In the Image of Grace by Charlotte Ann Schlobohm Read Free Book Online Page A

father. It was peach and very soft and
fuzzy, it felt like a rabbit, luckily it was not made of one. I
checked. It was almost the shape of an upside down flower. It fit
snuggly around the top of my head and kind of belled out at the
bottom. It was the cheeriest thing I picked out that day. Clarissa
had her hair up in what seemed now to be her signature ponytail and
wore a pink ski vest over her shirt. She kept talking to Jeremy as
we walked. It seemed she discovered she liked talking to other
people because our whole lives we’ve only had each other to talk
to. The drill went something like this.
    “What year are you?” Clarissa asked.
    “Senior,” he replied.
    “What is your full name?”
    “What?”
    “First, middle, last.”
    “Why? Are you going to steal my identity? Get a
mortgage in my name, a bunch of charge cards and ruin my
credit.”
    “No,” Clarissa giggled.
    “All right then. Jeremy James Moretti.”
    “What are your hobbies?”
    “Uh, music and I like poetry, mainly from the beat
generation and music again I guess.”
    “Really, that sounds like you just made it up.”
    “Do you want me to say watching football and
drinking?”
    “We’ll go with the first. Where do you live?”
    “Up on the northwest side, way up on the northwest
side actually.”
    Clarissa paused to think of something else to ask and
then continued. “Where are you going to college?”
    Jeremy shrugged. “I dunno, that’s still in discussion
with my mom and stepdad.”
    “Ever kill anybody?”
    “No, well at least not intentionally.”
    Clarissa’s mouth fell open.
    “I’m joking.”
    “Good.”
    “Anything else?”
    “When I think of more I’ll get back to you.”
    Jeremy bobbed his head. It kind of made him look like
a pigeon.
    Isabelle quietly walked along with us just taking in
the atmosphere. The tips of her ears and nose were a rosy pink
because she wasn’t wearing a hat, just a grass green pea coat. I
couldn’t believe we were on the campus of what we always referred
to as our father’s university. It was always off limits to us like
the rest of the world. I wondered how he would react if he found us
there. What could he have really done anyways? We reached the edge
of the main campus and waited for the light to turn and walked
across the street looking at the address on the buildings. We found
the one we wanted and climbed the front steps. An overwhelming
feeling of anxiety came over me. I stopped on the second step.
    “Wait,” I said stopping everybody else. “What are we
doing exactly?”
    “Getting answers,” Isabelle quietly replied.
    “What for, will any of it really make a difference
now?”
    “We have to for Elizabeth,” Clarissa said.
    I sighed and looked over at Jeremy. He was probably
thinking I didn’t come all this way with you girls for nothing. He
walked down the steps and grabbed my hand and we walked into the
building together. Clarissa started looking at the room numbers. “I
don’t think it’s on this floor, the second floor.”
    We walked to the end of the hall, found some stairs
and went up.
    “201 that’s it,” Clarissa bleated with excitement.
“Oh God, I’m nervous. What are we going to say?”
    “We can’t just bust in there,” remarked Isabelle. “Is
class still in session?”
    “I don’t know,” Clarissa responded. We were hoping to
catch Mr. Carl right as his class ended, so then we couldn’t miss
him.
    “I’ll check,” Jeremy volunteered grabbing the door
handle. Right as he grabbed the handle students started pouring
out. We didn’t wait for them all to leave; we kind of shoved past
them, so Mr. Carl couldn’t slip out. We made our way across the
lecture hall and saw Dr. Carl Williams standing up front wearing a
tan blazer and talking to a couple students. Jeremy coughed, which
made Mr. Carl look up. He immediately recognized us and excused
himself from the students. He had a puzzled look on his face, his
eyebrows were drawn together and his lips