The Color Of Grace (7 page)

The teacher lifted her glare from the computer tucked under
my arm and focused on my face. “Oh,” she said, her shoulders easing and mouth
softening into a welcoming smile. “Sorry about that, dear. But next time, don’t
bring your computer to class. There is no need for electronics in Art. That
means cell phones and iPods too. You must be Grace.”

With a flourish, she swept toward me, her long, hippie
flowered skirt billowing around her sandals and tattooed ankles. Seriously, the
woman was wearing sandals in January with a below-zero wind chill going on. Why
would I lie about that?

When she held out her hand as if I were there for an interview
instead of attending my first class, I faltered a moment before taking her
fingers in a shake. But she didn’t pump our wrists up and down. Instead, she
jerked me toward her and lifted my palm upright, studying the skin. Expecting a
fortune reading, I was a little surprised when she cooed, “Nice, capable fingers.
Yes, I see promise here. I’ll make an artist out of you yet.” Then she lifted
her face and narrowed her eyes before asking, “Quick. Which great artist cut
off his ear before killing himself?”

“Uh…” Holy Hosanna, was knowing that answer some kind of
prerequisite to taking Art 1? Thanks to Schy, I actually knew the artist’s name
and how to pronounce it correctly. “Umm, Van Gogh?”

A slow, approving smile spread across the teacher’s face.
She let go of my hand and took a step back. “Very good. I’m Miss Abernathy.
Welcome to the wonderful world of art.”

* * * *

Schy would’ve absolutely adored Miss Abernathy, I decided an
hour later when the bell ending first period rang. The woman was all about
freedom of expression and artistic endeavors. Still, I felt dazed as I pushed
out of the art room and entered the hall traffic. She actually expected us to
come up with an art project to enter into some festival Osage held every year
at the courthouse. So not what I wanted to do.

Thinking I’d definitely have to call Schy and get some idea
of something simple that wouldn’t end up making me look like a total loser, I
paid attention to where I was going and managed to trace my way back to my
locker.

Not sure if every class forbade bringing laptops, I took the
safe way out and stored my MacBook in my new cubby. Then I stalled, waiting for
Laina. Biting my lip, I peeked around me at the passing people. Everyone knew
everyone else. They chatted, laughed, yelled friendly insults, jostled jokingly
for more room. I felt so left out. So alone.

I knew no one.

Well, almost no one.

Across the hall and down about ten lockers lounged Ryder
Yates.

Freezing as my gaze latched on to him, I forgot to breathe
for a full ten seconds. Then air rushed from my lungs in a tidal wave.

No! What was I going to do? I told myself to turn away. But
for some reason, I simply stood there, ogling.

He looked nice. Really nice. Dressed in tan slacks and a
long-sleeved black turtleneck tucked neatly into a pleated waistline, he’d
brushed his long bangs to the side so he could see. And see, he did.

He saw me.

When he first turned my way, I remained petrified and forgot
the whole breathing thing again. But then he glanced right past me, and my
lungs exhaled in relief. Except he did a double take and swerved back to gawk.
For a split second, our gazes met and held.

And held.

His mouth dropped open; I read immediate recognition clear
on his face.

Oh, yeah. He remembered me.

I whirled away, bumping the center of my forehead on the
edge of my opened locker door. Mortified, I slapped a palm to the stinging skin
and caught the still-quivering, thin metal door with my other hand. No one paused
to ask if I was okay. So either no one noticed, or they were all too busy discreetly
laughing at the new dork in school.

After checking my fingers for blood, I blew out a relieved
breath and buried my face in my locker to pull out my book bag, only to rummage
through it as if I were looking for something, when actually I looked for
nothing. The notebook and pen I planned to take to second hour were already
securely tucked under my arm.

From behind me, I heard some boy call, “Hey, Yates, my man,
what’s wrong with you?”

I didn’t catch Yates’s response, but he had to have said
something to his friend, because the caller followed up with, “Who?” and
seconds later added, “Where?”

When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I glanced over my
shoulder. Ryder had his back to me. He stood oddly still as he looked into his
own locker as if searching for something inside, maybe something that would
give him meaning to his existence. But the guy next to him rested his forearm
on Ryder’s shoulder and openly dissected me from head to toe. Then he glanced
at Ryder’s side profile.

I swear I heard the phrase, “Are you sure that’s her?”

Ryder’s head gave a slight nod and his friend glanced over
at me once more.

They were talking about me. Well, I felt pretty certain they
were talking about me. With the level of paranoia raging through my
bloodstream, they could’ve been disputing if the girl off
Twilight
had also been in
Snow
White and the Huntsman
. Who knew? But, at this particular moment in time, I
was so infinitely aware of those two individuals discussing me, I felt more
self-conscious than if I’d forgotten to put on a bra that morning.

Again, I turned away—thank God I didn’t smack into anything
this time—and glanced around for Laina but didn’t spot her.

I was on my own.

Blindly closing my locker, I hurried in the opposite direction
of Ryder Yates and his gossipy, staring-problem friend. Fleeing clueless
through the halls, I forgot to look at the room numbers I passed before I
returned to Art. Wondering whether Miss Abernathy would let me hide in her room
the rest of the day if I made some kind of mad plea about how an artistic muse
had suddenly struck, I blew out a breath and silently counted to ten.

After calming myself enough to consult my schedule, I
discovered I had Chemistry next. I figured I could find the room number from
the numbers over the doors. But I soon discovered how wrong I was. It took me a
couple of minutes to realize the different wings of the building numbered their
classes in different ways.

In a desperate search for Room 4-D, my heart dipped into my
knees when the second bell rang. Dear Lord, I had no idea where to go.
Thankfully, I saw a passing adult in the cleared halls and flagged him down.
After introducing himself as the vice principal, he welcomed me to Southeast
and pointed me in the right direction.

I walked as fast as my legs would carry me and found 4-D
half a minute later. When I jerked open the door, about two dozen heads turned
my way, making me stall out in the threshold.

The teacher, who’d already started class, stopped talking in
his droning voice and glanced over his shoulder to scowl at me.

Half the room consisted of currently unused lab tables—four
rows of counters stretched out, holding beakers and vials and discolored
liquids along with Bunsen burners and microscopes. The second half of the
classroom consisted of occupied student desks.

And seated on the end row, about ten feet from me, three
chairs from the front, sat Ryder Yates.

Chapter 6

“Can I help you?”

I tore my eyes from Ryder and found an irritated,
mid-fifties man eyeing me over the top of his bifocals, his hand frozen in
midair, holding a marker poised against the whiteboard.

“Uh…” I said, and had the good fortune to remember to close
my mouth. “Chemistry,” I finally mumbled. “With, uh…” The fumbling started then
as I scurried to find my class schedule. “Uh, with Mr. Dorkman.”

“That’s
Dock
man,”
he corrected.

“Oh. Sorry.” Oops. I cringed and sank back as half the class
snickered.

He dropped his marker from the board and stepped toward me,
snapping his fingers.

I handed over my schedule immediately. “New student,” I
uttered as I did so.

He scowled at the sheet a moment then
flipped it back to me so quickly I had to fumble yet again to catch the
flapping page.

Ten feet away, Ryder Yates tapped the seat in front of his
with his shoe. His friend—yeah, the staring one—lifted his disinterested gaze
from the notebook he’d been doodling on and glanced over his shoulder.

He and Ryder had some kind of silent conversation that
consisted of the enlarging of Ryder’s eyes and then directing them my way. His
friend turned slowly to study me.

I diverted my attention to Dockman just as he showed me his
back with a very dismissive air. “Class,” he announced. “We have a new student.
This is Grace En… En-dee…”

“Indigo,” I supplied. “Pronounced and spelled just like the
color.”

It felt strange saying my name aloud, knowing Ryder Yates
was finally learning my true identity.

Dockman nodded. “Grace Indigo. She’s new here. So, please…” he
gave a tired sigh and said, “treat her with a little decency today, will you?”

He told me to take a seat and as I scanned the room for a
chair, Ryder sank lower into his desk and ducked his head to study his opened
textbook.

The only place left in the room was next to his friend and
catty-corner from him. Knowing this was going to be one very long hour, I sank
down into the chair, sitting one place over and in front of Ryder Yates.

Class started.

Thank goodness Southeast used the same textbook we had at
Hillsburg, and a double thanks to the fact we’d already started learning about
the Periodic Table, because no way could I have concentrated on that first
lesson, not when I was stuck wondering how much Ryder Yates had to be staring
through my head to watch the teacher lecture.

The back of my neck burned and sizzled; I was surprised I
didn’t set off the smoke alarms. I pressed the tip of my pen astutely to my pad
of paper and wrote words in a fury. Most of my mad ramblings consisted of how
much I wanted to return to Hillsburg, flee from this foreign place, and treat
my mother to some kind of nasty prank—nothing permanent or painful, mind you,
just something humiliating enough to make her feel exactly how I felt at that
very moment.

About thirty minutes through the agony, Dockman finally
passed out a worksheet for homework. When I turned to hand off my stack, Ryder
and I made eye contact. He paused a moment and gave me a vague, brief, tight
smile before turning his attention to his friend to receive his own homework.

Yep, he remembered exactly who I was.

The teacher explained the assignment
and then gave us the rest of the hour to work on it. As he sat at his desk,
some students bent their heads and began to fill in the blanks, but most of the
room relaxed, each person turning to a friend and chatting
quietly.

I planned to be an assignment worker, until Ryder’s pal spun
directly toward me. “So, you’re Grace, huh?”

I jumped. Shocked someone had finally spoken to me, I lifted
my head and glanced over at him. The first person to voluntarily talk to me at
my new school just had to be the very buddy of Ryder Yates, didn’t he?

Great.

I didn’t want to be rude and lose all chance of making any
friends, but seriously, did it
have
to be Ryder Yates’s chum who first spoke to me?

“Yeah,” I answered, forcing the friendliest smile I could
manage. Since I wasn’t sure what else to say, I sucked in a breath, lifting my
eyebrows as if to stretch out my friendly demeanor as far as I could, and went
right back to studying my homework. From the corner of my eye, I watched the
friend glance back at Ryder, who grinned smugly at him and gave him the thumbs
up sign as he sarcastically mouthed the word “
smooth”
.

The friend gave Ryder a dirty look and turned back to me.
“I’m Todd.”

Okay. So now, I’d forever think of him as Todd, Ryder
Yates’s staring friend. Still not sure where all my social skills—or my
brain—had gone, I offered him another one of my smiles, pretty sure by this
point, I looked like I’d just come from the dentist and had a little too much laughing
gas flowing through the bloodstream.

“Hi, Todd,” I said, and turned my attention back to my
homework. Feeling as if I should write something, I scrawled in my name across
the top, misspelling Indigo as I forgot to jot down the N.

“So, where’d you move from?” Todd persisted in talking to
me. Guess he didn’t catch on to how nervous or shy I was.

“Hillsburg,” I answered, not even bothering to glance up. I
hadn’t left a whole lot of room to fit an N between I and D, but I managed to
wedge in a tiny, misshapen one.

“A Viking, huh? What made you come here?”

Finally, I looked up. Todd continued to stare at me. He
wasn’t bad looking. In fact, if he wasn’t always sitting or standing so close
to Ryder Yates, I might label him attractive. But compared to number forty-two,
he ranked a measly four or five with his hazel eyes, blond hair, and scruffy
start at a goatee.