Home Song by LaVyrle Spencer

Author:LaVyrle Spencer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US

10

CHELSEA and Kent managed to avoid each other until classes passed between third and fourth periods. Until then he’d kept clear of his locker, where they used to meet, and she took alternative routes. But before fourth period he needed a notebook he’d forgotten and she—short of time—picked the quickest route to her social studies class, leading her past the spot where they used to rendezvous, exchange smiles, and feel their pulses quicken.

The memory stung them with embarrassment now.

Sure enough, she was barreling along behind a flock of kids when Kent came out of his locker aisle and they came face-to-face. They halted, pivoted, and veered apart as fast as humanly possible. They both blushed, and he hurried to get away in one direction while she did the same in the other.

They both felt stupid.

And embarrassed.

And guilty of something obscure.

* * *

Honors English, fifth period, was a fact of life. Mrs. Gardner, teacher, had been dreading it as much as Kent Arens, student. But the clock moved, the bell rang, and during the 12:13 shuffle he approached the door of room 232, where she stood as her class filed in.

She knew she should greet him, but couldn’t.

He knew he should say something, but couldn’t.

They encountered each other with the bristling stares of a cat and dog meeting in a doorway, each knowing it can hurt—or be hurt by—the other.

She saw in him the spit and image of her husband.

He saw in her the woman who’d married his mother’s seducer.

Each viewpoint had its deserved antagonisms, but a profound respect for authority had been drilled into Kent from the time he could grasp it, and he nodded stiffly as he passed Mrs. Gardner.

She tipped up the corners of her lips but no smile domed her cheeks or touched her eyes. When she closed the door to begin class, he was seated along with everybody else. Avoiding eye contact with him became a concentrated study throughout that hour while she faced him and spoke of Greek plays and mythology, passed out copies of the Odyssey, and gave historical background about the classic. She explained why they were taking the chronological approach to literature, listed the segments of study, recommended available videos and paperback books that would bring Greek classics alive for them, and passed out a paper listing suggestions for extra-credit work for this unit.

Throughout her lecture Kent kept his frosty gaze fixed on her shoes. Peripherally, she was aware of this, and of the fact that he sat with his spine curved slightly to the right, an elbow on the desktop and a finger covering his upper lip, scarcely moving through the entire fifty-two minutes. Once she forgot herself and looked him square in the face, startled by how much he resembled Tom. That glance touched off a peculiar sense of déjà vu, as if she were teaching the seventeen-year-old Tom Gardner, whom she’d never actually known.

The bell rang, her students began filing out, and Claire stood behind her desk, making herself

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