Free Deep Blue Secret by Christie Anderson Page B

Why are you so distracted? Is there someone special you're hoping to see? She assumed I was thinking about Nick Christensen which was of course way off. It actually seemed like she wouldn't stop talking about him. Maybe she should be going out with him tomorrow. Then again, a whole day at Disneyland would be a great way to keep my mind off the boy from the beach—if that was even possible.
    After Spanish class I was a little nervous about going to photography today, fearing another traumatic, emotional experience.
    Mr. Brown presented another Ansel Adams piece, making it a theme for the week. But when he displayed Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome to the class, it didn't even faze me. The tree could’ve been perceived as depressing, the way it hung low and billowed over like it was crying, but I didn’t have any problems with my emotions.
    Instead, all I could picture was the mystery guy poking his face from behind the trunk, winking at me, taunting me to chase him.
    After school I went straight home and decided to get my homework out of the way, but not before wrapping myself back in the black hooded sweatshirt I left on my bed this morning.
    I didn’t have a desk in my bedroom so I usually worked in the center room of the house, the computer room as my mom called it. I believed the standard term was home office, but my mother despised the word office .
    After she had me she continued working at the hospital for a while, but when my grandparents died she was left on her own. Her schedule was too difficult to maintain while trying to raise a child by herself and she couldn’t find a job with a day shift at a doctor’s office. So she gave up what she loved to be home and take care of me.
    She worked reception at a large insurance company for several years, but she never enjoyed it.
    I could tell she was unhappy. One time I overheard her talking about it on the phone. She said she felt like an animal trapped inside a tiny cage that was draining the life right out of her.  She would never say that to me though. She was talented at masking her feelings and putting on a happy face. Once I was old enough to be home alone I talked her into going back to the hospital and she seemed much happier now.
    I scooted my chair to the L-shaped desk and opened my math book. It took me a good hour to complete. I had to keep flipping back to review the example problems, probably due to my trouble listening to the teacher this morning. But I figured it out eventually.
    A crick formed in my neck from hunching over my books. All I had left was some reading for Econ, so I moved to my bed to get more comfortable. I lay on my stomach using a pillow to rest my chest on, legs crossed in the air.
    Supply and demand wasn’t exactly the most interesting subject in my opinion. It made sense how it worked—out there in the business world—but I wondered if it would ever be relevant information for me in the future. If it was, would I even remember any of it by then? It felt pretty irrelevant to my life at the moment.
    I sped through the rest of it, shoved the book aside and reached for my radio on the nightstand. The bed bounced as I hopped back onto it and rolled over on my back. With my hands clasped beneath my head, I waved my feet back and forth to the beat of the music, singing whenever I knew the lyrics.
    I was amazed how long I’d been able to focus without my mind wandering back to those dreamy green eyes—especially while I was surrounded in his big, nice-smelling sweatshirt; but they started to creep back into my thoughts. This was going to be a really long afternoon if I started back up with the daydreams again.
    I needed distraction.
    I went out to the living room and flipped aimlessly through the channels on TV, finally stopping at a movie on one of the cable stations. It was a romantic comedy I'd seen several times.
    The first half of the movie seemed like it was actually helping, but as soon as the story focused on romance, the attractive