If You Find Me(39)

I follow him like Shorty follows Nessa, and realizing this, I feel the heat creeping into my cheeks. Get a grip! I almost walk past the door, but he grabs my upper arm.

“This is your door. Second one from the end, that’s how you remember. Mrs. Hadley will assign you a student buddy to get you to your classes. That’s how she rolls.”

[page]He sticks out his hand. “Ryan Shipley, vice prez of the junior class and all-around shepherd of the lost and befuddled.”

I shake his hand, and he looks at me like he’s waiting for something.

“Hey, Ry!”

“Hey, Travis.”

I stand there like a bump on a log.

“Carey,” he says for me, “Blackburn. Right?”

It’s as if a gust of Hundred Acre wind set the trees rattling in their skins of ice, only it’s my bones rattling. Gran called the feeling “someone walking over your grave”.

And then it’s gone. He drops my hand. I want to ask him how he knew. But the words won’t come.

“Good luck, Carey,” he says, turning to grin at the woman who appears in the doorway, her lips pursed like Nessa’s after her first-ever sip of grapefruit juice. (Pink, of course. But still.) “Aren’t you late for class, Mr. Shipley?”

“I sure am, but for good reason: I took it upon myself to deliver this new girl into your capable hands.” He winks at me.

I listen to the exchange, note the begrudging affection in her voice, and, his attention diverted, I stare at him openly. He’s the first boy I’ve ever touched, let alone talked to. I want to reach out and touch his hair. Does boy hair feel different from girl hair? I like his face. I see both clouds and suns.

“Well, that’s a valid excuse, although I do believe you find too many of them, Mr. Shipley,” she says, giving me a sidelong glance and then looking longer, like people have ever since I got here, like they can’t stop looking. She pulls her eyes from mine and tilts her head at Ryan. Her chalky finger stabs the air.

“I’m sure there’s more than chivalry going on here. You’d better skedaddle.”

She strides to her desk and returns with a yellow slip of paper. “Now, shoo.”

“You’re a hard woman, Mrs. Hadley,” he says, winking at her this time.

“Oh, shoo!”

He sprints down the hallway, slides to a stop at the staircase, then takes the stairs two at a time.

“And you are?” Mrs. Hadley peers down at me, her face all business.

“Carey Blackburn.”

“Ah, Carey. We’ve been expecting you.”

I peer through the doorway, where a gaggle of girls giggle and whisper. Delaney scowls from their midst.

“Nice boy, Ryan Shipley,” Mrs. Hadley says, watching my face.

The heat creeps up my neck as I nod in agreement.

“Delaney Benskin would agree.”

I glance back at Delaney, who shoots me the evil eye.

“Come on in and find a seat.” Mrs. Hadley guides me through the door with her hand on my back. My elbow still feels warm where Ryan held it. “When you’re seated, I’ll make the introductions.”

I keep my head low as I walk the aisle farthest from Delaney. I feel like I’m walking the gauntlet. More giggles when my violin case bumps between my thighs and I trip, catching myself on the end of the desk of a skinny girl with metal things on her teeth.

I choose the desk in the back corner, safe as a key in a hollow tree. I stash the violin case behind my chair and drop my knapsack on the floor next to me, not even remembering that Ryan gave it back to me.

“Delaney liked Ryan all last year. And he doesn’t even hang out with the pops.”

She’s small, like the girls who dance on beams and do backflips on weekend television.

“The pops?”

“The popular kids. Ryan does his own thing. I know he’s into astronomy. Last year, he built his very own telescope! Just in time to see the Geminid meteor shower. He said it was ah-mazing”

I note her rosy cheeks, the caramel freckles, the screaming red hair, and the whitest skin I’ve ever seen on a living person. She can’t be much older than Jenessa, and yet there she sits in the desk next to mine.

“You’re Carey, obviously,” she says. “Mrs. Hadley told us you’d be joining the class. I’m Courtney Macleod, your student buddy. But they call me ‘Pixie’ ”—she makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses her elfin stature—“because of my particular situation. I also have the misfortune of being the smartest twelve-year-old in the state of Tennessee—or maybe it’s the shortest. I can never remember, exactly.”

I giggle, liking her instantly.

“Carey Blackburn,” I whisper, offering my hand like Ryan offered his. “I’m fourteen and I tested as a seventeen-year-old. They skipped me a year.”

I don’t tell her that I’m feeling right better about it, after meeting her.

Courtney grins. “Us geeks need to stick together. Of course, I mean geeks in the nicest way. Another plus is that Delaney despises me,” she says wickedly.

“An added bonus.”

“For sure . . .”

Pixie’s voice trails off as she all-out stares at me.

Is there something on my face? Am I doing something uncool without realizing it?