Lost in Thought (5 page)

He coughed and gave me a look that was charmingly abashed. “Hi.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Another smile. “I’m Carter. I work here.”

Wow. He worked in the bookstore. Could he tip the perfection scale any further? Before I could respond, I heard a woman’s voice, somewhat muffled as if on the first floor, call, “Cartwright? Are you upstairs?” I looked at him questioningly.

“Uh, yeah. Short for Cartwright. It’s an old family name, kind of a tradition. Thankfully nicknames are a tradition too, so Carter it is.”

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I laughed. “Well, I’m Lainey. And I understand old family names, because that’s short for Elaine.”

“It sounds like we have something in common then, Lainey. I’m sure that’s the first of many.”

That’s about when I blushed, a particularly bad habit of mine. But I hoped it was a pretty blush that made me look fetching, instead of shy and awkward, which I so suddenly was. Not knowing what else to do, I looked down at the book in my hands.

Thankfully Carter appeared to be neither shy nor awkward. “I haven’t seen you here before,” he said, looking at me as if he was trying to remember something. “Are you at the Academy? I thought I knew all the students.”

“I just started, actually. Apparently I’m a Legacy, but I didn’t know that until three days ago.”

Something slight changed in him when I mentioned being a Legacy, or so I imagined. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I felt it, as if the air tightened around us. “A Legacy? Really? Who’s your Sponsor?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”

Now he looked at me questioningly. “You’re on Legacy, but you don’t know your Sponsor?”

I shook my head. “No, I really don’t.” How did I explain without telling this boy my whole, tragic life story? “I…it’s anonymous, and I don’t know if my father established it or if it’s from someone else. I haven’t had the most traditional upbringing, I guess you could say, and I don’t know much about my family. My parents died when I was young,” I finished lamely.

“Well Lainey, I think you just became the most interesting girl at Northbrook.”

Okay, I blushed again. How did he keep doing that to me? I started to say something, a thank you, maybe, but I was interrupted by the same woman’s voice, nearer and a little more irritated.

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“Cartwright! I hear you upstairs! I need your help sorting the new collection of…”

But I never heard what the new collection was, because a heavy crash sounded from not far below, followed by a breathy, “Oh damn,”

and a much louder, “CARTER!”

“Sorry,” the boy in question offered. “I’d better go help my aunt.

I’ll see you soon, Lainey,” he called over his shoulder as he loped quickly down the stairs, but not before I’d seen something that confirmed I was going crazy. I could have sworn that just as the whatever it was crashed downstairs, his eyes made a strange flash, becoming entirely dark in the center, surrounded by a pale, watery blue line.

AMY WAS ON her bed, flipping through a magazine, when I got back to our room but she tossed it aside when I came through the door.

“Hi!” she bubbled. “How was your first day?”

I sat down across from her and told her about my classes, my meeting with Headmaster Stewart, signing up for swim team. “And I went to the bookstore,” I added, frowning as I picked up my backpack and moved over to my desk.

She noticed the frown and frowned herself. “You didn’t like it? I
love
going there.”

“No, no, it’s a great bookstore. I only saw a little bit of the place, but they seemed to have everything. I can’t wait to go back and really poke around, sit by that fireplace maybe.” She laughed, and I looked back at her, confused. “What?”

“It’s a great bookstore, I’ll give you that, but that’s not why we all love going there. Did you meet Carter?”

I gave a small, strained smile. “Yeah, I met Carter.”

“And
that’s
your whole reaction? ‘Yeah, I met Carter?’” She mockingly imitated my voice, pretty well I might add.

Now I laughed, a real one. “He…seems like a good employee,” I offered. She threw the magazine at me, but I ducked and it landed

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harmlessly on my desk, a little ruffled, but perfectly readable. I tucked it in my bag for later.

“I was right. You
must
be a heartbreaker if you can be this casual about Carter Penrose.”

I was pretty sure that, between the two of us, she was the true heartbreaker, but I simply smiled and said, “Okay, let’s put it this way…I wouldn’t mind doing some of our studying over there whenever you suggest it.”

“That’s more like it! I’ll tell you though, the sitting area is always full of our classmates. The younger ones and the new ones get dressed up before they go, and make excuses to ask him for help with something,
anything,
especially if it involves a trip to the upstairs, where they can really turn the flirt on. But after a while you realize you just go to enjoy the scenery. It doesn’t help that he remembers
everyone
and is so freaking nice all the time. I think a spark of hope lingers in all of us, but I’ve never seen him hang out with anyone from the Academy outside the store, except for some of the guys on the track team. And Jill.

She swears they’re not dating, but we hate her anyway.”

I didn’t know who Jill was but decided to hate her a little too, just on principle. “Does he go here? Or to the town school?”

“Not anymore. He graduated last year. Or I should say ‘graduated,’”—she made little air quotes around the word—“since I swear he only played sports and used the library. He’s ridiculous smart and did most of his classwork at home with his aunt as a tutor. She’s super nice too, if you didn’t meet her. They live on the third floor, above the bookstore. Anyway, I think the school just wanted to let him run on the track team and bring up their average SAT scores, not that they’re not stupidly high anyway, but that’s how good he is. I mean, I’m a genius and he gives
me
a complex. What I can’t figure out is why he’s still here—not that I mind—and not in college, getting his PhD in astro-physics or something. But he’s been working at the bookstore as long

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as I’ve been here, and I’ve asked, but he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

“Wow. Well…maybe that’s his flaw,” I said. Amy raised one of her pretty eyebrows. “He’s got to have one, right? I was thinking at the bookstore that he was a little too perfect. Maybe he’s got no ambi-tion.”

“I guess,” she replied skeptically. “If that’s it though, it wouldn’t make me kick him out of bed, unless it was to go do my homework for me and then come back.”

I rolled my eyes, but laughed anyway, because, my weird feeling aside, I thought maybe I didn’t disagree.

saw him the next morning. I was surprised, though I’m not sure why. After lying in bed pretending to sleep got old, I decided to get up and clear my head before swim practice by learning the I campus a little better. It was cool out, bordering on cold, but crisp and refreshing. The sky was the pearly gray of early morning but sure to be clear and bright later. New England autumn at its best. I tugged down my sleeves against the chill and headed off toward the ponds.

Main Street was still and empty beyond the gates. I skirted the big pond and followed the path past the Admissions building. Penrose’s stood dark and silent across the street. I was supposed to be clearing my head of the weirdness, so I purposefully turned up a branch that led toward the middle of campus, putting the bookstore at my back and pushing thoughts of the cute, disconcerting boy to the back of my mind. Of course, then I saw him.

I was coming out between, according to my directory, one of the science buildings and the Infirmary when Carter ran past me. I was close enough to call to him, but I kept quiet and watched him instead.

He was jogging quickly, his stride sure and even, sweat making his shirt cling to his back and outline his broad shoulders. Watching him

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for only a minute, I could understand what Amy had said about the school wanting him to run on their track team.

He didn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious though. I don’t know what I expected, shifty glancing around maybe, a secret meeting at the woods’ edge. But he was just running. Fast. I came out from beside the building and took the same turn he had on the road that bordered the woods. When I crested the small hill, he was already disappearing into the trails behind the faculty quarters.

I shook my head and mentally slapped myself for my foolishness.

Just because I was going crazy didn’t mean that everyone around me was in on it. This was all on me. I hadn’t had a dizzy spell and nothing truly strange had happened since I arrived. The longer I thought about it, the less I believed I’d seen anything at all yesterday. I was nervous about being here, nervous about my growing craziness, and trying to make myself feel better by making everyone I met seem as weird as me. I took a trick from all of Aunt Tessa’s yoga classes and concentrated only on my breathing until my mind was sufficiently relaxed and I could enjoy my early morning walk.

I got to the gym a little early for swim practice. “Gym” wasn’t really the right word for it. Athletic complex was closer to the mark, but even that barely did it justice. It was enormous, modern, and as nice as any of the student centers at the biggest universities where my aunt had taught. The pool—or the natatorium, as my admissions counselor had called it—was in the back.

I found the girls’ locker room and Coach Anderson’s surprisingly cheery little office with ease. She directed me to the equipment room, where I was told to help myself to whatever I wanted, and assigned me a locker. I changed quickly and headed out, grabbing a towel from the generous stack by the door. Really, I could get used to this prep school thing. Coach Anderson didn’t waste any time and sent me straight into the pool for an evaluation. I was no swimming star in the making, but

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I was strong, and she thought I’d be a good distance swimmer by the end of the season.

The other students had started to trickle in during my test, some of them stretching, a few in the Jacuzzi to limber up, but most of them covertly—or openly—staring at me. Talk about awkward. Nothing like meeting a bunch of your new classmates for the first time while in your swimsuit, dripping wet and breathing a little hard. Before I had time to meet more than a handful of others, Coach blew her whistle and gave us our workouts.

The time flew by. Or glided, really. Going back and forth, the sounds of the pool and the other swimmers, concentrating on what my arms and legs were doing, all of that lulled my overactive brain into a sense of calm and normalcy. When the final whistle blew, I realized I’d enjoyed myself, though I was sure I’d be sore tomorrow. I met most of the girls back in the locker room, promptly forgetting all of their names, before I quickly showered and hung my new suit in my locker to dry.

As I was packing everything else in my bag, listening to two of my teammates chatter, I noticed one of the girls watching me. She was small, a little over five feet maybe, and slim, with shoulder-length pale blonde hair and average features that were made completely irrelevant by the largest, widest blue eyes I had ever seen. It was all you could do to look away from them, and it reminded me of Carter when he’d smiled at me.
I
reminded my stupid brain to give the Carter thing a rest, and tried giving the girl a tentative smile. She looked away without returning it. I’d never caught her name, and it seemed as though she kept to herself, not talking with any of the other girls on the team. I knew that she'd been watching me though, had felt the weight of her gaze like the heavy, wet hair down my back.

I LOOKED AROUND for Amy when I arrived at the dining hall for lunch. I was starting, a little guiltily, to think of her as my Northbrook

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life raft, but I honestly liked her too. I would have chosen to hang with Amy even if she hadn’t been my roommate, and when I spotted her at a crowded table, I knew I was far from alone in that. Thankfully, she seemed to like me too, or at least pity the new girl. She jumped up and waved me over.

“Lainey, ohmigosh, it’s all I’ve heard all day,” she gushed, and then adopted a husky, lower voice, “‘Ame, are you rooming with the new girl?’ and ‘Ammmmmy, dude, can you introduce me to your roomie?’

and ‘Hey Ame, can I come study with you later at your room?’” She snorted. “I swear, I need a freaking whip and chair to keep the animals at bay, not to mention an allergy pill for all the over-excited testos-terone I’ve been exposed to in the last twenty-four hours. Move over, idiot,” she finished, pushing the guy next to her—I thought he was Caleb, from swim practice this morning—over, and dragging a chair for me from the table behind her, right out from underneath what looked like an unsuspecting freshman.

Had I mentioned I really liked Amy?

I sat and gave I-thought-he-was-Caleb a sorry-she’s-crazy-but-thanks-for-moving smile, which, to my relief, he returned with a my-pleasure-and-we’re-used-to-it smile of his own. I was introduced to the few others around the table I hadn’t met in classes and settled into mostly listening to a lively conversation that touched on designer shoes, matter vs. energy, a recent action movie, and Shakespeare. I contributed a little on the two ends, was completely lost in the middle, and mainly thought to myself,
so this is what rich, smart prep school students
talk about?
Really? I was musing about that when Amy completely side-swiped me.