Second Sight by Maria Rachel Hooley Page B

questions I’m not ready
to answer, and as the bell rings, I stand, ready to fly out the
room when Kane catches my arm while Sarah and Jayvee scoot around
us and head into the hall, whispering about some guy at the front
of the room.
    “ Hey, I guess I kind of
touched a nerve a few minutes ago. I’m sorry. It’s none of my
business what happened, and if you want to tell me, you will.” He
slides from his desk and stands, towering over me. “I just don’t
want things to be weird between us like this: I didn’t mean to
upset you.” Around his wrist, he wears a fiber bracelet, and I am
struck by how different he really is.
    “ It’s okay,” I manage.
“Just a few things I haven’t worked out yet.” I look down at my
schedule, trying to figure out where my next room is.
    “ Can I see?” He points at
it, and when I nod, he takes it and reads through my class list.
“Well, it looks like we have four out of five classes together.
What a shocker.”
    “ What do you
mean?”
    He shrugs. “It’s the small-town thing. We all
have pretty much the same classes because this town isn’t big
enough to have more than about twenty teachers. So we all have Ag
Science or Bask Weaving 101 for electives. Now those classes are
definitely going to come in handy.”
    I can’t keep from laughing as we head out
into the hall. “Sounds like you enjoy small towns as much as I
do.”
    “ Hate ‘me.” He shakes his
head. “I moved here last fall, and I haven’t been able to accept
that the biggest pastime around here is watching the grass grow. Or
not. Go figure.”
    He stops in front of a locker and opens it to
slip his spiral inside. “What about you?”
    I chew my bottom lip and try to form a
reasonable answer. “Let’s just say my last experience in a small
town wasn’t so hot, and I’d rather be someplace like Dallas or even
Knoxville right about now.”
    “ I can’t say I blame you.”
He shuts the locker, and we move on with the flow. Even though I
stare ahead, knowing I’m not graceful enough to watch where I am
going, I feel his gaze lingering on me.
    “ So what do you for fun
around here?” I watch Jayzee and Sarah duck into the bathroom while
we keep going.
    “ That depends on what you
call ‘fun.’” A group of students stand in our path, forcing us to
move to the side to brush past.
    “ Not watching the grass or
basket weaving, that’s for sure.”
    Kane chuckles. “We go out to the Cherokee
National Forest a lot. Do some camping. Go swimming in the Tellico
River. That sort of thing.”
    “ Figures,” I
mutter.
    “ Meaning?” Another narrow
passage through students. Doesn’t anybody go to class?
    “ There’re no bowling alleys
or movie theaters here, are there? Nothing even remotely resembling
the modern world.”
    He shrugs. “Basically.” At this point, he
gestures to a classroom to my right. “That’s our math class. Ms.
Martin is pretty strict. You definitely don’t want to get on her
bad side.”
    I want to burst out laughing because Jimmie
has unknowingly placed me in yet another small town where I’ll
stand out like a rose bush blooming in December. Camping and
fishing aren’t exactly on my list of preferred activities, so this
could definitely be one long senior year.
    “ What about cemeteries?” I
ask as we head into the classroom, our bodies sandwiched between
two other small groups.
    “ Graveyards? Why?” He’s
looking at me like I’ve suddenly morphed into a green-skinned
monster.
    “ What—you have something
against them?”
    He shakes his head. “Not sure how to answer
that, Lizzie.”
    I chuckle; his confused expression says it
all. “No, I’m not some freak. I like to take pictures of statues,
and sometimes I find cool ones in cemeteries, that’s all. Feel
better?”
    “ Definitely.”
    Although I figured we would beat Sarah and
Jayzee, they must have passed us in the hall because in the back of
the room I see the two of them sitting across from one