Spark (Elemental 2)

Focus.

“Truth?” he whispered.

She nodded. “I want to know everything.”

The second bell rang, and Layne jerked back. Her heart was in her throat.

“Free period?” he said.

“Yeah,” she choked.

Then Ms. Anderson was coming through the door, urging them to their seats, calling the class to order.

Layne did the six questions of the warm-up automatically, grateful for the distraction, for the need to keep her eyes on her paper.

A folded piece of notebook paper landed in the crease of her textbook. Layne unfolded it under the edge of her desk.

Are you afraid of me?

The breath poured out of her lungs in a rush.

Then she put her pencil to the paper.

A little.

She watched his face as he unrolled her note. No regret, no disappointment. Just flat acceptance.

With a little spark of challenge.

Layne’s palms were sweating on the pencil. She scraped them across her knees.

All of a sudden, she couldn’t wait for that free period.

The intercom over the chalkboard crackled to life. “Ms. Anderson?”

“Yes?”

“Could you please send Gabriel Merrick to the guidance office?”

Just about everyone in the classroom turned to stare at him including Layne.

“Are you in trouble?” she whispered.

He shrugged and shoved his math book into his backpack. “I have no idea.”

Then he swung out of his chair and moved down the aisle. He was gone before she noticed the new fold of paper tucked beneath the corner of her notebook.

Truth: don’t be.

Gabriel walked down the silent halls, his shoulders hunched, his backpack a dead weight.

The guidance office? If you were in trouble, they called you to the principal’s office. He knew that routine by heart.

The guidance office called if there was a college recruiter here for an interview and that had happened exactly zero times in Gabriel’s high school career. The guidance office called if you were involved in an altercation with another student, and Vickers thought you could talk it out but that wasn’t something they’d call you out of class for.

Then he remembered the first week of school, when Allison Montgomery had been called to the guidance office during chemistry. Her father had been killed in a car crash.

Nick. His heart stopped in his chest.