For Ever by C. J. Valles Read Free Book Online

your class?”
    It feels strange asking about someone I’ve
never really seen before, but I am curious, considering he’s the
one I crashed into.
    “Let’s see. He transferred middle of last
semester.” I watch nervously as he glances at the stacks across the
room. “Talented kid. There were no art classes on his transcripts,
but I swear I’ve never seen someone produce as many viable pieces
as he has in such a short time. You should look at some of his
work.”
    I try not to look guilty about my snooping. I
can tell the teacher likes him, but there’s a chord of uncertainty
when Mr. Gideon talks about him. And I pick up the same strange
underwater quality that I saw when my classmate, Matt, envisioned
Ever. The image looks kind of like a TV channel that’s not getting
reception: squiggly and indistinct.
    “Everyone has their strengths,” Mr. Gideon
says reassuringly, misinterpreting my nosiness as anxiety. “I don’t
compare students’ work when I’m grading.”
    I nod and think how silly it would be to
compare my childish rendering of fruit in a bowl on the same scale
as the dozens of pieces I just saw. While Mr. Gideon didn’t sound
worried about my classmate’s continued absence, I can’t contain my
inner conspiracy theorist—not after Matt’s dramatic allegation that
my little episode had something to do with our classmate’s
disappearance. When Ashley gets to class, I walk with her to the
supply closet.
    “How was your weekend?”
    “Great! What about you?” Ashley asks a little
too brightly.
    I shake my hand to indicate it was all right,
and she bites her lip. That’s when I realize that everyone went to the movies. A little embarrassed, I remind myself that
these people barely know me, and I’m lucky I found a group willing
to talk to me at lunch.
    “Hey, give me your number,” Ashley says. “I
forgot to ask you last week.”
    I give her my cell number, which still has my
old area code, and ask for hers.
    “Ashley?”
    “Yeah?”
    I’m on the verge of asking about our missing
classmate, but I decide against it.
    “Did you have Bellarmine for Algebra II?”
    She smirks.
    “Yep, that guy’s an asinine jerk.”
    I laugh.
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
    The rest of the week passes without incident.
No episodes with haunted mirrors. No hallucinating, speaking in
tongues, or blacking out. The only downside is that with my mom
back at work, I get stuck taking the bus after school.
    The next week, life begins to feel almost
normal again. I get an A on my English paper. Math picks up right
where it left off at Pali, meaning I hate Algebra. And lunch in the
cafeteria with Ashley and the others starts to feel comfortable,
even fun. The only kink is that Josh keeps asking if I need a ride
home after school. He’s like a telemarketer who won’t stop calling.
I decide to renew my Internet search for used vehicles, because
based on almost every teen movie in existence, when a girl gets
rejected by a guy, she usually blames another girl instead of the
guy. Taylor, Ashley’s friend who has a thing for Josh, has barely
said a word to me. And I’m starting to like Josh—as a friend . The last thing I need is to end up in a fight over
some guy.
    On my fourth official Monday at Springview,
I’m convinced that the seat next to mine in Art will remain empty
indefinitely, which wouldn’t bother me so much if the timing of my
classmate’s disappearance didn’t make me feel weirdly responsible.
I keep trying with very little success to get a read on him from
other people. This is what I know: reactions to this guy fall into
two distinct categories. The first category is awestruck. The
second is hostile. It doesn’t surprise me that most of the girls
are in the first category, and the guys firmly in the second.
Either way, nobody seems to know, or care, why he just disappeared.
I find this more than a little weird, since just about everyone is
hyperaware of him on some level. Ashley and I are