was looking at me the way he looks at you."
"A, those are not romance novels. They are Fantasy books. And B, what do you mean the way he looks at me?"
Anna jumped in as our resident socialite. She was also our self proclaimed romantic expert too. She was really relishing this. I wasn't.
"Even before the field trip, Thera, he has been watching you. Why do you think he sits behind you in Bio? Why does he take a seat in here at lunch where we can see him and he can watch you? We've all seen him look your way, right ladies?"
Lily and even Evony nodded their heads, but Evony's response was mechanical I noted. She was hearing us, but not listening really.
"Sometimes it's just a glance. Sometimes I see him staring like he's in a daydream."
"Or a psycho," Evony spoke up, momentarily refocused.
"We've noticed he watches you pretty often."
"That is crazy, Anna. I have never seen him looking at me. Like I said, we had barely spoken before this week."
Ryan Galead kept to himself most of the time. He would talk if someone initiated the conversation of if there was a sports competition he was participating in, but he didn't go out of his way to make friends or stand out like some star quarterback. We spotted him around town sometimes. Most of the time he was headed to the docks or sitting at Leary's. He never attended school events that I had seen, not that I had gone to more than a play or two really. Actually, that sounded a lot like me since we had moved here.
It was creepy. Why would he watch me? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't know anything about him. That had to change if I wanted to make sense of this. A plan began to form in my mind. That didn't mean I bought into the love sick boy watching from afar theory that my circle of friends apparently believed. Still...
"Lily, how do you feel about doing a little detective work and finding out a little more about Galead?"
My friend's eyes narrowed to small slits twinkling with mischief.
"You bet."
CURSEFELL
CHAPTER SIX
Homes were lit by strings of flashing lights twinkling red, purple, yellow, and green. The historical gas lamps lining Main Street in Stonecrest, retrofitted years ago with electricity, sat atop coal black poles wrapped around in candy cane patterned decoration. Their lights imitated the flickering flame they had housed at the turn of the century. It was all very quaint. A real postcard perfect scene. It was all an illusion.
Anna took my hand in hers. We had come downtown to find Anna's mom a gift for Christmas. Lily and Evony joined us to get holiday shopping done too. I had some molding clay I needed to finish the sculpted bust that I had been crafting for the Art final. It was also a good excuse to try and pull myself away from the melancholy mood this year's holiday had put me in. So far I was failing miserably.
I was tugged across the street by Anna, barely dodging a small white import that drove way too fast through our little town. She birded the driver well after he had passed and I couldn't help burst out laughing. My friend could be feisty when she wanted to be, especially if it involved one of her friends. Most people, I think, looked at her as the typical teen. She liked to talk about anything but school. Ask her about the future and she would tell you all about her dream of being the next big fashion designer. Bring up college and she was evasive. But what all those people forget is that they were young adults too. No doubt they gave similar answers. They had dreamed as big, planned as little, and felt the rays of adulthood waking them to a world as bright and large as they dared themselves to make it. Anna was no different than they had been,, none of us were, only they were now cool and
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley