by Linda Kage
Around me, everyone groaned. Typically, a five-page paper in English would’ve made me moan out my distress too, but I was too busy wondering.
What color would I be?
I glanced around me, and suddenly, every tint, tone, and shade stood out in vivid Technicolor. A gamut of light and dark. Symbolisms galore.
* * * *
Laina caught up with me again just after the last bell rang and I entered the hall. Actually, it was more like I caught up with her. I must’ve been in “junior” hall, because as I was making my way back to my locker, I spotted her twirling on her own combination.
“There you are,” I called, pausing beside her. “I was wondering where my guide went.”
She jumped and spun around to gape at me. “Oh. Uh, hi,” she said, immediately turning back to her locker to gather her homework.
Almost comforted by the fact she was shyer than I was, I lingered next to her as she filled her bag with books and papers. “So I survived through my first day. Go me. And I just wanted to thank you so much for showing me to my art class.” I didn’t demand to know why she’d bugged out on me for the rest of them. For some reason, I wanted to take her under my wing and coax her out of her shell.
I have no idea why, but something in me saw great potential in her. She just needed a friend to help bring her to life.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d need me anymore after I saw you with them.”
She talked so quietly, I had to lean in to hear her properly. And still, it took me a second to piece her words together. Pulling back in confusion, I repeated, “Them? Them who?”
“You know.” She fluttered out her hand as if that should make everything perfectly clear. “Kiera, and Todd, and Mindy and all them.”
“Oh,” I said. Them. “Yeah, when I couldn’t find you, they showed me to the rest of my classrooms. They even invited me to do something with them after the game tonight.”
“Really?” Her eyes grew wide, but not in an impressed way—more of an intimidated, scared way—and she pulled back as if my talking to them had infected me with a disease. “So, you’re popular then?” she asked, sounding suddenly gloomy.
“Popular?” I almost laughed in her face. “Hardly. My friends and I at Hillsburg are actually called a nerd herd. Why? Are Kiera and Todd and all them the in-crowd here?”
Laina glanced around before she leaned confidentially closer. “Oh, yeah.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Seriously?” The word popular had always turned me off, maybe because all the popular people I’d ever known seemed so two-faced and artificial. I couldn’t really pinpoint the origin of my distaste. I just knew learning Ryder Yates was one of them made me feel even more disappointed.
Laina nodded, eager to spill all the exciting gossip. “Cory and Mindy get crowned the Homecoming King and Queen every year. Except maybe this year. With Kiera dating Ryder now, I bet they’ll win. They’re like the most sexually active couple in school, you know.”
Everything she said after that blew right over my head and floated off into the unheard. Ryder Yates and his awful girlfriend were the most sexually active couple in school, huh?
Until that moment, I hadn’t thought my day could get any worse.
I was so, so wrong.
“Well, thanks for a juicy four-one-one.” I cut Laina off in mid-sentence, not even caring that I’d finally gotten her to talk. “But I need to get home. It’s my night to cook. I’ll see you tomorrow. ’Kay?”
“Uh…” She blinked, looking dazed and confused. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Sweet. See you then.” I spun away and hurried off.
Don’t think about it, I commanded myself. Don’t think—
But Ryder was the only person my rattled brain could picture. A vision of him and his precious witch cheerleader sucking face made my chest feel tight and achy.
It hurt.
Not only had I been a passing flirtation until he could get together with Kiera again, but even if he’d been single, hearing he was the most sexually active boy in school clearly told me what he’d wanted from me. And it wasn’t sweet poetry and flowers or interesting conversation.
The jerk.
I wasn’t that kind of girl, and I definitely wouldn’t become one for a cheater like him.
Stewing hotter the more I thought about it, I worked on autopilot, opening my locker, packing my bag, and trooping out the exit. I didn’t return to reality until I stepped off the sidewalk to cross the parking lot and slipped in a nice glassy piece of ice, hidden under a deceitful layer of pretty, puffy white snow.
After I fell onto my butt and landed hard, I sat there, stunned speechless.
Ahh. The perfect ending to a perfect day. Not.
Chapter 8
Indigo is a mystical kind of blue, intensified and immediate. Like a midnight sky, and often royal or spiritual, it develops intuition. Am I perceptive enough to be my indigo namesake? I don’t think so. I don’t feel like I’m anything as majestic or profound as indigo.
* * * *
On my third attempt to stand up from my icy nest, I stayed seated on the ground and threw back my head to crack off a laugh. But, come on, if a girl couldn’t laugh at herself, who could she laugh at? Besides, it was either that or bawl my head off. And I figured if I started crying now, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
I was still shaking my head and wiping tears of mirth from my eyes when a shadow blocked the sunlight above me.
“You definitely don’t take after your name, do you?”
I looked up enough to find a hand being held down to help me to my feet. Oh, how familiar those fingers looked. Today, he had a Band-Aid wrapped around his index finger.
Following the male palm up a long, coat-covered arm, I stared into Ryder Yates’s green eyes.
Why, I wanted to demand. Why had he filled me with so much hope only to not just shoot it down, but stomp on my dreams and pulverize them into shattered particles? But, the most sexually active boy in school? Seriously, what a tragedy.
He quirked an eyebrow. “You okay?” he finally asked when I only stared at him, feeling the worst case of disappointment and déjà vu ever. Just when I wanted to hate him, he had to go and remind me of the first moment we’d met. He’d been perfect then, a handsome unknown boy saving my camera and helping me to my feet, then smiling at me as if he didn’t have a beautiful witch for a girlfriend.
I immediately lowered my eyes. “I’m fine.”
Ignoring his hand because there was no way I was going to travel down that path again, I winced once and pushed myself off my ice perch. And made it up about a foot before my feet slipped again, and I landed hard on my already sore rump.
Above me, there came an impatient sigh. The fingers I was determined to ignore hooked themselves around my upper arm, and Ryder hauled me to my feet. I slipped again and clutched his sleeve, almost taking him down with me this round. But he somehow had the steadiest of footing. He tightened his grip on my bicep and we both stayed upright.
Once I was sure I wasn’t going to tumble again, I finally lifted my gaze.
He still had the face of that gorgeous stranger who’d flirted with me at the Hillsburg game, but he was so much more now. He was reserved and distant, not at all like the grinning, open teen who hadn’t known when to quit.
We’d become adversaries, and I wasn’t quite certain how or why. Who cared if I’d brushed off his attempts to flirt…well, who cared beside me? He had a girlfriend. If anything, I should be the offended party here. He’d acted interested in me while he was already taken.
But Ryder Yates frowned at me as if I were the source of his entire life’s misery.
Thinking he had to believe I was the world’s most ungrateful person, I managed a winded, “Thanks.”
He glanced down at his feet and slowly slid his fingers from my arm. “Mmm hmm.”
I jerked my hand off his sleeve and backed up a step, wobbling on the ice, but not daring to fall again.
He
stared at the ground another moment. Then he turned on his heel and walked off.
I could only watch him go.
“Okay,” I said to myself, rattled by the brief encounter. “That was definitely odd.” I spun back to head in the opposite direction.
And fell on my butt.
“Not again,” I moaned, all humor gone. This falling business was getting irritating. And painful.
I’d just heaved myself up when that all-too-familiar voice returned. “Why don’t you follow the already-made footsteps in the snow? There’s more traction there.”
I pushed my hair out of my face and scowled. “I like to make my own way.”
Ryder lifted his eyebrows. “Well, Miss Independent. Your way seems to get you bruised and battered.”
I shrugged. “But it’s my way.”
He shook his head and sighed, remaining close despite his obvious irritation over my stubborn determination to forge my own path. I know he was ready to reach out and catch me if I stumbled again. It was irritating, and nerve-wracking, and so completely sweet, I—
Catching another slick spot, I flapped my arms, and he caught a swinging elbow, immediately steadying me.
“You’re kind of like a backward church song, aren’t you?”
I frowned. “How so?”
“Amazing Grace, how graceful thou aren’t.”
I blinked. “You just mixed two songs. ‘Amazing Grace’ is totally different than ‘How Great Thou Art’.”
Then I slipped and he caught me again.
“You’re not great either,” he supplied as he struggled to keep me upright. “Maybe you should buy new shoes.”
“Maybe you should let me go so I can move at my own pace. I tend to fall less when I’m not being rushed.” I jerked my arm out of his grasp and wobbled, feeling like I was on the slipperiest ice skates ever made.
He cracked off a laugh as he caught my arm again. “How many times do you plan on trying to fall?”
“As many as it takes,” I spat back. This time I knew better than to make any sudden movements.
Since I was in no longer in danger of wobbling—not with the death hold he had on me—I paused to send him a frown, letting him know he could let go now. “Don’t you have a girlfriend to help through the snow?”
He grinned and slowly complied, easing his grip away. The sweet, adorable monster actually grinned at my muttered question. “She’s inside the gym, doing something cheerleader…ish before the game tonight.”
“Cheerleader-ish?” I repeated.
He gave a nod.
“Is that a word?”
“Sure.”
I quirked a brow. “In what dictionary?”
“This one.” His grin was pure dazzle as he tapped the side of his temple.
Rolling my eyes, I shoved my hands in my pockets. When I reached a cleared sidewalk that had been scraped clean of snow and ice, I had to step over a pile of drifted mush by the curb before I landed on the bare concrete walkway. No chance of falling now. Yet Mr. Green Eyes stuck to my side, strolling merrily along beside me.
With a slight crinkle in his eyebrows, he gave a confused frown. Glancing over his shoulder at the school’s parking lot we were leaving behind, he scratched his head. “Umm. Where’re we going?”
“We?” I asked, sending him an are-you-for-real look that would’ve done Bridget proud. “I have no idea where you’re going, but I’m going home.”
Whirling around to walk backward as he kept pace with me, he pointed toward all the parked vehicles. “You didn’t drive?”
“No,” I muttered. “I did not.” Why the heck was he loitering around me?
He shivered and bundled himself more snugly into his jacket. “Bet that’s going to be a cold walk.”
Narrowing my eyes, I demanded, “Why are you following me?”
He shrugged. “I’m curious.”
“About what?”
His grin was mischievous and—ugh—adorable. “Can’t tell you.”
I growled. Fine. I didn’t want to know anyway.
Spinning so he could face forward again, he continued to walk with me. “So how far do you have to go?”
Like I was really going to tell him where I lived.
Prepared to stick my nose in the air and coolly refuse to answer, I caught sight of an abandoned glove dropped forgotten in the thick snow lining the sidewalk out of the corner of my eye. Sidetracked and spellbound by the contrast of the bright red and black stripes of the glove against the pure white of the snow, I paused and stared a moment, thinking what a nice picture it’d make. The solitary object lying lonely and forgotten in the cold could mean so many different things.
It reminded me of my English assignment.
“What’s wrong?” Ryder asked, though I was so hooked on my thoughts, his voice sounded muffled as if it came from a great distance.
Ignoring him, I slung my book bag off my shoulder and rested it on my feet. After unzipping the front pocket, I extracted the cell phone Barry had given me.
“What’re you doing?”
Frowning, I powered up the LG and waited for the welcome screen to flash on.
Ryder moved closer and leaned over my shoulder to examine the phone as well. Either the heat from his body radiated into me or my own full-body flush from his proximity made me grow warm. I’m not sure which, but suddenly I was no longer cold.
“I haven’t seen that model before.”
I tried to act distracted, inspecting my new phone. “It’s new.”
He whistled. “Must be. I got my phone this summer and didn’t see that version in the store then.”
Finally, my LG was ready for action; I clicked into the main menu and pressed the multimedia icon on the screen. “My stepdad bought it last week.”
“Hmm. So what’re you doing?” he asked again, the heat from his breath fogged out a cloud in front of me. “Calling lost and found to report a missing glove?”
Since I’d just found out he had a girlfriend, no way was I going to admit I thought his curious, sarcastic question cute.
With an annoyed sigh, I said, “I’m taking a picture.”
“A picture?” He sounded skeptical.
I glanced over my shoulder to glare at him but realized doing so moved our faces closer, only inches apart. A breathy cloud puffed from my lips. I hated that he was so beautiful. Even the movement of his eyelashes as he lifted his gaze to mine made my body tighten with an awareness that would’ve horrified my mother to learn her sixteen-year-old daughter was experiencing.
For a moment in time, neither of us moved, nor spoke, nor breathed. The achy look he sent me drove a tremor of alarm—or maybe it was excitement—straight through my system.
Ugh. I did not want to like him. So why did I keep feeling so freaking “likeable” toward him?
I darted my gaze away. “It’s a camera phone.” I wanted to sneer all sarcastic like, but my voice was a bit too winded to sound demeaning.
He glanced around, looking one way before turning the other, even squinting off into the horizon. “But what’re you taking a picture of?”
“The glove.”
Swerving back around, Ryder arched a questionable eyebrow at the article of winter wear in the snow. “The glove?”
Concentrating on setting the phone’s camera mode to capture, I held the screen in position as I neared the glove for a good close up.
Ryder moved in with me. I paused to send him a scowl over my shoulder. He paused too, glancing briefly at me before returning his attention to the glove. “I don’t get it.”
Gritting my teeth, I turned back to my task and tipped the phone sideways for a vertical portrait shot before tilting it back, preferring the original landscape mode. Focusing all my attention on finding the perfect pose, I scooted a little to the right and then the left, testing the light from each angle before I made up my mind and took the shot.
As the final product froze on my screen, my face lit with pleasure. “Perfect. Isn’t it w
onderful?” I spun around to show off my masterpiece before I remembered the boy behind me was the one person I didn’t want to be around just then.
Ryder looked down at the picture. “It…” He scratched his head, then raised his gaze and laughed. “Honestly, it looks like a glove. What am I supposed to see?”
My face fell. He didn’t understand. I don’t know why I was disappointed. There was no chance Ryder Yates would ever be anything to me, but the fact that he didn’t share my passion let me down. Just like everything else I’d learned about him today.
“You’re supposed to see whatever you want to see. Feel whatever you want to feel.”
He concentrated hard as he glanced back down at the camera screen before he looked up and quietly asked, “So what do you see?”
Touched beyond words he cared anything about my opinion, I bit my lip as I studied the shot. After thinking it through, I gave my answer. “Well…there’s only one glove. Right away, I wonder, where’s the other glove? How did it become separated from its mate? Does it feel lost and confused without its other half? It looks lonely. Cold. Like an outsider that has no one to turn to, nowhere to go. And the stark contrast of the white snow against the bright colors of the glove makes the lines crisp and clear. It makes that feeling of alienated loneliness crisp and clear. The purity of the snow gives the purity of the glove’s solitude a stronger effect.”
When I finished talking, I held my breath, realizing how far off the deep end and into my musings I’d gone. Slowly, I lifted my face, desperate to know his response. Did he think I was crazy? Totally out there? Or wise and philosophical? The response I feared most was that he’d laugh, making fun of my foolish prattle.
But he didn’t laugh when he titled his chin up and met my gaze. He didn’t praise my profound thoughts either. He stared at me with the blankest look anyone had ever given me. I couldn’t read a thought in his head. Then his features fell, ever so slightly, wafting off the hint of regret.