Beautiful Beings by Kailin Gow Page A

order to be able to pay for a modest house that could comfortably sit in your living room.  They can only afford payments on one car. My Mom doesn’t go to work in an Escalade, she takes public transit. I don’t come home to an impossible view of the bay, I’m lucky if I can glimpse it over the neighboring rooftops.”
    “At least you have both your parents to come home to.” Solemn and pain ridden, his statement hung in the air, silencing me.
    I reached out to thread my fingers between his, silently apologizing for being so insensitive. “I’m sorry, Brax, I didn’t mean to be so insensitive. I guess from the outside you look like you have the perfect life…”
    “Nobody seems to believe it when they hear that money doesn’t buy happiness. They all think that if you throw enough money into a problem, everything will be all right.  Well, it’s not all right.”
    I wanted to reach out to him, to caress the sad line of his lips away, but I simply squeezed his hand then sat back.
    “Being the new girl at school I thought you’d understand; understand what it’s like to have people make unjust judgments about you. How do you feel knowing people think you're something you're not?”
    “Like…?” I had a vague idea what people might think, but wanted to hear it from him.
    A slow and reluctant grin softened his face. “Like your mysterious past, where you come from, why you were transferred here, and how, on your parents’ admittedly small income manage to get into a school like St. James.  Like the bad girl attitude you give off, like the hot and sexy way you have in making that dreary school uniform look like high fashion.” He pulled me closer. “Like the beautiful face that is so captivating, yet so withdrawn and inaccessible.”
    “Well, maybe that is who I am.” I flashed him a cocky smirk.
    “Seriously?”  He sat up and propped an elbow on the table as he turned to look intently at me. “I mean, I know you're beautiful, anybody can see that, but… mysterious, bad girl, the attitude?”
    “Well, I do like to keep my private life private. If some people want to call that mysterious, that’s fine with me. As for the bad girl, I don’t know. I don’t really like to take crap from anyone. Don’t push me and I won’t push you back.  Could also be that I’ve never been the girly girl type. I hate doing my nails, I can’t stand wasting time on my hair and getting into a dress…”  I flared out the skirt of my uniform. “You have no idea how uncomfortable this is to me.  I guess some people see something wrong with all that.”
    “And the attitude?”
    I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a defense mechanism… you know, shun them before they shun you.”
    “You’re amazing, you know that?”  He reached out, as though to caress my face, but he stopped, bit the corner of his lower lip and withdrew his hand. “I’ve never met anyone like you; not at St. James, or anywhere for that matter.”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment.” I pulled my science book out of my bag and opened it.  “Now, are you going to help me understand all this, or what?”
    He laughed and we got down to some serious studying. It was two hours and dinner time when we took a break.
    “I feel like my brain has spent a week in a beaker flaming over a Bunsen and is now ready for the Petri dish.”
    “How about a bite to eat?” Brax offered.
    “Hmmm, maybe coffee would be good.”
    He rose. “Coffee it is.”
    I followed him inside to the large gourmet kitchen.  The cool chill immediately settled on my shoulders again, despite the warm rays of sunshine beaming through the arched windows.
    As I leaned back against the dark granite counter, my hands playing over the cool, smooth surface, Braxton prepared a blend of coffee I’d never even heard of before, filled the machine with pricy bottled water and clicked the on button. “You’ll have the perfect cup of world class java in a minute,” he said.
    “I have