Read Online Lost in Thought by Cara Bertrand - Free Book Online

focused on me with a smile. “More than anything, you vant to know what brought you here, yes, Elaine Young, and vhat causes your headaches? It is because you are special, Elaine Young, and you vill find that out soon, I am certain of it.”
    “Whoa,” I breathed. I didn’t really tell people about my headaches, though Amy had warned me there were no secrets here, but Brooke was right. That was the question in my mind I most wanted answered.
    There had been no more clues to my unusual Legacy and no crazy visions so far, but her calling me “special” brought to mind my first meeting with Headmaster Stewart. And the strange trick of the candles that had caused me to see Brooke’s eyes as a different color also reminded me that I had seen—or thought I had—a similar strange effect in my first meeting with Carter Penrose. As I mulled over her weird
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    prediction and the strange connections, she brought me back to reality, also as if she’d truly been reading my thoughts.
    She dropped her excellent accent and leaned over, whispering con-spiratorially, “And there’s a certain local boy you hope will finally move past the flirting stage, yeah? I think you’ve got that one locked up too, but you didn’t hear me say that.” She giggled and switched back to her gypsy persona. “Your fortune is done now, Elaine Young. Be gone and send me the next vaiting truth-seeker.”
    I waved and smiled on my way out, but then dropped it immediately once I was by myself. She was also right about the local boy. The more time Amy and I spent at the bookstore, the more I too came to like Carter Penrose, as a friend, and yeah, maybe a little more than that. Not that I admitted it to anyone. I had always thought he was good-looking, sure, but I wasn’t the kind of girl who was immediately interested in someone just because he was hot enough to make me blush or give my stomach little somersaults.
    I was, however, very much interested in a guy who was incredibly smart, brilliantly sarcastic in a way that was both funny and sharp-witted, and who was genuinely polite and nice. To everyone . Frankly, I was the tiniest bit in love with the boy from the bookstore. Despite Amy’s pronouncement that she was trying to hook us up, she never really pushed anything, and I didn’t try to do more than be myself and flirt back when he flirted with me. But it was getting a little frustrating.
    Even I could see that Carter hung out with Amy and me more than anyone else, and though I could tell he was naturally flirtatious—which is exactly what, according to Amy, caused hope to burn eternal in all the Academy girls—he definitely devoted extra attention to me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it. A lot. But I would have liked to get beyond that and, oh, have him ask me on a date or something.
    I’d gotten a few other offers from guys at the Academy, one of which I accepted. I went with a senior named Garrett, a friend of
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    Caleb’s who played with him on the baseball team. He was quietly funny and tall and a little bit shy, which was actually what I liked about him most. We’d gone to—where else?—the bookstore lounge for a coffee by the fireplace. I imagined about a million first dates had happened in the very seats where we sat, since the bookstore and the Academy were both over a century old. Of course, back then, first dates were chaperoned, and I almost felt like mine had one too.
    In my peripheral vision, and in the periphery of my mind, I always knew where Carter was in the shop. And he spent more than a necessary amount of time in my direct line of sight. Stoking the fire.
    Repeatedly stopping to chat with the group across from me. Wiping non-existent dust off a few of the coffee tables. He didn’t speak to me, except to say a friendly hello to both of us—he knew Garrett, of course, because he knew everyone . However, I did catch him, more than once, while he performed whatever