Quietus//Teaser

Quietus//Teaser

Belle takes a book off the shelf and scrutinizes it with her hazel eyes. The cover is the same shade as the green in them. I’d know; I’ve stared at them enough. Never into them, though. Just sidelong glances and cursory eye-contact whenever we happened to come in contact. I don’t know why I can’t bring myself to do more than that. I also don’t know why I’m standing here now, in Borders, watching her pick out books from the safety of the cookbook isle instead of casually saying hello. Watching her as she brushes her long brown hair behind her ear and adjusts her thick-rimmed glasses, watching as—

“’Scuse me, miss, but you’re in my way.”

I jump and scoot out of the elderly lady’s glaring range.

Oh yeah, now I remember why I can’t do more than watch.

Belle is a girl.

So am I.

I trudge out of the cookbook isle and towards the bookstore’s café. Will is there behind the counter, thick black eyebrows raised. He hands me my usual—a French cream soda with half-and-half—and says, “So, how’d it go?”

“Stupid,” I say, forking over a wad of cash. He rings it up and comes out to sit with me beside the windows, where we can watch people as they trickle into the mall like so many coin-scaled consumer fish. Several people glance our way and one soccer-mom type squints at us. We’re kind of an odd couple, Will and I. First there’s him, the terrorist from India (all most people usually see is “Middle-Eastern,” which is annoyingly ignorant) with his dark cinnamon skin and spiky black hair, today streaked with electric blue. He changes his hair color so often you’d think he was a mood ring.

Then there’s me. Stick-thin but not tall, so no modeling job for me, and no boobs, either. I shouldn’t rag on Will about his hair. Mine’s currently short, boy-short as my mom says, and gelled into a weird little brown Mohawk. Can’t forget the eccentric clothes, either. Will can get away with being labeled Goth, but my fuzzy purple leg-warmers and “Keep the Earth clean, it’s not Uranus” shirt often leave people guessing. Hence the stares. I’m used to it.

“I hate watching you watch her, Cole. It’s like watching an alternative-genre teen flick or something,” Will says, and steals a sip of my soda. “You could at least talk to her. You’re allowed to do that.”

“I know,” I grumble. “She’s just so…” I clench my hands, searching for words to describe such an amazing girl. “She’s just so cute. And innocent. And we’re not.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Good idea. That way you can do all the talking, since Belle is headed this way.”

I bolt upright in my chair and clench the table. Will grins wickedly and inclines his head behind and to the right of me. Slowly I turn my head a little, trying to look cool, and indeed, she’s headed our way, several fresh hardbacks in hand.

“She’s looking at you,” Will says softly, in a sing-song voice. Before I can stop him, he raises a hand and waves at her. “Hey, Belle!”

Belle smiles, so help me God, and proceeds on to our table. “Hey,” she says in that sweet voice of hers. “Can I sit here? Café’s kind of crowded. Don’t want to end up sharing with some weird old guy.” I keep my eyes on the floor. She’s wearing a very cute pair of checkered flats I didn’t notice earlier.

“Sure.”

She pulls up the chair next to me and plops the books down. Fantasy titles, most of them. Ooh. Maybe I could strike up a conversation about those. Ha, maybe. I suck noisily on my soda despite the way my stomach’s beginning to churn. The half-and-half doesn’t help quell the nausea.

“Hi, Colette,” she says cheerily. I smile around my straw and swallow hard.

“Hi.” Will stares at me so hard that I have to add, “How’re you doing?” I don’t care that she’s used my full name, which nobody calls me by anymore, save my mother when she’s angry. She could call me anything she wanted and I wouldn’t care.

Wow, I am pathetic.

“Pretty good, actually! I got a bunch of cash for babysitting my stepsister and I decided to get some new books,” she says. In a conspiring sort of whisper she adds, “I like the way they smell. The paper and ink, you know?” She picks up the top book, the one with the cover the same shade as her eyes, opens it and inhales deeply with her nose against the page. Yep, that’s my girl.

“Yeah, like new car smell, only better,” I say, and she laughs. I made her laugh! Score!

“Exactly!”

Will stands up and stretches his arms out almost as widely as his smile is stretched across his face. “Well, ladies, I have to get back to work. You two have a nice chat. Want anything, Belle?”

Whoa, wait, what?

“A green tea chai, please.”

Will! You can’t do this to me!

“Comin’ right up,” he says, and after a wink, leaves me alone with the one person in the world I’d love to be alone with, and yet am terrified of at the same time. I’m going to punch him a new bruise on the drive home, I swear.

“Hang out here often, or are you book shopping, too?”

Out of reflex I turn and accidentally look straight at her for the first time. The light from the windows lights up the brown and green in her eyes like summer treetops viewed from below. I’m completely spellbound, letting eternity slip away while I stare into…

“You can see it, can’t you?”

“What?” I’m barely conscious of my mouth moving in response to hers. I feel like I’ve strayed into a dream. Sounds are fuzzy around the edges, and I’d swear the background noise has stopped completely.

But the dream only lasts a second because Will comes back to drop off Belle’s chai. She breaks our eye-contact as she turns to thank him and to sip at her drink. The feeling that I’ve done something foolish and embarrassing creeps over me and I draw back into my chair (when had I moved to the edge of it?) with what I hope is a casual look of indifference.

What just happened?

Belle picks up one of her books and starts reading as if she hadn’t just been talking to me a second ago. Maybe she wasn’t. The experience is running out of my mind like water through a sieve. I grasp at it frantically, but all I retain is the sense that something has changed.

So much for conversation. I people-watch while she reads, turning the pages at an alarming rate, and try to imagine myself in anyone else’s shoes but my own. Don’t get me wrong, I like my shoes, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder. What would it be like to be the elderly widowed man at the corner table, pouring over large-print romance novels? What would it be like to be the handsome college student near the counter, with the laptop and calculus books? The soccer mom with her squint and her morals, not to mention five boisterous kids?

As I’m watching this small selection of the human race, I realize Belle is looking at me.

“What?” I say, flustered. She takes another sip of chai and turns back to her book. I don’t expect her to say anything, but she does.

“Right now you’re the watcher, Colette. What will you do when you’re the one being watched?”

She closes her book, gathers her things, and leaves, but not without glancing back at me one last time. I watch her make her way through the crowded little tables and disappear into the bookshelves from whence she came. What’s that supposed to mean? People look at me all the time. It’s the high price of my sense of fashion.

Weird. I knew Belle was an oddity, but that was a little beyond strange.

And it only makes me like her more.