A Different Blue(20)

little cover.

“Come on, little girl,” Donnie cajoled. “You think I'm interested in your skinny legs?

Sheee-it! You look like a little drowned bird.” He stood up and grabbed a towel and handed it

to me, walking out of the bathroom with a heavy sigh, an indication of how ridiculous he thought

I was. I wrapped myself in the towel but stayed pressed into the corner. I was suddenly too

tired to move. I was too tired to even be afraid of Donnie.

I thought I heard him talking to someone. Maybe he had called Cheryl. She wouldn't be pleased.

They would have had to call her off the casino floor. I was forbidden to call her at work. I

leaned my head against the cabinet and closed my eyes. I would just sleep here. I would wait for

Donnie to leave, and then I would get back in the tub where it was warm and I could float away

once more.

The bell rang. I threw my pencil down gratefully and grabbed my purse, abandoning the assignment

as if it were burning me.

“Just leave your papers on your desks. I'll collect them!” Wilson called, avoiding having

thirty pages shoved at him simultaneously.

He picked up the remaining papers quietly and halted when he came to the desk where I was

sitting. I watched him read the line I added. He looked up at me, a question in his face.

“You haven't written very much.”

“There isn't much to tell.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Wilson looked back down at the paper and studied what I'd written.

“What you've written sounds almost like a….a legend or something. It makes me think of your

name when I read it. Did you do that intentionally?”

“Echohawk was the name of the man who raised me. I'm not sure what my name is.”

I thought the bold statement would make him back off. Make him uncomfortable. I stared him down

and waited for him to respond or dismiss me.

“My first name is Darcy.”

Laughter sputtered from my chest at the randomness of his response, and he smiled with me, the

ice broken between us.

“I hate it. So everyone just calls me Wilson . . . except for my mother and my sisters.

Sometimes I think not knowing what my name is would be a blessing.”

I relaxed a little, leaning back in my desk. “So why did she name you Darcy? Sounds pretty

Malibu Barbie to me.” It was Wilson's turn to snort.

“My mother loves classic literature. She's extremely old-fashioned. Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy is

her favorite.”

I knew very little about classic literature, so I just waited.

“Look, Miss Echohawk –”

“Ugh! Stop that!” I groaned. “My name is Blue. You sound like an old man with a little bow-

tie when you talk like that! I am nineteen, maybe twenty. You aren't that much older than me so

. . . just . . . stop!”

[page]“What do you mean, maybe twenty?” Wilson raised a questioning eye brow.

“Well . . . I don't exactly know when I was born – so I suppose I could be twenty already.”

Jimmy and I had celebrated my birthday every year on the anniversary of the day my mother

abandoned me. He was pretty certain I was around two years old at the time. But he had no way of

knowing how old I actually was. When I'd finally been enrolled in school they had put me in the

grade below my estimated age because I had so much catching up to do.