“201? You must like chemistry.”
“I guess.”
Kate moved closer, putting her things on the table next to the girl's backpack.
She stuck out her hand.
“I'm Kate. I'm a friend of Mr. Clark. He's been helping me with chemistry, too.”
The brief smile returned, and she shook Kate's hand gingerly. “I'm Stacy.”
She went back to work, pulling a thick, heavy-looking textbook from the depths
of her backpack.
“Hi, Stacy.” Stacy…the girl one of the Thread Heads had mentioned the
other morning?
She tried to ignore how much the girl reminded her of herself at this age.
Shy, pretty but probably afraid to think it. Her brief smile had shown a glint of
metal. Braces. Kate had forgotten how much she'd hated to smile when she had
braces. Two whole years of high school photos with just a tight-lipped, grim Mona Lisa smile, not to mention junior high. Courtesy of some orthodontic condition she could pronounce. One thing she hadn't forgotten how much high school could suck.
“So, do you take any art classes?” Kate pointed to the drawings next to the
backpack.
“There aren't many to take, but I've done some extra-credit painting.”
“What year in school are you?”
“I'm a senior.”
“Oh, almost ready for college?”
“I guess.”
“And you like chemistry, too?”
There was a lot longer pause as if Stacy was deciding something. She didn't
look up, just said, “Not really,” in a small voice.
Kate's eyebrows arched slightly. “But you're taking the second chemistry
class? I'm guessing that's what the two-oh-one stands for, right?”
“Yeah.” Another pause. “My parents think I need to get as much science as
possible. For college. So I can get a good job.”
Now where have she heard that before? “Let me guess. One or both of your
parents work at Nitrovex?”
That got a direct look in the face. “How did you know?”
Kate chuckled. “Lucky guess. I bet half the town works there.”
“I guess.”
Kate noticed Stacy's unopened chemistry binder on the table. It was covered
in intricate doodles. Animals, shapes, filigree, all intertwined. She opened the binder and saw more doodles in the margins as well as whole pages of drawings.
Cats, lions, a girl with hair streaming in the wind as she stared from a cliff out at the ocean, hands clasped behind her back.
“Stacy, these are really good.”
Stacy's head popped up. Her face grew pink when she saw Kate looking through her binder. “Oh. Those are just things I do. In my notes when I'm bored.”
“Well, they're good.”
Brief smile. “I like art the best, but my dad wants me to do something in science, like be a doctor or something.”
