks at me, I laugh. “Come on. I’m not going to tickle you or something. Just close them.”

  “Fine,” she mutters. She closes her eyes. “Okay, oh great wise one. My eyes are closed. What now?”

  “Now think about talking to Jack. Think about how you would like those conversations to go. Picture yourself being the Mina that talks to Jack with ease and makes him laugh or whatever.” It sounded better before I added the “or whatever,” but Mina doesn’t say anything. She just nods slowly.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m picturing.”

  “In detail?”

  Somehow she manages to roll her eyes at me even though her eyes are closed. “In detail.”

  I just grin. “Great. Now you need a positive affirmation. Something to tell yourself; something that encourages you. Actually…” I hesitate. “I think you might already have one. ‘This is my year.’”

  Her eyes snap open. “How did you know that?” she says, her voice as surprised as her face.

  “You say it,” I reply with a shrug. “You’ve said it before.”

  “Huh,” she says, still looking at me.

  “So that’s your positive affirmation. You tell yourself that this is your year. You visualize the way you want your interactions with Jack to go. And then you open your mouth and make it happen. Even if you don’t feel confident, you fake it. The confidence will come as you put in the work to make things happen.”

  So the internet tells me, anyway. I don’t add that part.

  She eyes me with interest. “Okay,” she says slowly. “I’ll give it a shot. Step out of my comfort zone.” Then her gaze flicks over me. “Where’s your costume?”

  I point to my closet.

  “You’re not doing some sexy thing, are you?” she says, casting a skeptical eye at the closet door. “Is there a guy version of the sexy costume thing? I’ve always hated that. It’s so objectifying.”

  I shrug, grinning at her. “I’m not sure you could handle the sexy costume thing on me, so don’t worry.”

  She narrows her eyes and points at my mouth. “You’re doing the smirky thing again,” she says, leaning forward. “The flirty thing. Stop it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, rising out of my chair. “I don’t do that.” I cross the room to my closet and pull the doors open, and I can feel her eyes on my back. I dig through the closet for a second, using my foot to nudge a few dirty shirts out of her line of sight while I do, until I finally find what I’m looking for. I pull it out and hold it up.

  “A button-down shirt?” she says, her voice flat. “That’s it? That’s your costume?”

  “No,” I say. I pull the shirt on over the one I’m already wearing—a t-shirt with the Superman logo—and button it up halfway. I run my fingers through my hair, tousling it, and then I pick up my glasses from my bookshelf. I go to my night stand and remove my contacts, then put the glasses on. “I’m Superman,” I say, probably unnecessarily. I point at my hair. “I’ve been flying.” Then I point to my crooked nose. “And then I ran into a wall. See?”

  She considers me, a slight smile on her face. “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” she says, sounding interested.

  I shrug. “I don’t, usually. I keep contacts in. But, yeah. My eyesight is pretty bad.”

  She holds her hand out and beckons for me to give her the glasses. She takes her own off and holds them out to me. It’s strange to see her without them on; I’m so used to them that now it looks like part of her face is missing.

  I pass her my glasses and take hers from her. As soon as I try them on, my vision swims. “Wow,” I say, squinting. “All right, you win. Your eyes are worse.” I take the glasses off before they give me a headache.

  She looks up at me from the bed, squinting through my glasses, and says, “I can sort of make out with your face.”

  I freeze, and so does she. Her eyes widen and she flushes red.

  “Make out your face. Not—with. Not with your face,” she says, her words rushed. She looks completely mortified.

  There’s a sharp, palpable silence.

  And then I start laughing, easily as hard as she was laughing about the dumb puns, except this is so much funnier.

  She gives a little squeak of despair and takes off my glasses, flinging them across the bed. She covers her face with her hands, and her voice is muffled as she says, “I didn’t mean that at all. I just misspoke. I would never say that.”

  I just wave her words away, still laughing. “Come on,” I say. “We need to go. There’s a corn maze and lots of socialization with your
name on it.”

  14

  Mina

  Right before we leave, Lydia swoops down upon me with a palette of black and white face paint and an idea that she “just wants to try really quick.” I let her, because I’m happy to have any part of my bright red face covered at this point. While she works she asks if later we want to watch a scary movie with her and Jade. Cohen shudders, and I shake my head vigorously. I am not a scary movie person. She shrugs and then shoos us out the door.

  Maybe this stupid corn maze will swallow me up and I’ll never have to look at Cohen again. That’s the only way I can think of to deal with the mortification I’m still wallowing in.

  Fifteen minutes and one newly made-up skull face later, we pull into the lot at Decker’s. We’re not even out of the car and I can already smell the cows, but Cohen is still prone to smirk to himself every few minutes, so I get out of the car at top speed.

  Make out with your face. Where did that even come from? What is wrong with me? He’s just a little supportive of me and out slips “make out with your face”?

  I shudder to think what I’d accidentally say if he did something truly incredible.

  It was admittedly nice of him to be so encouraging about the florist thing. It’s nice to have someone prompt you in the direction you want to go but don’t feel like you can.

  I shuffle through the hay-strewn parking lot—a parking field, really—as slowly as possible, because I can already see who else is here. The second I see Virginia and Marie, being in Cohen’s company doesn’t seem so bad. I’ll take his smug snickers over Virginia’s snide comments any day.

  Cohen catches up to me, truly looking like a superhero who ran into a wall. The glasses look good on him. They give him an intellectual sort of air, which I didn’t realize I found attractive until he put them on.

  “So?” he says. “Do you have topics of conversation planned out?”

  “I’m trying to calm myself down,” I say. “I can’t think that far ahead right now.”

  Not that I haven’t been trying. But really—what am I going to talk to these people about? There are four people waiting for us, so six people, including Cohen and me.

  Three boys. Three girls. How fortuitous. And wouldn’t you know it—Virginia and Marie are definitely not wearing full-body suits.

  “They’re going to freeze,” I say under my breath.

  “What?” Cohen says quietly.

  I nod as subtly as I can to Virginia and Marie. “They’re going to freeze. What are they? Is Marie a fairy? A dragonfly? And Virginia looks like a cowgirl that forgot to put on half of her clothes. They’re going to freeze.”

  “I don’t think they cared about that,” Cohen says, grinning at me.

  “No,” I say with a sigh. “As long as they can get a lot of skin showing, I guess they’re good. Well, they can cuddle up to their lucky men.”

  Cohen raises an eyebrow at my bitter tone but doesn’t say anything.

  I do feel a little twinge of guilt. I’m being pretty judgmental, which is a quality I don’t like in other people. I guess despite their past behavior Virginia and Marie could be all right—deep, deep down. Or there might be some scarring past event that made them act the way they do. Or maybe they’re just insecure.

  I would feel better about that, actually. I mean, rude is rude. But it’s a little more excusable—or at least understandable—if there’s some sort of reason behind it.

  I’ll just try to be cordial and avoid them otherwise. I’m here for Jack.

  Although getting to Jack might involve going through Virginia, I notice as we finally reach the group. She’s not precisely draped over him, but that word isn’t too far off. She has this look she gives that’s sort of scary; it’s mean but also disdainful and detached at the same time. Like she’s deigning to descend to your level just long enough to shoot daggers with her perfectly blue eyes. She looks me over once and then looks away, the corners of her mouth tugging down into a frown as she smooths her perfectly beautiful hair.

  “Hey,” Cohen says, moving effortlessly into the group of very scary people. He does some sort of bro greeting that involves a vague handshake or something and a back slap with Jack and Grant. Do all guys know that same greeting? Is it intuitive? Is it passed down from father to son?

  Jack’s costume consists of a cowboy hat, a plaid shirt, jeans, and boots. He’s Virginia’s counterpart, I guess, which makes my heart sink a bit. I’m not a boyfriend stealer. Partly because it’s rude but also because there is no way I will ever be adept enough to manage that sort of thing. Grant’s and Marie’s costumes don’t match, I don’t think, but it’s hard to tell because I can’t tell what Grant is supposed to be. Maybe they just got randomly pulled into this whole outing, like I did.

  I debate the pros and cons of just not saying anything when Cohen takes that option away from me.

  “Mina, everyone. Everyone, Mina.”

  “Hi,” I say, miraculously keeping the squeaking to a minimum.

  Jack and Grant smile at me, although Grant looks a little confused by my presence, and Virginia and Marie just sort of stare. Standing next to them makes me feel kind of like an idiot. Which is dumb. I’m not an idiot just because I’m wearing a different kind of costume. I try to shrug it off.

  “Come on,” Virginia says, hooking her arm through Jack’s and looking pointedly at Cohen. She gives him a weirdly suggestive look, licking her lips slowly in a way that makes my skin crawl. “Let’s do the maze.”

  I notice her shivering, and I bite back a grin. They can look at me like I’m stupid, but at least I’m warm.

  Grant and Marie don’t pair off the way Virginia and Jack do, but they look pretty cozy. That leaves Cohen and me.

  “Um,” I say, and he leans down a little to hear me. His clean scent mixes with the vague smell of fall and bonfires that the wind is carrying to us, and the result is pleasantly heady. “Virginia is definitely trying to work her seductress magic on you.”

  He looks surprised for a second and then laughs loudly, causing Grant and Marie to look at us briefly. Cohen stifles his laughter quickly.

  “Virginia always wants what she can’t have. If Jack’s not interested, she wants to be with Jack. If I’m not interested, she wants to be with me. It’s a power play for her. She’ll never be happy with one person. So even though she and Jack are hanging out—”

  “She still tries to undress you with her eyes,” I say, nodding. “I saw it. I will never unsee it.”

  Cohen shrugs, staring at his feet and looking uncomfortable as we shuffle along. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

  “And you don’t want to get back together with her?” I say over the wind. I’m glad my hood is up, because the wind would have a field day with my hair.

  “No,” he says with a snort of laughter. “Very much no.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to ask—if she’s that terrible, why did you ever go out with her in the first place?” I say as we reach the entrance to the maze. The cornstalks sway in the wind, rustling softly around us.

  He looks at me. “She wasn’t terrible to me,” he says as though it’s obvious. Which maybe it is. “And despite my charming personality”—I laugh, and he grins—“people on Virginia’s level aren’t usually interested in a face like this. I was flattered. She was gorgeous and flirty and sweet.”

  “You seem to think you’re uglier than you actually are,” I say, frowning.

  Cohen pointedly ignores this. “And then I started noticing how she treated other people.”

  All right; we can ignore it. “And her devil horns showed up.”

  He grins at me. “Something like that.”

  I smile. “Now,” I say, looking around. “Where are we going?”

  The labyrinth of corn surrounding us is twisting and shadowy. It’s quieter than outside, and the wind is mostly blocked by the corn growing all around, although I still feel it a bit. It’s oddly peaceful in here. However, I have little to no faith in my ability to get
through.

  “No idea,” Cohen says comfortably.

  I wince as a thought occurs to me. “Are they actually going to do the maze? Or is everyone going to just…you know…find a corner and make out or something?”

  Cohen winces, too. “I can’t promise it won’t be some of both.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. I look around to make sure everyone is far away enough that we won’t be heard before I say, “I’m supposed to be here talking pretty words to Jack. I can’t do that if he’s off making out with Virginia somewhere.”

  “Talking pretty words?” Cohen says with a grin.

  I hit him on the arm. “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, if you’re really dedicated to this—”

  “I’m in costume in a corn maze with people I don’t really like. Present company excluded,” I say as he opens his mouth to protest. “I think it’s safe to say I’m dedicated. This is my year.”

  Cohen shrugs. “Well, then I think our best option is just to follow Jack and Virginia and don’t let them sneak off.”

  “I don’t even know which way they went,” I say, my eyes searching the corn corridor. It’s hard to see very far, even in the light of the lanterns hung every few hundred feet, but I can tell there are several options we could take—two in the leftish direction, one straight ahead, and one to the right.

  “I think I saw them go this way,” Cohen says, pointing to the option on the right. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  It’s better than nothing, I guess, and it’s certainly more than I can contribute. “All right,” I say. “Let’s go. Let’s walk fast; it’s cold.”

  “Oh, didn’t anyone tell you?” Cohen says, and I can see him grin. “I’m here to keep you warm. Thus the three-boys-three-girls setup.”

  “You’re hilarious,” I say, staring at my feet.

  “I try,” he says, still grinning. His voice is pleasant, deep. I don’t know how many people are out in this corn field, but with the silence surrounding us, it feels like we’re the only ones.

  “Let’s see,” I say as I eye a fork in the maze we’ve just arrived at. “Which one?”