Free Charcoal Tears by Jane Washington Page A

table. He reached me a moment later, chuckling.
    “Nice try, little ghost.” He caught my arm and steered me back to his table with the popular kids. I swallowed past a lump in my throat, but shuffled alongside him.
    We sat down and he dropped a sandwich into my lap. I muttered my thanks, and he smiled as though it was no big deal, but they had packed it especially for me, knowing that I wouldn’t have any food. I looked over at Tariq, remembering his blush from the day before when I had given him the other half of my lunch. It had embarrassed him. Without eating any of the sandwich, I walked over to him and dropped it onto the table in front of him.
    “You left your lunch in my bag again,” I tried to sound annoyed, and even feigned an eye roll.
    He didn’t blush as he had the day before, and I knew that I had done well. He smiled wide, and his friend with the red hair winked at me. I returned to Noah, and a minute later a body slid in on my other side. I looked over, expecting to see Cabe, but it was an unfamiliar boy. He raised his brows at me.
    “You have different coloured eyes. I never noticed before.”
    The whole table seemed to descend into silence, and I shrank back from him, quickly averting my eyes to my lap. My brows drew together in confusion as I realised one thing: I didn’t avert my eyes from Cabe or Noah, like I did with the rest of the world. How strange. Noah dropped his chin onto the top of my head but didn’t voice the back-the-hell-off variation that I had come to half expect from him, and I realised why a second later, when a hand landed on the shoulder of the boy sitting next to me.
    “You’re in my seat, Garret.” Cabe clipped the words out in a warning.
    “Sorry dude, was a little shocking to see, that’s all. She’s still super hot.”
    Cabe’s hand tightened on Garret’s shoulder, his fingers digging in until the other boy winced. Garret held his hands up, and Cabe released him, allowed him to stand up and back away a little.
    “O-kay then.” Garret’s words were drawn out with exaggerated slowness. “I’m just going to sit down here.” As he drew further away, he whispered to one of the other guys, who spluttered out a laugh.
    I knew my face was flaming, and the emptiness in my belly was starting to pain me enough that I almost wished I’d eaten half of the sandwich.
    That wasn’t normal , I told myself , did you see how the other student’s reacted? This isn’t normal.
    “You coming to the party next Saturday?” Cabe asked, his voice cheerful and light once again.
    It took me a moment to realise that he was talking to me. “Ah, yeah. I think.”
    “You think?” He handed a banana to me and I started to eat.
    I shrugged. “Yes?”
    He laughed, shaking his head. “Don’t look like that. You might get a chance to meet Silas, we’re trying to convince him to come.”
    “I think he met me already,” I offered.
    “Oh?” Cabe’s smiled hovered. He knew what I was talking about.
    I made a binocular with my hands and peered through at him, imitating spying on him. He chuckled and tugged on my ponytail playfully before starting on his lunch. I pondered the rest of my banana, wondering if I wanted to meet the guy who had my house under surveillance.
    Lunch passed too quickly, but my discomfort at the sound of the bell was soothed over by the promise of art class. Quillan must have decided on a lecture for this lesson, as the easels had been put away and desks were roughly lined up. We found three desks in the back and by the middle of the lesson, Cabe and Noah had pushed their desks up against mine. Noah was drawing absently on my hand as he listened to Quillan, and Cabe was mostly staring out of the window. Quillan watched us, but didn’t do anything about our seating arrangement. I had never considered Quillan a strict teacher, but I still might have expected him to discourage this. When the bell rang, the desks shifted subtly away and the rest of the class barely