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Chapter Three:
Amy
Over the next few days, I simultaneously helped Tony adjust to life at Burger and introduced him to everyone in our group. My sibs and Thea had taken an incredible shine to him, as had I- something about his sarcastic, straightforward personality never failed to make me laugh. He understood the situation we were in with my friends too, about how they were almost certainly plotting to make us a couple. Together perhaps we could keep them at bay.
A week after he’d been transferred, Tony and I were walking to the library before homeroom. We’d discovered our mutual love of escaping the mundane through reading about the impossible, and going to the library in the morning was becoming such a regular occurrence that it was almost as natural as eating breakfast.
“So, let me get this straight. It’s about CATS?” he asked skeptically as we wandered down the hall. Tony had a strong (and ridiculous) aversion to any type of cat, which I’d found out soon after suggesting to him one of my favorite book series. I was determined to convince him otherwise.
“Yes, Tony, they’re cats. Talking cats. Which, in essence, should make them human!” I said exasperatedly, then paused in my futile attempt at making the boy read Warriors to wave at a tall blue-eyed boy with sandy blond hair, walking in the opposite direction with a group of his friends. “Hi Jake,” I called, and he offered a friendly smile in return.
“Hey, lovebirds,” he teased, then ran away before I could kill him with my eyes. Tony scowled after him, but didn’t say anything. So far we hadn’t had any luck at all getting him to talk to our other classmates, and he hadn’t expressed any interest in getting to know them either.
The librarian, Ms. Pluck, rushed right up to us when we opened the wide double doors to the school library. She was bouncing excitedly up and down on the balls of her feet, brown hair carelessly flung over her shoulder and a dimpled smile on her young face. She was carrying a gigantic stack of books in her arms. “Tony, Amy, it’s great to see you! We just entered a whole bunch of new books into the system! Would you like to help put them away?” She held out the stack, and I noticed that they were all brightly colored novels with interesting, imaginative covers. The one on top in particular was amazingly illustrated. The cover bore a wreath of green vines and silver, gold and white flowers against a black background, each petal etched with different fantasy creature. Inside the circle was a title in glossy silver cursive, and around it was a know of rainbow colored dragons in all shapes and sizes.
“That’s awesome!” I said enthusiastically, taking some of the books off the top of her pile. “Of course I’ll help you- what better way to find a good book to read?”
Tony followed suit with a grin. The blue-eyed boy remained mostly an enigma to our group- neither he nor Will had talked about his past or his life at Roth, and we all got the feeling that we shouldn’t ask. But here in the library, I sometimes felt like I got a glimpse of the person he was under the whole antisocial facade.
As I shelved the new paperbacks, I watched him closely. It was something I loved to do, watching the way people acted when they thought I wasn’t around. Tony was deep in conversation with Ms. Pluck, smiley widely. It was another one of those smiles that, though this fact was skillfully concealed, were painfully fake. He really DID like the librarian, I knew that much, but whatever spook from his past haunted all of his smiles that I’d seen. Then again, it had only been a week and he didn’t know us too well yet. Give him time...
My mind wandered, as it often did, towards the future. Will and Tony were close, I thought to myself, but does that necessarily mean it’s still possible to get that close to him? Would Tony EVER accept us as his new friends, tell us stories like we tell him? And how long until that day comes?
A hand waved in front of my face while I was musing, and on instinct I grabbed it and twisted. Tony’s squeak of pain was so different from his normally deep voice that it was almost comical. I laughed even as I apologized, taking his injured hand and stroking it gently like I was petting a cat. His face was red again, but that was probably because I’d just killed his hand.
“Sorry!” I apologized again after I’d finished putting away both of our stacks and checked out the one with the colorful front cover, which was titled ‘The Wonderful World of Fantasy’. We walked back along the hall, which was twice as choked with eighth graders as it had been twenty minutes ago. Then again, Fridays were always excitable. The noise was so loud that the sound of the warning bell, which told us all to go to our homeroom every day, was nearly swallowed up in the chorus of voices as we slipped into our homeroom and stood inconspicuously in the back. “I didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“You didn’t!” he retorted. “Anyways, what book didja get? Another one of those crappy cat ones?” He snatched it out of my hands before I could answer and started reading the back cover while keeping me at bay with the other hand.
“The Wonderful World of Fantasy...?” I could tell from his expression that he was interested. Over the past few days I’d been studying him constantly, and I now knew how to tell his thoughts and emotions apart from the way he arched his eyebrows, tapped his fingers or bit his lip. It felt a little stalkerish, but then, it was my brothers who had suggested it and everyone knew that Leo and Arthur were excellent spies.
“Give me that!” I ducked under his arm and grabbed the thin black book with both hands, effectively getting it away from him. I stuck out my tongue as he reached for it again, and stomped on his foot when he got too close. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make him back away with a playful pout that I KNEW that Holly’d tried on Will before several times.
“C’mon, I was reading that!” he complained, crossing his arms and tapping his foot in a way I’d seen Will do a thousand times before. So he was starting to pick up on our habits... was that a good sign? Curious.
“Oh, you don’t really care.” I laughed and threw it back to him anyways, smiling at the way he eagerly resumed reading the summary and riffling through the pages. Each page seemed to be bathed in color, filled with interesting text and beautifully illustrated, some of them glittering in the fluorescent lighting. It was one of those books that had yellowish brown pages to imitate old age, with a place for your name in the front and sleek, glossy pages. Several brilliantly drawn dragons caught my attention, as well as a fairy with gossamer butterfly wings and a gryphon with magnificent gray-black wings and tawny eyes. And that was upside-down- I can’t imagine how Tony restrained himself from stopping on each page to soak it all up, like I wanted to.
“Here you go.” He handed it back to me, the brightness in his eyes the only giveaway that he’d been as interested as me in the book. The bell rang, and people started to file into the room slowly.
“You can sit with me and read it,” I offered in an attempt at friendliness, but he shook his head.
“I have algebra homework to do before second period,” he said. “But I’ll sit back here, if you don’t mind. My seat in the front is really annoying.”
“Enough said,” I agreed, pulling out my agenda to check that I’d finished all of my own homework and cross off another day on my calendar in black pen. In ten seconds I had all of my things under my desk and the amazing fantasy book open in front of me. Before I could start reading the description to a Forest Nymph, however, Tony sat down beside me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Where’s Leo?” he asked. My half brother was usually sitting next to me by this time, making me laugh.
“I think he said something about Dr. Jess,” I shrugged. Leo was very fond of our music teacher, often spending mornings, study halls and lunches with him, helping him with errands and such. “He’ll be in your algebra class later, in any case.”
“Hmm...” After a few minutes of alternately scribbling down equations on lined paper and the sounds of a pencil tapping on a desk followed, until at last he put the paper in his paper and turned to me again with a shy smile.
A real smile.
“Let’s look at that book now,” he suggested in a quiet, happy voice. I obliged, scooting my desk closer to his so that our sides were pressed together and pushing the book between us.
“Out loud?” I asked, feeling ridiculous for asking but still wanting an answer all the same.
“Sure!” It surprised me, but then he was reading in that low, soothing voice and I forgot what I’d been thinking about.
“The Forest Nymph is a gentle nature spirit, usually female, that embodies the essence of trees, other plants and the wilderness itself...”
It didn’t occur to me that Dr. Jess was out that day, or that Leo was high-fiving Ms. Pluck in the library as I lost myself in Tony’s voice.
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That. Took. FOREVER! I can't believe it took me like 2 hours to type this, god! I was a bit distracted but still.... Thats ridiculous. The good news is, my fingers dont hurt lolz. Enjoy! This is Amylina Horton, signing out!
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