A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(10)

Just as she started down the hall, she happened to glance back through the open doorway and into the principal’s man cave. She saw a girl lift a wooden carving of some kind off his desk and stuff it into her jacket pocket.

The principal was in the hall, joking around with a group of kids, so Auri didn’t understand why the girl was in there. But she recognized her from the party. Dark hair. Huge gray eyes. Supermodel attitude.

So, while the looting was strange enough, the girl turned, looked right at Auri, and winked at her before walking out.

“See you later, Mom,” she said to Corrine.

“Bye, sweetheart. Don’t forget about lunch.”

“I won’t.” The girl, who must have been Lynelle, smirked at Auri as she walked out, and Auri couldn’t help but feel there was a joke hanging in the air and she’d missed the punch line.

Drawing in a deep breath, she turned to the swarm of kids in the hall half a second before the tardy bell rang.

She could do this. She’d done it before when they’d moved from Albuquerque, where her mom had been working and going to college, to Santa Fe, where she’d gotten her first job in law enforcement as a patrol officer for SFPD. That had seemed like so long ago, but she owed it to her mom to do her best. To go with the flow. To never—ever—be a burden.

That was her biggest fear. To be a burden to her mom. Well, any more than she already was.

God, if only her new friend hadn’t deserted her. She’d felt an instant connection to Sybil. Maybe Sybil hadn’t felt the same about her.

After wandering the halls longer than she should have, growing more anxious by the moment, Auri finally found her first-period classroom tucked into a corner of the main building. Unfortunately, the tardy bell had rung about two minutes earlier, so plan A, the plan where she would walk in and take a seat before anyone noticed her, fell by the wayside.

Plan B consisted of two steps. One, pull the fire alarm. Two, reenter the building with everyone else once the firefighters gave the green light. But just as she was about to pull the little red lever, she noticed a security camera pointed in that general direction. Thus, plan B had to be nixed as well. Not that she would have done it, but she would’ve liked the option.

Left with no other choice, she had to opt for plan C, the worst of the three she’d come up with. It basically involved her walking into the classroom and interrupting a lesson already in progress so that the students would turn en masse and give her their full and undivided attention.

Great.

She braced herself and opened the door to Mrs. Ontiveros’s English I. If nothing else went her way that day, at least Auri could tell her grandchildren that plan C had worked brilliantly. Every student turned toward her, and she froze.

After an eon passed in which she prayed for the earth to open up and swallow her, she tore her gaze off the sea of faces and scanned the room for Mrs. Ontiveros. She’d assumed the instructor would be the only adult in the room. Instead, she found three, all of them standing at the back, staring at her as expectantly as she was staring at them.

Auri’s cheeks went up in flames. She ducked her head just enough to let her hair cover most of her face as embarrassment infused her entire body with a blistering heat.

The movement brought her head around, and she realized what they were all looking at before she so rudely interrupted. A boy stood at the front of the room, holding a piece of paper as though giving a report. A boy she recognized.

She’d seen him a few times at the lake when she’d spent her summers with her grandparents, but she’d never talked to him. In fact, nobody seemed to talk to him for very long. Even though everyone would wave at him or try to convince him to join the festivities, he just sort of hung back and watched everyone else have fun.

But something about him had fascinated her. Now even more so. He was taller than she’d expected. And more . . . built.

She thought she’d seen him at the New Year’s Eve party as well, but when she’d looked again, he was gone and there were two patrol cars racing toward the scene in his stead.

“Can I help you?” one of the adults asked, a tall older woman with dark curly hair and black-framed glasses.

Auri cleared her throat and started the long walk to the back of the room to hand the teacher her schedule, gazes still locked on her like laser-guided missiles.

The woman took the paper, welcomed her to the class, and gestured toward a seat, explaining something about a poetry reading, but Auri was already inside herself. Everything outside registered only as a droning hum over the blood rushing in her ears.

At least the teacher didn’t introduce her to the entire class. Small blessings.

After she sat down, she ignored the gawkers and fought to claw back out of her self-imposed exile, to reenter the world she shied away from all too often.

And then she heard a voice, soft and deep and lyrical.

She looked up. The boy read from the paper he held, and the words rushed over her like cool water. The poem was about a trapped bird, yet even imprisoned, the bird’s powerful wings caused the air underneath them to stir and curl as it fought for its freedom like a hurricane demanding to be set free. One simply had to look close enough to see the power building beneath it before it broke free.

“One simply has to notice,” he said before folding the paper and stuffing it into his front pocket.

The class clapped, many with genuine appreciation, and the teacher beamed at him.