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After school she walked home slowly. The sun and fresh air invigorated her and made the queasy feeling in her stomach disappear completely. Nonetheless, when she selected her clothing the next morning, she went back to a tank top.
At the beginning of bio, David sat down in the chair next to her. “Do you mind?” he asked.
Laurel shook her head. “The girl who usually sits here spends the whole class doodling hearts for someone named Steve. It’s a little distracting.”
David laughed. “Probably Steve Tanner. He’s super-popular.”
“Everyone goes for the obvious person, I guess.” She pulled out her textbook and found the page Mr James had written on the whiteboard.
“Want to have lunch with me again today? And my friends,” he added hastily.
Laurel hesitated. She’d figured he would ask, but she still hadn’t thought of a way to answer him without hurting his feelings. She liked him a lot. And she’d liked his friends - the ones she’d been able to hear over the din. “I don’t think so,” she began. “I—”
“Is it Chelsea? She didn’t mean to make you self-conscious about your lunch; she’s just really honest all the time. It’s actually kind of refreshing once you get used to it.”
“No, it’s not her - your friends were all really nice. But I can’t…I can’t stand that cafeteria. If I have to be indoors all day, I need to spend lunch outside. I guess with all the freedom of homeschooling for ten years I’m having trouble relinquishing it so quickly.”
“So everyone was OK?” David whispered as Mr James brought the class to order.
Laurel nodded.
“Do you mind if they come eat outside with us, then?”
Laurel was quiet as she listened to the beginning of the lecture on phyla. “That would be nice,” she finally whispered back.
When the bell rang, David said, “I’ll meet you out there. I’ll just go tell the others so they can come if they want.”
By the time lunch was over, Laurel remembered at least half of the kids’ names and had managed to join in several of the conversations. Chelsea and David went with her to her next class and it felt natural to walk with them. When David made a joke about Mr James, Laurel’s laugh echoed through the halls. After only three days, the school was beginning to be more familiar; she didn’t feel as lost, and even the crush of people that had been so overwhelming on Monday wasn’t quite so bad today. For the first time since leaving Orick, Laurel felt like she belonged.
Chapter Three (#ufd186ee1-6cb2-57d4-8483-55fcff77b877)
The next few weeks of school flew by faster than Laurel would ever have imagined after those first awkward days. She felt lucky that she’d met David; they hung out often at school, and she shared a class with Chelsea too. She never ate lunch alone, and felt like she had gotten to the point that she could call Chelsea and David her friends. And the classes were OK. It was different to be expected to learn at the same speed as everyone else, but Laurel was getting used to it.
She was also getting used to Crescent City. It was bigger than Orick, of course, but there was still plenty of open space and none of the buildings were more than about two storeys high. Tall pine and broad-leafed trees grew everywhere, even in front of the grocery store. The grass on the lawns was thick and green, and flowers blossomed on the vines that crawled over most of the buildings.
One Friday in September, Laurel ran right into David as she ducked through the doorway of her Spanish class, her last class of the day.
“Sorry,” David apologised, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s OK. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Laurel met David’s eyes. She smiled shyly, until she realised she was standing in his way.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Laurel said, moving away from the doorway.
“Um, actually, I was…I was looking for you.”
He seemed nervous. “OK. I just, have to…” She held up her book. “I need to put this in my locker.”
They walked to Laurel’s locker, where she stowed her Spanish book, then she looked expectantly at David.
“I was just wondering if you wanted to, maybe, hang out with me this afternoon?”
Her smile remained on her face, but she felt nerves settle into her stomach too. So far their friendship had been confined completely to school; Laurel suddenly realised she wasn’t entirely sure what David liked to do when he wasn’t eating lunch or taking notes. But the possibility of finding out held sudden appeal. “What are you doing?”
“There’re some woods behind my house - since you like to be outdoors, I thought we could go for a walk. There’s this really cool tree there that I thought you might like to see. Well, two trees, actually, but - you’ll understand when you see it. If you want to, I mean.”
“OK.”
“Really?”
Laurel smiled. “Sure.”
“Great.” He looked down the hall towards the back doors. “It’s easier if we go out the back way.”
Laurel followed David through the crowded hallway and out into the brisk September air. The sun was struggling to break through the fog, and the air was chilly and heavy with humidity. The wind blew in from the west, bringing the salty tang of the ocean with it. Laurel breathed deeply, enjoying the fall air as they entered a quiet subdivision about half a mile south of Laurel’s house. “So you live with your mom?” she asked.
“Yep. My dad split when I was nine. So my mom finished up school and came here.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a pharmacist down at the Medicine Shoppe.”
“Oh.” Laurel laughed. “That’s ironic.”
“Why?”
“My mom’s a master naturopath.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s someone who basically makes all their medicine out of herbs. She even grows a bunch of her own stuff. I’ve never had any drugs, not even paracetamol.”
David stared. “You’re kidding me!”
“Nope. My mom makes stuff that we use instead.”
“My mom would freak. She thinks there’s a pill for everything.”
“My mom thinks doctors are out to kill you.”
“I think both our moms could learn something from each other.”
Laurel laughed. “Probably.”
“So your mom never goes to the doctor?”
“Never.”
“So were you, like, born at home?”
“I was adopted.”
“Oh yeah?” He was quiet for a few moments. “Do you know who your real parents are?”
Laurel snorted. “Nope.”
“Why is that funny?”
Laurel bit her lip. “Promise not to laugh?”
David raised his hand in mock seriousness. “I swear.”
“Someone put me in a basket on my parents’ doorstep.”
“No way! You’re totally messing with me.” Laurel raised an eyebrow at him. David gaped. “Honest?”
Laurel nodded. “I was a basket child. I wasn’t really a baby, though. I was, like, three and my mom says I was kicking and trying to get out when they answered the door.”
“So you were a kid? Could you talk?”
“Yeah. Mom said I had this funny accent that stuck around for about a year.”
“Huh. Didn’t you know where you came from?”
“Mom says I knew my name but nothing else. I didn’t know where I was from or what happened or anything.”
“That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It made for a huge legal mess. After my parents decided they wanted to adopt me, they had a private investigator looking for my birth mother and all sorts of stuff about temporary custody and whatever. Took over two years before everything was final.”
“Did you live in a foster home or something?”
“No. The judge my parents worked with was pretty cooperative, so I got to live with them through the whole process. A social worker came out to see us every week, though, and my parents weren’t allowed to take me out of the state till I was seven.”
“Weird. Do you ever wonder where you came from?”
“I used to. But there are no answers, so it gets frustrating to think about after a while.”
“If you could find out who your real mom is, would you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pushing her hands into her pockets. “Probably. But I like my life. I’m not sorry I ended up with my mom and dad.”
“That’s so cool.” David gestured towards a driveway. “This way.” He glanced up at the sky. “It looks like it’ll rain soon. Let’s drop our bags and hopefully we’ll have time to see the tree.”
“Is this your house? It’s pretty.” They were passing in front of a small white house with a bright red door; multicoloured zinnias filled a long bed that ran along the front of the house.
“Should be,” David said, turning up the front walk. “I spent two weeks this summer painting it.”
They dropped off their bags by the front door and walked into a neat and simply decorated kitchen. “Can I get you something?” David asked, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge. He pulled out a can of Mountain Dew and grabbed a box of Twinkies from the cupboard.
Laurel forced herself not to wrinkle her nose at the Twinkles and looked around the kitchen instead. Her eyes found a fruit bowl. “Can I have one of those?” she asked, pointing to a fresh green pear.
“Yeah. Grab it and bring it along.” He held up a water bottle. “Water?”
She grinned. “Sure.”
They pocketed their snacks and David pointed towards the back door. “This way.” They walked to the back of the house and he opened the sliding door.
Laurel stepped out into a well-kept, fenced backyard. “Looks like a dead end to me.”
David laughed. “To the untrained eye, perhaps.”
He approached the breeze-block fence and, with a quick, leaping bound, pulled himself to the top and perched there.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll help you.”
Laurel looked up at him sceptically, but extended her hand. With surprisingly little effort, they hopped over the fence.
The tree line came right up to the fence, so with that one small jump they stood in a forest with damp, fallen leaves forming a thick carpet under their feet. The dense canopy hushed the sound of cars in the distance, and Laurel looked around appreciatively. “This is nice.”
David looked up with his hands on his hips. “It is, I guess. I’ve never been a big outdoors person, but I do find a lot of different plants in here that I can look at under my microscope.”
Laurel squinted up at him. “You have a microscope?” She snickered. “You really are a science geek.”
David laughed. “Yeah, but everyone thought Clark Kent was a nerd too, and look how that turned out.”
“You telling me you’re Superman?” Laurel asked.
“You just never know,” David said teasingly.
Laurel laughed and looked down, suddenly shy. When she looked up, David was staring at her. The glade seemed even quieter as their eyes met. She liked the way he looked at her, his eyes soft and probing. As if he could learn more about her just by studying her face.
After a long moment he smiled, a little embarrassed, and tilted his head towards a faint path. “The tree’s this way.”
He led her on a path that wound back and forth, seemingly without purpose. But after a few minutes, he pointed to a large tree just off the path.
“Wow,” Laurel said. “That is cool.” As David had said, it was actually two trees, a fir and an alder, that had sprouted close together. Their trunks had merged and twisted, resulting in what looked like a tree that grew pine needles on one side and broad leaves on the other.
“I discovered it when we moved here.”
“So where’s your dad now?” Laurel asked, sliding her back down a tree and settling into a soft pile of leaves. She pulled the pear out of her pocket.
David made a low laugh in his throat. “San Francisco. He’s a defence lawyer with a big firm.”
“Do you see him very often?” she asked.
David joined her on the ground, his knee resting gently against her thigh. She didn’t scoot away. “Every couple of months. He’s got a private jet and he flies into McNamara Field and takes me back with him for the weekend.”
