Blue Violet - By Abigail Owen Page 0,20

the boy from Ellie’s economics class.

“Kayla just needs to back off. She’s soooo obvious, coming on to Brian that way,” Ellie caught Rose’s thoughts during lunch.

“Jeez. Rose should get a clue that Brian is not remotely into her,” Kayla was thinking during economics.

Brian tended to be the focus of a lot of the girls at the school, and Ellie could understand why. He was hot, outgoing, genuinely nice, smart, and athletic. A good catch for anyone. Brian didn’t tend to show favoritism for any one girl, which led all the girls interested in him to think they had a chance. It was silly, but this small bit of drama managed to keep Ellie’s mind occupied to get her through the day.

As soon as her last class was over, Ellie met Lila, Adelaide, and Nate in the parking lot and drove them all to the library. Ellie hadn’t been there yet. The building was one of the first you came to when going down the main street of downtown Estes Park. All wooden beams and stone, it looked more like a lodge than a library. It wasn’t very busy on a Thursday night in March.

They trooped into the building and headed upstairs where the tables and study carols were located.

“Awesome!” Nate exclaimed. “The biggest table is still open.”

They pulled out chairs and spent the first several minutes getting settled and spread out…organizing their books and notes and booting up their laptops.

Ellie had never studied with other people before, always working on her homework in the middle of the night, and never allowing herself to make friends at any of her previous schools. In general, her impression was that most students used studying in a group as an excuse to socialize, never really getting any work done.

As Ellie looked at her new friends, she thought, I should just tell them who I am.

“Don’t you dare, Ellie,” Griffin’s voice echoed in her mind. “You agreed we would wait until I could find out a little more about them.”

Keeping her expression carefully blank, she mentally replied, “This is getting silly, Griffin. I know these are good people.”

“Just a little longer Elle. I can’t shake this feeling that something is wrong. At least give me till the end of the week. That’s only a few more days. Okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly.

Breaking the mental contact with her brother, Ellie turned to concentrating on school work. Fairly quickly, the three girls knocked out studying for their test scheduled for the end of the week. Since they were all fluent, it wasn’t that hard. French was Ellie’s “easy A” class. Apparently it was the same for Adelaide and Lila.

“How’d you get so good?” Lila asked as she put away her textbook, and pulled out homework for another class. They’d decided they were all ready for the exam.

Ellie answered with her usual practice of sticking as closely to the truth as she could and being as vague as possible about the rest. “My mother’s side of the family’s from France.” She made sure to gloss over the verb tense as she said it. “I’ve spoken it since I was a child.”

Ellie caught a slightly perplexed look on Lila’s face. But she covered it up so rapidly, Ellie wondered if she’d really seen it.

“Did your parents meet in France?” Adelaide asked propping her chin on her hand.

“No… ummm… they met in the U.S. Most of my family was here by then.” Ellie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hated getting creative with the truth. She was brilliant at it, but hated it, regardless.

“Hi, guys,” a deep voice conveniently interrupted the conversation. His voice. Her heart raced and her breath tightened in her chest.

Alex was standing directly behind her. Ellie took a quick second to compose herself before she turned around to stare directly into his silver-blue eyes.

“Hey,” he said softly, talking to her alone, giving her long hair a gentle tug.

“Hi, Alex.” Ellie was proud of how she managed to pull off a casually confident sounding reply. “What’re you doing here?”

“Working on some research for Dad.” He grabbed a chair from the table and straddled it beside her.

“Don’t look now,” Lila leaned over to Ellie to whisper. “But Brian Reynolds is staring at you.”

Ellie kept her expression carefully neutral. She’d heard a lot about Brian today listening in on thoughts of various girls at school. But she hadn’t bothered to listen to Brian’s thoughts, and so hadn’t been aware that he was even at the library.

“I’m sure he’s not looking