“The alphabet.”
Confusion flickered over her face before she responded. “Are you stressed? Is that why you’re not making sense?” she asked. She sounded so sympathetic. But that was the thing; since she would have meant it if she asked anyone else, to anyone else it would sound like she was sincere with me.
But subtext.
It sucked to have to deal with Angelique daily because of stupid alphabetical order. I was Landry. She was LeBlanc. We only had eighty kids in our class and there were no Ls between us. She usually got seated behind me. Even in here, where we had no assigned seating, our cubbies adjoined, and this was the second time since school started two weeks ago that she had hinted at me taking something of hers.
Livvie got so mad at me for not calling Angelique out, but I’d blown up at Angelique once last year when she offered me lunch money in the cafeteria. So nice, right? Except it was only to make a point to Dex Payton, a cute new transfer who had sat by me that day, that I was a money-grubber on a charity scholarship. Here’s the thing: when an entire room regards Angelique as one of the kindest, most down-to-earth people to ever walk LaSalle’s halls, it’s bad form to get in her face and say, “What is your problem?” Because you will literally see people “closing ranks” around her and against you, and Dex Payton will pick up his tray and back away to avoid your toxicity.
For a moment, I longed for freshman year when Angelique had been as nice to me as she was to everyone else, before Cash Guidry had ruined everything.
Refusing to let her get a rise out of me, I flipped up the edge of the corduroy to reveal a zippered pencil bag with half a dozen of my own markers. “I haven’t seen your pencils.” I pushed the bag toward her. “Help yourself. I don’t want to keep you from your work.” It was terse, but Delphine had already used up my supply of patience for people who irrationally hated me.
Angelique pushed the bag back toward me with the tip of her fingernail. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll keep looking for mine. I like the good quality pencils.”
I nodded and turned back to my fabric. She glided away in a pair of sandals I had admired at Maison Blanche when I did my school shopping from their clearance rack. They were way out of my budget, but Angelique probably owned a pair in every color. I hated that she had great taste. It half made me wish we wore uniforms, so I wouldn’t be reminded daily of how good her eye was.
Now I dreaded Labor Day even more. I could only imagine Angelique’s glee when I showed up at the LeBlanc’s house on Monday for their Labor Day party, wearing my catering whites, ready to serve her. Maybe Miss Annie would let me work in the kitchen and out of the line of fire.
I’d beg.
Even better: I’d skip it altogether.
Some things weren’t worth the money.
When seminar ended, I waited for the room to clear out so Mrs. Broussard could talk to me. She took the stool across from me.
“I want you to push yourself,” she said without preamble.
“I always do my best.”
She shook her head. “You do better than anyone else. But not your best.” She sighed. “Last spring, you left your sketchbook here. I opened to see who it belonged to, and...”
I stiffened. “Did you look through it?”
She nodded, her cheeks slightly flushed, but she pushed on. “I didn’t go through the whole thing, but I saw enough to know that your Color Splash collection isn’t even close to what you’re capable of.”
“I don’t really design for the New Orleans upper crust,” I said. “They won’t get it. Color Splash is good enough.”
She dropped a fancy linen envelope on the table between us. “Open it.”
I pulled out an invitation of thin balsa wood etched in chic script. “Spotlight on Design. Please join us for an evening of cutting-edge design from rising new talent.” It gave the time and date for the November showcase as well as the location, which she hadn’t told us before. The Saenger Theater. That was big time.
“I assumed it was going to be in our school theater,” I said, awed.
Mrs. Broussard shook her head. “No. Smoki Branson is about ‘taking it to the next level,’ apparently. The Saenger will be fantastic. Think about how your designs would look in there. The ones you keep hidden from everyone else.”
She was right. My designs were made for that setting. But I shook my head. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you, but life is exactly what I can handle right now. I need to do what gets me out of LaSalle with the least amount of resistance.” I’d been at school for eight hours already, and my day wasn’t close to over. Tonight, I had to dig through trash looking for Delphine’s owl picture until she fell asleep then do two hours of homework. I couldn’t fit anything else in. Not a capstone redesign. Not another scene with Angelique. Nothing.
Mrs. Broussard didn’t back down. “What if I told you this invitation is going straight to Aidan Helm from Smoki Branson? Does that change anything?”
My jaw dropped.
It changedeverything.
Chapter 3
Mrs. Broussard smiled at my reaction. “Smoki wants this to bethesocial event of the fall, so it’s scheduled for the week that the Saints have a bye. There will be nothing else in New Orleans to compete that night.”
