Page 23 of The Color of Grace

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d need me anymore after I saw you with them.”

She talked so quietly, I had to lean in to hear her properly. And still, it took me a second to piece her words together. Pulling back in confusion, I repeated, “Them? Them who?”

“You know.” She fluttered out her hand as if that should make everything perfectly clear. “Kiera, and Todd, and Mindy and all them.”

“Oh,” I said. Them. “Yeah, when I couldn’t find you, they showed me to the rest of my classrooms. They even invited me to do something with them after the game tonight.”

“Really?” Her eyes grew wide, but not in an impressed way—more of an intimidated, scared way—and she pulled back as if my talking to them had infected me with a disease. “So, you’re popular then?” she asked, sounding suddenly gloomy.

“Popular?” I almost laughed in her face. “Hardly. My friends and I at Hillsburg are actually called a nerd herd. Why? Are Kiera and Todd and all them the in-crowd here?”

Laina glanced around before she leaned confidentially closer. “Oh, yeah.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Seriously?” The word popular had always turned me off, maybe because all the popular people I’d ever known seemed so two-faced and artificial. I couldn’t really pinpoint the origin of my distaste. I just knew learning Ryder Yates was one of them made me feel even more disappointed.

Laina nodded, eager to spill all the exciting gossip. “Cory and Mindy get crowned the Homecoming King and Queen every year. Except maybe this year. With Kiera dating Ryder now, I bet they’ll win. They’re like the most sexually active couple in school, you know.”

Everything she said after that blew right over my head and floated off into the unheard. Ryder Yates and his awful girlfriend were the most sexually active couple in school, huh?

Until that moment, I hadn’t thought my day could get any worse.

I was so, so wrong.

“Well, thanks for a juicy four-one-one.” I cut Laina off in mid-sentence, not even caring that I’d finally gotten her to talk. “But I need to get home. It’s my night to cook. I’ll see you tomorrow. ’Kay?”

“Uh…” She blinked, looking dazed and confused. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Sweet. See you then.” I spun away and hurried off.

Don’t think about it, I commanded myself. Don’t think—

But Ryder was the only person my rattled brain could picture. A vision of him and his precious witch cheerleader sucking face made my chest feel tight and achy.

It hurt.

Not only had I been a passing flirtation until he could get together with Kiera again, but even if he’d been single, hearing he was the most sexually active boy in school clearly told me what he’d wanted from me. And it wasn’t sweet poetry and flowers or interesting conversation.

The jerk.

I wasn’t that kind of girl, and I definitely wouldn’t become one for a cheater like him.

Stewing hotter the more I thought about it, I worked on autopilot, opening my locker, packing my bag, and trooping out the exit. I didn’t return to reality until I stepped off the sidewalk to cross the parking lot and slipped in a nice glassy piece of ice, hidden under a deceitful layer of pretty, puffy white snow.

After I fell onto my butt and landed hard, I sat there, stunned speechless.

Ahh. The perfect ending to a perfect day. Not.

Chapter 8

Indigo is a mystical kind of blue, intensified and immediate. Like a midnight sky, and often royal or spiritual, it develops intuition. Am I perceptive enough to be my indigo namesake? I don’t think so. I don’t feel like I’m anything as majestic or profound as indigo.

* * * *

On my third attempt to stand up from my icy nest, I stayed seated on the ground and threw back my head to crack off a laugh. But, come on, if a girl couldn’t laugh at herself, who could she laugh at? Besides, it was either that or bawl my head off. And I figured if I started crying now, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

I was still shaking my head and wiping tears of mirth from my eyes when a shadow blocked the sunlight above me.

“You definitely don’t take after your name, do you?”

---