Blue Violet (8 page)

As soon as her
last class was over, Ellie met Lila, Adelaide, and Nate in the parking lot and
drove them all to the library. Ellie hadn’t been there yet. The building was
one of the first you came to when going down the main street of downtown Estes
Park. All wooden beams and stone, it looked more like a lodge than a library.
It wasn’t very busy on a Thursday night in March.

They trooped
into the building and headed upstairs where the tables and study carols were
located.

“Awesome!”
Nate exclaimed. “The biggest table is still open.”

They pulled
out chairs and spent the first several minutes getting settled and spread
out…organizing their books and notes and booting up their laptops.

Ellie had
never studied with other people before, always working on her homework in the
middle of the night, and never allowing herself to make friends at any of her
previous schools. In general, her impression was that most students used
studying in a group as an excuse to socialize, never really getting any work
done.

As Ellie
looked at her new friends, she thought,
I should just tell them who I am.

“Don’t you
dare, Ellie,”
Griffin’s voice echoed in her mind. “
You agreed we would
wait until I could find out a little more about them.”

Keeping her
expression carefully blank, she mentally replied,
“This is getting silly,
Griffin. I know these are good people.”

“Just a
little longer Elle. I can’t shake this feeling that something is wrong. At
least give me till the end of the week. That’s only a few more days. Okay?”

“Okay,”
she
agreed reluctantly.

Breaking the
mental contact with her brother, Ellie turned to concentrating on school work. Fairly
quickly, the three girls knocked out studying for their test scheduled for the
end of the week. Since they were all fluent, it wasn’t that hard. French was
Ellie’s “easy A” class. Apparently it was the same for Adelaide and Lila.

“How’d you get
so good?” Lila asked as she put away her textbook, and pulled out homework for
another class. They’d decided they were all ready for the exam.

Ellie answered
with her usual practice of sticking as closely to the truth as she could and
being as vague as possible about the rest. “My mother’s side of the family’s
from France.” She made sure to gloss over the verb tense as she said it. “I’ve
spoken it since I was a child.”

Ellie caught a
slightly perplexed look on Lila’s face. But she covered it up so rapidly, Ellie
wondered if she’d really seen it.

“Did your
parents meet in France?”  Adelaide asked propping her chin on her hand.

“No… ummm…
they met in the U.S. Most of my family was here by then.”  Ellie shifted
uncomfortably in her seat. She hated getting creative with the truth. She was
brilliant at it, but hated it, regardless.

“Hi, guys,” a
deep voice conveniently interrupted the conversation.
His voice.
  Her
heart raced and her breath tightened in her chest.

Alex was
standing directly behind her. Ellie took a quick second to compose herself
before she turned around to stare directly into his silver-blue eyes.

“Hey,” he said
softly, talking to her alone, giving her long hair a gentle tug.

“Hi, Alex.”
Ellie was proud of how she managed to pull off a casually confident sounding reply.
“What’re you doing here?”

“Working on
some research for Dad.”  He grabbed a chair from the table and straddled it
beside her.

“Don’t look
now,” Lila leaned over to Ellie to whisper. “But Brian Reynolds is staring at
you.”

Ellie kept her
expression carefully neutral. She’d heard a lot about Brian today listening in
on thoughts of various girls at school. But she hadn’t bothered to listen to
Brian’s thoughts, and so hadn’t been aware that he was even at the library.

“I’m sure he’s
not looking at me,” she whispered back. She glanced over at Alex, surprised to
see a rather peculiar frown on his face.

“He’s really
staring at you, Ellie,” Adelaide chimed in with a conspiratorial grin.

Ellie turned
around, and immediately saw Brian across the library. He gave her that head dip
guys tend to use when she caught his eye and waved her over.

“Umm… maybe he
wants help with his homework,” she muttered. “I’d better go see.”

“Hey, Ellie.”
Brian gave her a confident grin as she approached him.

“Hi.”

“I didn’t get
a chance to talk to you today,” he said. “You seemed kinda distracted during economics.”

“Ummm… I was
just bored. Letting my mind wander.”  Ellie gave a nonchalant shrug.

“Oh. Anyway…
how’d you like to go to a movie Friday night?”

“Oh!”  She’d
joined in on several activities organized by the crew Brian hung out with in
the past few months. She always had fun, which had been a pleasant surprise
after so many years of keeping to herself. “Sure!  Are Lila, Adelaide, and Nate
going?”

Brian looked
puzzled, and Ellie was confused…She’d obviously missed something. With an
inward sigh of resignation, she tapped into Griffin’s power again.

“… Guess
she didn’t figure out that I was asking her on a date
,” Brian was thinking.

Ellie bit back
her amusement.
I should’ve known,
she thought. But high school boys
often didn’t like to be direct when they were interested. They sort of fished
around, or hinted, or assumed that you knew they were asking you on a date. Her
first few times in high school she’d even confused an offer as a date when it
wasn’t. It was never very clear either way. She didn’t know how normal girls
managed it without mind reading abilities to help them out. Boys got better at
asking girls on a date properly in college she’d found.

Pretending she
hadn’t heard Brian’s thoughts, she continued, “Do you mind if I ask them along
too?” She gave him an innocent, oblivious look.

Truthfully,
she was flattered. Brian was a great guy. But there was a very good reason that
she couldn’t date him. Although she was a student at the moment, she had been in
high school several times. But being over two-hundred years old made dating a
real teenager… creepy. There was something just not right about it. Knowing the
track Brian was on, Ellie already had a plausible excuse prepared for when he
did get around to asking her out properly.

Alex tried to
appear like he wasn’t watching Ellie. He tried not to notice that the boy she
was talking to looked like the athletic, popular type that all the girls go for.
He tried really hard not to think about how Ellie would probably be flattered
by the attention. And most important of all, he tried not to think about the
vaguely irritated feeling that came over him when Lila told Ellie she was being
admired from afar. That feeling hadn’t gone away, and if anything, was growing
stronger as he watched Ellie let out a small giggle and the other boy lean
closer. Alex gritted his teeth. What could he do? He’d tried his best to keep
his relationship with Ellie as casual as possible. Had even stopped texting her
and tried to treat her like a little sister when they were on their runs. But
that didn’t diminish his growing feelings toward her. Feelings he could never
act on, no matter how strong they were becoming.

Alex shook his
head and turned his attention back to his siblings, and caught Adelaide’s
amused expression. He sighed.

“Ok, Delia,
what do you see?”

Her eyebrows shot
up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alex,” she replied, pursing her
lips.

Shrugging,
Alex let it go. She’d tell him when she wanted to,
if
she wanted to.

*****

While Ellie
and Brian were talking about the movie on Friday, an idea popped into her head.
She didn’t date boys in high school, but she supposed being
friends
with
them was alright. She tapped into Griffin’s power and checked through Brian’s
thoughts a little more in depth. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t actually
attached to the idea of dating her. She just happened to be the new girl in his
group. Someone he had yet to date. And someone who hadn’t shown much interest
which, of course, made him all the more interested. So if she encouraged
friendship, and remained clear about that distinction, she wouldn’t hurt him.
And she needed a distraction from Alex. He seemed to be occupying way too much
of her brain space these days. Too much for her comfort.

“If you’re
here alone, why don’t you join us?” she said to Brian. She waved her hand in
the general direction of the group.

Brian looked
pleased and glanced at his watch. “I have to leave in about thirty minutes,” he
said. “But I could hang out ‘til then.”  He stood up, collected his gear, and
followed her across the room.

When they
approached the table, Ellie explained to her friends, “I invited Brian to join
us while he’s here.”

“Hey,
Reynolds!” Nate greeted Brian with a high-five. Nate played tight-end on the
school football team, while Brian was the quarterback and team captain. The two
boys were understandably friendly even though it was off-season.

“Brian, this
is our brother, Alex,” Lila said. The two boys shook hands with a nod. Brian
pulled out a chair and got settled.

“I’d better
get to work,” Alex announced. With a casual salute, he left the rest of them to
their studies.

After a little
while, when Brian and Nate seemed to run out of conversation about basketball,
Ellie nonchalantly asked, “So what movie are we going to see Friday, Brian?”
Looking at the others at the table she kept her expression carefully innocent
as she added, “Are you guys going, too?”

Lila glanced
at Brian. “Is a group going to see a movie?”

Listening to
Brian’s thoughts, Ellie almost laughed out loud as he mentally gave up on
having a date with her. He just barely stopped himself from answering with a sigh.
“Yeah,” he said. Ellie had to give him some credit, he bounced back quickly.
“I’m getting a group together to go on Friday. You guys in?”

“What’s the
movie?” Nate asked. “I’m not going to see some lame chick flick.”  He scrunched
up his face comically, eliciting a laugh from the others. Adelaide bopped him
in the arm.

Brian named a
movie that was definitely a guy’s guy type movie. All action, lots of blood
probably, short on plot, but very entertaining.

Nate punched a
fist in the air. “Yeah, man!” he exclaimed. “I’m in.”

Adelaide and Lila
rolled their eyes in unison. “Not really my type of movie,” Lila said with a
wry twist to her lips. “But I’m in, too.”

Adelaide
shrugged her shoulders in resignation. “I go where Nate goes,” she agreed, snuggling
in to him.

“What about
you, Ellie?” Adelaide asked.

Since Ellie
happened to enjoy that genre of movie, she grinned. “I’ve already told Brian
that I’d go,” she confirmed. “I hope that it’s going to be as good as the first
two.”

Both boys gave
her a dumbfounded look. “No way,” Nate teased. “A girl who likes action
movies?  I don’t believe it.”

“Hey! Lots of
girls like action movies,” Ellie defended.

“Not the girls
in my life,” Nate declared, winking at Adelaide.

Ellie tapped
her pen on her notebook. “I like almost all types of movies, but action and
fantasy happen to be my favorites. Best movie ever, hands down…
Star Wars
.”

“Wait,” Brian
narrowed his eyes at her. “Which one?”

“Duh…” Ellie rolled
her eyes dramatically. “Episode four.”

“I beg to
differ,” Nate scoffed. “
Empire
is clearly the best of the
Star Wars
movies.”

Ellie shook
her head. “
The Empire Strikes Back
is too dark for me.”

“Sorry to
interrupt your geek-out moment,” Lila started. “But after listening to
basketball talk for twenty minutes, I’m afraid that sci-fi talk would send me
over the edge.”

Ellie just laughed
and bent her head back to her studies. About the time Brian left, Ellie moved
on to her English assignment, writing her term research paper. This happened to
be one of Ellie’s favorite assignments at this school so far. She was researching
Jane Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility
, one of her favorite novels, rich in
both characters and in satire. The internet provided the opportunity to do the
majority of her research from the comfort of her home, but Mrs. Cavender had
insisted that her students include citations from real books. What better place
to do that research than in the library? With that in mind, Ellie hopped up and
went to the computer terminal and started to look up material that might help
her with the assignment.

She was
standing amidst the aisles leafing through one of the titles when a voice
murmured in her ear, “That must be fascinating reading.”

She was so
startled that she dropped her book and jumped back. She managed to remain
cognizant of the library rules, and restrained herself to a little squeak of
surprise, rather than a loud yelp. Alex was leaning against the shelf, arms
crossed over his broad chest, one foot casually crossed over the other, and
watching her with a highly amused expression.

“Jeez, Alex. You
scared me,” she accused in a half-whisper.

“Sorry.” He
gave her an unapologetic grin. “You know you’ve been standing there reading
that book for a good fifteen minutes?  I’m amazed at your powers of
concentration.”

Ellie hid her
chagrin that, unbeknownst to her, Alex had been watching her that long. She
felt flattered and unnerved all at the same time. She bent to retrieve her
dropped book, but Alex beat her to it. “Jane Austen fan?” he asked as he
glanced at the title.

“What girl
isn’t?” she quipped. She made sure their fingers didn’t touch as she accepted it.