Style by Chelsea M. Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

of desks sliding and people moving seats and then it was just me and Kyle.
    I looked at her and she looked at me and it was inevitable.
    “Guess I have no choice,” I said, trying to sound bored while my heart was beating roughly three thousand miles a minute.
    “Yup,” she said, sounding irritated. Mr. Hurley handed out our assignments. Great. We had to pick from a list of topics, write a three page paper together and do a presentation for the rest of the class. We were going to have to work together for the next two weeks.
    Oh, hell.
     
     

     

     
    I was really beginning to hate Mr. Hurley. Did he understand how horrible it was to make you work with someone you didn’t want to work with? Hadn’t he been in school once? Maybe it was too long ago. He was old and had gray hair.
    Whatever the reason, I had to look forward to working very closely with Stella for the next two weeks. No way around it. She and I would have to work in-class and outside to get everything done. Great. Just great.
    “So . . .” she said, grabbing the topic list before I could reach for it. “I think we should do the one about feminism. Because Jane Eyre ’s clearly a feminist text.” I hadn’t even seen the choices and I wanted to smack her because that did sound awesome.
    “Do I get a say, or are you just going to do the entire thing yourself?” I said, my tone dry. She raised one absolutely perfect eyebrow and handed me the paper. I scanned the topics and I could feel her studying me. I pushed my glasses back up my nose and looked at her. I hadn’t really absorbed what the paper said and I couldn’t tell her that.
    “Fine, we can do the feminism thing. But I want to write the paper. I type really fast.” She gave me another eyebrow raise and I tried to do it too, but failed. My eyebrows weren’t that coordinated.
    Something passed over her face and she slid her eyes back down to the paper.
    “Fine. But I get to do the presentation.”
    “Fine.” I was absolutely fine with that. She was much more of a performer than I was, with the cheerleading and all. I’d probably end up stumbling over my words and messing it up. Stella probably knew that too.
    There was a moment where neither of us knew what to say. The quiet hum of talk seemed distant. It almost felt like the two of us were completely alone. And then Mr. Hurley walked over and cleared his throat.
    “Better get started, ladies.” He gave us a Stern Look and I glanced at Stella. For a brief second, I could have sworn she was holding in a smile. But she smoothed her expression like a wrinkle out of fabric and it was gone.
    “Guess we should start,” I said to her.
    “Guess we should.”
     

     
    T he rest of the class we spent in terse conversation. I was in charge of pulling quotes from the book we could use in our paper and Stella was busy looking up other sources on one of the classroom tablets.
    For the most part, we could work quietly, but when we did have to exchange a few words, it was short and to the point.
    Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. As if it was planned that way, a shaft of sunlight broke through one of the windows and lit her hair on fire. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she looked like an angel. And then she turned and gave me a look and I edited my assessment. Fallen angel. Fallen angel that was kinda bitter about the whole thing.
    It was just then that I realized I’d been staring. Dammit.
    I shoved my face in my book and tried to get back to work. A moment later I looked up because she’d cleared her throat.
    “What do you think about this?” Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it and I nearly fell out of my seat when she leaned over with the tablet to show me whatever was on the screen. I looked down at it, but it could have been written in emojis for all I noticed. She was too close. Way too close and I was freaking out about it. My heart was pounding so much that I was sure she could hear it and my hands