because she liked watching him and listening to his voice. Every day, Bel noticed new details about him. A small scar above his eyebrow, a beauty mark on his cheek, how his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the whiteness of his teeth. She paid attention not only to what he said, but how he moved, when he laughed, what he wore. Today he was wearing khaki pants and a blue-check dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The outfit looked amazing on his tennis player’s body. He wasn’t overly jacked like so many of the jock boys. He was lean and elegant. She didn’t try to notice these things. He just made an impression on her, whether she liked it or not.
Mr. Donovan turned to recite the line to the class.
“‘Its sculptor well those passions read,’” he quoted, in his deep, rich voice, “‘which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked him.’”
He asked for a volunteer to identify the synecdoche in that line, and Bel averted her eyes. If she tried to speak, she’d stutter and blush and generally make a fool of herself. Not because she hadn’t done the reading—this was the one class she always prepared for. But because she was shy in front of these hyper-verbal Odell kids, and because Mr. Donovan unnerved her. That part was Darcy Madden’s fault. Normally Bel would never stoop so low as to get a crush on a teacher, but Darcy and her posse of Moreland seniors were obsessed with Mr. Donovan and talked about him nonstop. Naturally their obsession had rubbed off on her. Bel listened to Darcy, and followed her lead in all things. Darcy was older, sophisticated. She understood how things worked around here. Bel felt fortunate to have been taken under her wing.
Yet, she had to laugh, because the seniors’ contest to seduce Mr. Donovan had gone nowhere. Girls went to his office hours or cornered him in the dining hall. They flirted shamelessly, made heavy eye contact. The bold ones flashed some cleavage or bared a thigh in a short skirt. And they got no response. Zero. Donovan didn’t seem to notice at all. He was apparently loyal to his wife, though nobody understood why. Darcy said the wife was a total mouse, a real loser. That she must have some unnatural hold over him. Maybe it was money, or some secret she was using to blackmail him. Otherwise, he’d be susceptible to the seniors’ charms, like any man would be. To Darcy’s own charms, anyway. Bel had to agree—Darcy was killer. She had those perfectly regular features: the long, swinging blond hair; a sharp tongue hidden behind a wide smile. Everybody danced to her tune. To Bel, she was the Oracle of Moreland, not to be contradicted. Yet, Bel thought Darcy was wrong about Mr. Donovan. His love for his wife was pure, and Mr. Donovan was chivalrous. Honorable, like a knight of old. He would see Darcy’s sharp edges, and keep his distance. Which made him all the more attractive in Bel’s book.
The bell rang. Class ended, and Bel gathered her things, hesitating. Was she supposed to go up to him, or wait for him to speak to her? Would their meeting happen here in this room, or should she go to his office? Talking to teachers wasn’t Bel’s thing to begin with, and him, well, she couldn’t imagine speaking to him alone. Well, she could imagine it, but the things she imagined were unlikely to happen.
A couple of kids went up to the front of the room to talk to him, and Bel breathed a sigh of relief. Kids at Odell loved to hang around after class and suck up to teacher. Back home, being smart made you uncool, but here it was the opposite. Everybody spoke up in class, and competed to get noticed. Everyone except Bel, who kept her mouth firmly shut unless a teacher called on her, and then struggled to get a word out. Back home, teachers hadn’t cared what she thought, not enough to put her on the spot anyway, and she preferred it that way.
With Mr. Donovan distracted, Bel took the opportunity to slink toward the door, hoping to escape before he noticed. She could claim she forgot, or that something suddenly came up, or—
“Bel,” Mr. Donovan called. “Hold on. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Crap. Bel waited, palms sweaty, heartbeat skittering. Once they were alone, she’d be struck dumb, she knew it.
After a few minutes, the students left to go to their sixth-period classes, and he came over to her.
“Were you going to my office?” he asked, with a puzzled smile. Up this close, his teeth were so white, his eyes so blue, and he smelled so good that she felt dizzy.
“Um. Sorry?”
“I saw you leaving. You remember we have our first advisory meeting now, right?” he asked.
“Oh. Right. Yes. No, I didn’t forget, I just wasn’t sure, uh, where to, or—what to do,” Bel said, her cheeks burning. She sounded like the biggest idiot.
“It’s so warm today. I thought we could grab an iced coffee and sit outside. My office is like an oven, but there should be some breeze if we go over to the Art Café. Come on.”
Coffee? With Mr. Donovan? Alone? The Moreland girls would be pea-green with envy.
They went to the snack bar in the basement of the Art Studio, which was empty at this hour, since most kids were in class. (Bel had scheduled the meeting for her free period.) Mr. Donovan bought two iced coffees, which he carried to the patio out back. They sat down facing each other at a small iron table in the shade of a tall tree. (The trees in this place were insane. All that chlorophyll, she could gag on it.)
“Since this is our first advisory meeting, I thought I’d start by explaining the role of advisor here at Odell, which is not exactly the same as a guidance counselor in a public school,” Mr. Donovan said.
Bel was relieved that he was talking about official-sounding stuff. If she was lucky, she could sit here and enjoy listening to him and never have to say a word.
“At Odell, we’re fortunate to have professionals for every function,” Mr. Donovan continued. “There are counseling services at the health center if you’re having emotional or mental health issues. You’ll be assigned a college counselor starting next year. My job is to advise you about academics, and more generally . . .”
She got distracted by the color of his eyes. They were such an intense shade of aqua-blue that they almost seemed fake. Was it possible that he wore colored lenses? But they went beautifully with the long, sooty lashes, and the rich, dark color of his hair, so maybe they were real after all.
“Bel, are you listening?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. I just—” She blushed furiously and shook her head.
“No. You know what? It’s my fault, droning on like a page out of the handbook. No wonder you zoned out. Let’s start over. I’m Heath, and I’m your advisor, nice to meet you.”
He reached across the table, and she realized he intended to shake her hand. Had he just given her permission to call him by his first name? Their eyes met, and she put her hand in his. The warmth of his grip jolted her.
“And you are—?” he asked.
“Isabel Enright. Bel. Call me Bel. I’m your, um, your student. Nice to meet you, too.”
The exchange was so silly that she laughed, and felt less awkward after that. Maybe he wouldn’t prove impossible to talk to after all. She simply had to concentrate on what he said, not how he looked.
Easier said than done.
“Think of me as your guide to Odell,” Heath said, releasing her hand. “You come to me with a question or a problem, and it’s my job to help you. Maybe you have an academic issue, or a personal problem, or maybe you just don’t know which extracurricular activity to try. If I can help you, I will. If it’s out of my wheelhouse, I’ll find the right person for you to speak to. Odell can be so confusing at first, and the point of the advisor is to help you feel comfortable right away. Odell is your home now, and we’re your family, your school family, that is. I want you to know, Bel, that you have a support system in me. I’m here for you.”
Such kind words would have reached her no matter who said them. But to have Mr. Donovan say them—wow. His sympathy hit her hard; it released something. She’d been holding her feelings in for weeks now. Acting like she didn’t care that her grandmother sent them away. Hanging out with