Blue Violet - By Abigail Owen Page 0,3

the front office, dropped off her signed class slip, and headed for the parking lot. At least the first day of school was over. Tomorrow she’d be less of a novelty.

Ellie was walking out of the main building when she was ambushed by her new friends.

“Hey, Ellie!” Adelaide called out.

“Hi!” She waved and tried to keep walking, but the others caught up with her easily.

“How was your first day?” Adelaide asked, skipping up beside her.

“Typical first day in a new school,” Ellie grinned.

“So Nate, Lila, and I study together a lot. You probably already guessed that. Since you share some classes with us, I thought you might like to join us some time,” Adelaide continued.

Ellie didn’t want to encourage a friendship, as tempting as that seemed. At the same time, she didn’t want to drive Adelaide away.

“Sure! That sounds great.” She’d just have to make sure her schedule was booked any of the times they asked. They’d stop asking eventually.

“Okay. So how does Wednesday night sound to you?”

Nuts. She hadn’t realized that Adelaide would immediately make plans. And being new to town, her original excuse of busy would stand out as an obvious excuse.

“I think that will be alright, but let me check. Okay?”

“Sure,” Adelaide agreed.

Suddenly, Lila let out a squeal of delight. “Alex!” She shot across the front courtyard.

Beside Ellie, Adelaide limited herself to a milder reaction, just smiling widely. Ellie couldn’t quite see the person Lila had greeted with such enthusiasm until she launched herself into his arms, and Ellie had a direct view of him.

Suddenly Ellie’s world tilted at a slightly crazy angle. One moment she was walking along, trying to think of an excuse to miss out on studying. The next moment she could hardly breathe. Feeling slightly dizzy, Ellie wondered fleetingly if what she was feeling was some kind of effect from the boy’s powers.

The boy’s good looks could be considered almost in-your-face handsome… tall, broad shouldered, and with similar coloring to her own - black hair cropped short, slightly longer on the top, and blue eyes. Even from where she stood, she could see that his eyes were a paler blue than hers, almost silver. Drop dead hot was an understatement. Ellie had seen her fair share of handsome guys over her lifetime, but none had ever piqued her interest. And despite a rather optimistic personality, she did not believe in love at first sight. But something about this guy was getting to her after just one glance.

Adelaide muttered, “What’s Alex doing home?”

Ellie realized that she’d managed to keep casually walking despite the havoc occurring inside her. Alex hadn’t noticed her yet, first talking to Lila and then Nate as he joined them. She willed him to glance up and feared it at the same time.

And then he did. He looked up directly into her eyes… into her soul. It could only have been a few moments. Just seconds. Heartbeats. Adelaide gasped beside her, and the sound was sharp enough that it caused Ellie to break eye contact. She turned to a startled Adelaide, and without even thinking, put her hand on her arm. They both jumped when an electric jolt passed between them.

Ellie jerked her hand back. “You shocked me,” she accused Adelaide jokingly. Deliberately. Adelaide gave a somewhat distracted, half-hearted shrug and started walking again.

Ellie didn’t know how she did it, but she somehow pulled her thoughts away from what she’d just seen when she’d touched Adelaide and followed her. She kept her eyes lowered when they first approached the little reunion going on in the parking lot. She made sure to stop and stand just far enough back so when they were introduced Alex wouldn’t try to shake her hand.

“Ellie, this is Alex,” Lila said, waving a hand in her general direction. “He’s our older brother.

Ellie took a deep, silent breath, and pasted a blandly pleasant expression on her face. This usually had the effect of putting people at ease and causing them to not study her any further.

She looked Alex directly in the eyes and offered him a slightly lopsided smile. “Hi.” Her voice sounded a little too breathy to her sensitive ears.

In return, he gave her a long, lazy grin that caused her heart rate to increase even more. It hadn’t yet settled down from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. All Ellie could do was stare back and try desperately to get her erratic breathing under control.

“This is Ellie…” Adelaide broke the spell. “She just moved