Blue Violet - By Abigail Owen Page 0,22
to be occupying way too much of her brain space these days. Too much for her comfort.
“If you’re here alone, why don’t you join us?” she said to Brian. She waved her hand in the general direction of the group.
Brian looked pleased and glanced at his watch. “I have to leave in about thirty minutes,” he said. “But I could hang out ‘til then.” He stood up, collected his gear, and followed her across the room.
When they approached the table, Ellie explained to her friends, “I invited Brian to join us while he’s here.”
“Hey, Reynolds!” Nate greeted Brian with a high-five. Nate played tight-end on the school football team, while Brian was the quarterback and team captain. The two boys were understandably friendly even though it was off-season.
“Brian, this is our brother, Alex,” Lila said. The two boys shook hands with a nod. Brian pulled out a chair and got settled.
“I’d better get to work,” Alex announced. With a casual salute, he left the rest of them to their studies.
After a little while, when Brian and Nate seemed to run out of conversation about basketball, Ellie nonchalantly asked, “So what movie are we going to see Friday, Brian?” Looking at the others at the table she kept her expression carefully innocent as she added, “Are you guys going, too?”
Lila glanced at Brian. “Is a group going to see a movie?”
Listening to Brian’s thoughts, Ellie almost laughed out loud as he mentally gave up on having a date with her. He just barely stopped himself from answering with a sigh. “Yeah,” he said. Ellie had to give him some credit, he bounced back quickly. “I’m getting a group together to go on Friday. You guys in?”
“What’s the movie?” Nate asked. “I’m not going to see some lame chick flick.” He scrunched up his face comically, eliciting a laugh from the others. Adelaide bopped him in the arm.
Brian named a movie that was definitely a guy’s guy type movie. All action, lots of blood probably, short on plot, but very entertaining.
Nate punched a fist in the air. “Yeah, man!” he exclaimed. “I’m in.”
Adelaide and Lila rolled their eyes in unison. “Not really my type of movie,” Lila said with a wry twist to her lips. “But I’m in, too.”
Adelaide shrugged her shoulders in resignation. “I go where Nate goes,” she agreed, snuggling in to him.
“What about you, Ellie?” Adelaide asked.
Since Ellie happened to enjoy that genre of movie, she grinned. “I’ve already told Brian that I’d go,” she confirmed. “I hope that it’s going to be as good as the first two.”
Both boys gave her a dumbfounded look. “No way,” Nate teased. “A girl who likes action movies? I don’t believe it.”
“Hey! Lots of girls like action movies,” Ellie defended.
“Not the girls in my life,” Nate declared, winking at Adelaide.
Ellie tapped her pen on her notebook. “I like almost all types of movies, but action and fantasy happen to be my favorites. Best movie ever, hands down… Star Wars.”
“Wait,” Brian narrowed his eyes at her. “Which one?”
“Duh…” Ellie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Episode four.”
“I beg to differ,” Nate scoffed. “Empire is clearly the best of the Star Wars movies.”
Ellie shook her head. “The Empire Strikes Back is too dark for me.”
“Sorry to interrupt your geek-out moment,” Lila started. “But after listening to basketball talk for twenty minutes, I’m afraid that sci-fi talk would send me over the edge.”
Ellie just laughed and bent her head back to her studies. About the time Brian left, Ellie moved on to her English assignment, writing her term research paper. This happened to be one of Ellie’s favorite assignments at this school so far. She was researching Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, one of her favorite novels, rich in both characters and in satire. The internet provided the opportunity to do the majority of her research from the comfort of her home, but Mrs. Cavender had insisted that her students include citations from real books. What better place to do that research than in the library? With that in mind, Ellie hopped up and went to the computer terminal and started to look up material that might help her with the assignment.
She was standing amidst the aisles leafing through one of the titles when a voice murmured in her ear, “That must be fascinating reading.”
She was so startled that she dropped her book and jumped back. She managed to remain cognizant of the library rules, and restrained herself to a little squeak of surprise, rather than a