Free Ice by Elissa Lewallen Page B

possibly feel like home? I told myself I was being dependant on Justin if I stayed, and that wasn’t right; I would have to be independent after the school year was over and would move back to California and live with Charlotte. I needed to be strong and shouldn’t be an inconvenience on Justin any longer than I had to be. I could always visit him from time to time, and call him.
    As the day went on, I couldn’t get the image of the wolves out of my head. I washed Justin’s clothes Kavick had worn and returned them to his room. Justin never knew that they were missing.
     
    Two weeks later, I started school. I figured I would never see Kavick again, and that was fine. At least, I told myself that, too. I knew that it was for the best , despite how much of a nice person he might have seemed.
    I got hellos from nearly every one of the students in the minute high school, but only a few people were actually friendly enough to carry on conversations with me.
    There was one girl who always tried to make conversation with me; Molly Straley. She had straight blond hair that barely brushed her shoulders, dark brown eyes and tan skin. She eagerly told me her life’s story at lunch, saying her hair wasn’t naturally blond and that her mother was part Eskimo, Yupik to be exact. She pushed her rectangular black glasses up her nose and then proceeded to ask me two thousand questions. I quickly learned that she liked to talk and that she was nosey, but she was the only one who had given me a truly warm welcome.
    We had many classes together, and after seeing my schedule, she decided to follow me around school, filling me in on everything useful, as well as everything useless.
    For example: she thought it was important that I know exactly who scratched “lily and tyler 4 eva” on the wall in the girls’ bathroom. I could have guessed it was “Lily,” but Molly told me everything that happened to Lily Manheim and Tyler Booth last year, including how she had dumped him because she thought he didn’t give her enough attention.
    As we walked out of the school building at the end of the day, Molly’s big t-shirt and baggy jeans made the swishing sound that I had become accustomed to hearing. The first thing my eyes saw when I stepped outside was the parking lot of a little grocery store across the street. Behind it was a wall of trees, which I was accustomed to seeing behind every building in this town. But, then I n oticed a familiar person leaving that parking lot. The person who seemed vaguely familiar was a pale faced, black and white haired young man skateboarding along beside someone who I didn’t recognize.
    I felt my jaw drop and I stopped walking for a second. Molly immediately stopped, as well, and turned to me. “What’s up?”
    I tried to act as casual as possible as I resumed my walk to the school bus with her. I pointed straight ahead and said, “Do you know who those two boys are?”
    She squinted her eyes and pushed up her glasses. After a few seconds she tipped her head back and said, “Oh, yeah! That’s Kevin and Tom Skarling. They graduated last year. I had a couple of classes with them. Tom was kind of popular. The bad kind of popular with the boys, but the good kind of popular with the girls, if you know what I mean. Kevin was kind of popular with the girls, too, because he was like that nice bad boy every girl wants. But the guys hated Kevin, too. In fact, all the guys at school hate the Skarlings.”
    As we boarded the bus I asked, “Why is that?”
    We took our seats in the back and I sat next to the window so that I could peer out at the boys in question. Kavick was wearing a gray t-shirt that looked like the sleeves had been ripped off , revealing the muscles of his pale arms, and faded blue jeans. It was only 59 degrees, but he was dressed like it was a hot, summery California day. The person walking beside him with short black hair was dressed in a black t-shirt and cargo shorts.
    “Kevin was kind