Tonight I was just going to sit here and think about this. About us. About how his arm was warm on top of mine, how I could hear his heartbeat through his polo shirt, how he smelled of evergreen soap and paint and cherry lollipop.
Lazily, happily, my eyes scanned the room full of students, none of whom could possibly have any clue what it felt like to be as content as I was at that very moment. Some of them gazed at us dreamily, others were oblivious to my existence, and some, like Gage, were still mocking us from afar. But I didn’t care. Everything was utterly peaceful and perfect.
Until suddenly, abruptly, my eyes fell on Graham Hathaway.
He stood diagonally across the room, alone, and he was staring right at me. Glaring, really. His hands were tucked under the lapels of his suede jacket and he had dark circles under his eyes, as if he either hadn’t slept in days or had suddenly discovered hard drugs. He held my gaze and kept right on glowering until my heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest.
But what the hell was his problem?
Then Missy and Paige walked over to him from the Coffee Carma counter, and Missy handed him a coffee. All the little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Paige was still on campus. And now the gruesome twosome from lunch yesterday had morphed into a gruesome threesome.
“What’s she doing here?” Josh asked, following my gaze.
“Who knows,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I’m starting to think she has no life.”
Graham chatted with the two girls happily as they sipped their drinks. Just like that he was back to being smiling, jovial Graham. He pointed to a table being vacated by a klatch of teachers, and the three of them made a beeline for the coveted seats. I watched them for a while as my pulse began to cool, wondering if I’d just imagined it. Wondering if he’d look my way again.
But he never did. And before long I found myself thinking I’d somehow imagined the whole thing.
THE TIDE
Headmaster Hathaway was starting to squirm. Clearly I’d been right about him not wanting Billings rebuilt after all, because as soon as things started to sort of swing my way at the board meeting, he’d begun clearing his throat at odd intervals and he kept shifting his weight in his chair, making it squeak and squeal.
Oh well, I thought, feeling betrayed as I watched him tap his pen against the long table behind which he and the rest of the board members sat. Sucks to be you.
When we’d first arrived, my hopes had not been high. Probably because the first people I’d seen upon entering the Great Room at Mitchell Hall were Missy, Paige, and her twin brother, Daniel, who appeared to have gathered an anti-rebuilding contingent near the front row. Plus, even though most of the student body was present, gathered behind me in chairs and along the walls of the room, neither Josh nor Noelle was there. Josh had told me he’d be stuck at the library finishing a paper, and I hadn’t exactly expected Noelle to come, but it would have been a nice surprise. Still, I wasn’t about to let their absence distract me. I had a mission to accomplish here, with or without them. Over the past hour, not only had Carolina and I managed to answer each and every one of Mr. Hathaway’s objections, but we had already started to turn the crowd to our side. I credited Carolina’s charm and my seemingly bottomless bank account for the change in tide.
Of course, now Hathaway had brought out the big guns. Speaking at the podium was Mr. Thatcher Phillips, a representative from the county development committee, who had come armed with a laundry list of complaints he had just finished reading aloud. He reminded me of the creepy guy who played Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie I saw at least part of every Christmas season. He just had this air about him like his main goal in life was to suck any and all joy out of it.
“So you see, Miss Grant, Miss Brennan, all of these plans will need to be revised, which will surely mean weeks of additional work for your architect,” he said haughtily, folding up his list and tucking it into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. He pushed his bifocals up on his bulbous nose and folded his hands over his ample belly. “I’m afraid that means a delay to the start of the project of at least two months.”
Behind the long table on the dais, Mr. Hathaway smiled into his hand. Is it wrong that I kind of wanted to smack him? What no one seemed to understand was that two months was not an option. In two days the entire Billings community was going to be descending on Easton, expecting to see some ribbon cutting. There was no way this weekend was going by without me wielding a giant pair of scissors.
“Actually, we have the revised plans right here,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing. Mr. Hathaway sat up straight as Carolina handed me a hard blueprint carrier, which I brought up to the podium. “In both paper and digital format.”
Mr. Phillips’s waddle quivered and he appeared, for a moment, flummoxed. “Yes, well, we’ll still need to review these and the process could take—”
“I’m willing to pay the admittedly exorbitant fee to rush the documents through,” I said, smiling even though my heart was pounding nervously.
You’re a Lange, I told myself. You know you are. Make them believe it.
“And since your very own staff architect oversaw the drawing up of these plans yesterday, I can’t imagine there will be any objections to our starting the project this weekend, as scheduled, with his good-faith approval.”
I turned and smiled at the county’s architect, Jack Lagos, who sat just behind Carolina. He was handsome in an older, rugged kind of way, with his frayed jacket and chin scruff. Carolina had called him on Tuesday evening and he, like almost everyone else she met, had been unable to resist her enthusiasm. The two of them had worked with her design team all day on Wednesday, through the night, and most of today.
“Of . . . of course,” Mr. Phillips said. “If you’re willing to pay the fee and if Mr. Lagos approves . . .”
“I do, sir,” Jack said, pushing himself halfway to standing. “You’re not going to find any fault with those plans, I assure you.”
“All . . . all right, then.” Mr. Phillips cleared his throat. “Then I have nothing further.”
As he turned back toward the dais, holding the blueprint roll, he looked at Mr. Hathaway and shrugged helplessly. I returned to our table as Carolina rose from her own chair. She surreptitiously gave me a very low high-five, then tugged on the lapels of her white linen jacket, which she wore over crisp jeans and a yellow T-
shirt. It was amazing how she managed to look businesslike, casual, and pretty all at the same time.
“Esteemed members of the board, we have now competently answered each of your concerns, from the problem of privacy to the safety of the site to disruption of classes to the county’s admirable green initiatives,” she said firmly. “But if I might add one last point of interest?”
Mrs. Whittaker, my friend Walt Whittaker’s grandmother, leaned forward in her seat, folding her gnarled fingers together atop the table. “Go ahead, Miss Grant.”