“Hmm.” A suspension for skipping a single class? Lucy doubted she was hearing the whole story. She turned back to her computer and continued to enter the register numbers into the afternoon attendance spreadsheet. She was getting a lot faster at it, thankfully. “Why PE?” she asked after several minutes had passed. “I mean, math or physics or something like that I could understand. But PE? It’s fun.”
“It’s stupid,” Bella said with sudden viciousness. She spun again in her chair, faster, so her hair flew out, and Lucy could see her face properly.
Spinning there, legs and hair flying, she looked very small, very young. Her face still held a puppyish roundness. And instead of reminding Lucy of the mean girls she’d encountered in junior high, Bella Kincaid reminded her of someone else.
Herself, at the same age. Vulnerable, lonely, so very unhappy—and hiding it any way she knew how.
“Some of it’s stupid,” Lucy agreed, turning once more back to the computer. “I hated swimming, for example. Getting wet in the middle of the day issonot fun.”
Bella didn’t answer, and Lucy mentally shook her head at herself. Why was she trying so hard? She didn’t care why Bella Kincaid had been suspended from school. She didn’t care about Bella Kincaid at all.
Except somehow she couldn’t keep from caring, at least a little. Surely Bella’s difficulties had something to do with her mother’s death. The girl still had to be grieving, and that alone, Lucy knew, was enough to soften her already too-squishy heart towards her.
“It was netball,” Bella said in a low voice. Lucy stilled, her hands resting on the computer keyboard; even her heart seemedto have stopped beating for a moment. “Stupid effing netball,” Bella said viciously, and then to Lucy’s shock she burst into noisy tears.
Lucy spun around and saw Bella with her arms over her face, her bony shoulders shaking.
“Oh, sweetie . . .” She tried to pull the girl into a hug, but Bella was no six-year-old Eva, grateful for a cuddle.
“Geroff,” she snapped, her voice muffled against her arm as she cringed away from Lucy.
“Sorry,” Lucy muttered. She felt her face flame as she sat there helplessly, not knowing how to make it better but wanting to. “I hate netball,” she finally said, and then added, “Is that like basketball?”
Bella let out a snort that Lucy hoped was a laugh. With her face still buried in her arms she said, “You don’t even know what netball is?”
“Well, itobviouslysucks.”
Bella lifted her tear-streaked face from her arm to peek at Lucy. Her mascara had run and she’d bitten off all her bright lipstick. She looked even younger now, and far too vulnerable. “I don’t evencareabout netball,” she said, and wiped at her cheeks. “And my dad doesn’t let us say ‘sucks.’”
“Hey, you said ‘effing,’” Lucy answered. “Isn’t that worse?” Actually, she wasn’t sure if it was a really bad swearword, or if she should have repeated it. Leaving the country at six years old had given her a limited Brit vocabulary, especially when it came to curse words.
Bella shrugged defiantly. “He wasn’t here.”
“I won’t tell him.”
She gazed at Lucy, the traces of her tears still visible on her face, along with the streaks of mascara. “Why are you sucking up to me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Are you trying to, like, get in with my dad?”
“Get in with your dad?” Lucy repeated with a nonchalance that sounded awful, almost as bad as one of those fake, hearty laughs stuffy adults gave when talking to kids.
Her mother’s friends had laughed like that when she’d been trotted out like some tarnished trophy at her mother’s showings.Heh, heh, heh, Lucy, well, aren’t you getting bigger?Then they’d turn away and her mother would give her a little push, indicating that she should make herself scarce. She’d usually ended up hiding under the refreshment table, her knees tucked to her chest, as she watched all the shoes go by.
“I’m afraid I’m kind of hopeless at this whole receptionist thing,” she told Bella with a shrug. “And frankly, your dad seemed so ticked off at you that being nice to you isn’t going to score me any points, is it?” Not that she wanted to score points with Alex. Or score anything.
Bella’s gaze remained narrowed, as she seemed to assess the truth of her words.
“So if it’s not netball you don’t like,” Lucy asked, “what’s the big deal with PE?”
Bella shrugged, hunching her shoulders and drawing her knees up to her chest. “Nothing,” she muttered, and looked away.
Lucy waited for a few minutes, and then when she’d finally finished logging in the afternoon register, she turned back to Bella, who was still sitting with her knees tucked up. “Why don’t you clean up?” she suggested, and Bella regarded her suspiciously.
“What are you talking about?”
Lucy tried for a kindly smile. “Umm . . .” She gestured to her cheek. “Mascara.”
“Oh.” Bella nibbled her lip and then with an attempt at an insouciant shrug unfolded herself from her chair. “Fine.”
“You know where the bathroom is?”
