Blue Violet

chapter 12



I must’ve looked like a blithering idiot, Ellie thought. She couldn’t believe how she could be so awkward with Alex now, but so comfortable with him when they met in the mornings. Lila linked an arm through Ellie’s, pulling her away from her inward contemplation.

“If it’s okay,” Lila started, “Can we get a ride with you to the library after school?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks! Alex is using the car again today. He’ll pick us up when we’re done with dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ellie said.

The day dragged on. Ellie found that even her favorite classes, English and French, were particularly boring today. She spent a lot of time absentmindedly doodling Alex’s name with little hearts in her notebook and watching as the hands of the clock seemed to cease all movement.

Ugh…This day is just never ending!

Sometimes, just to amuse herself, Ellie would tap into Griffin’s mind reading power and idly listen in on the high school gossip. Usually she didn’t like to invade people’s privacy, especially his. And if she did stumble on anything personal or anything mean, she always immediately moved away from those thoughts. Today there was apparently very little going on.

A bit of a competition was brewing between two of the girls Ellie sat with at lunch, Kayla and Rose, over Brian, the boy from Ellie’s economics class.

“Kayla just needs to back off. She’s soooo obvious, coming on to Brian that way,” Ellie caught Rose’s thoughts during lunch.

“Jeez. Rose should get a clue that Brian is not remotely into her,” Kayla was thinking during economics.

Brian tended to be the focus of a lot of the girls at the school, and Ellie could understand why. He was hot, outgoing, genuinely nice, smart, and athletic. A good catch for anyone. Brian didn’t tend to show favoritism for any one girl, which led all the girls interested in him to think they had a chance. It was silly, but this small bit of drama managed to keep Ellie’s mind occupied to get her through the day.

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.