Marigold by Heather Manheim (best books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

very pleased with herself. She then added, “You won’t be able to talk. The glass is too thick. But you can see each other, and you’ve both got drawing pads, pencils, and pens. You can write notes to each other, to hold up to the glass, at least.”

~

Davis fell asleep to a happy dreamland. When she awoke, she saw Brookshire was already in the room next to her. He had fallen asleep; his entertainment console had dropped to his side. She tried to lean over to see if she could see what he was reading or watching, but with the screen at such an angle, she couldn’t tell.

Davis looked at the lines of his face for a while. She mentally traced her finger around his jawline, somehow strong and soft at the same time. His long eyelashes looked so gently closed over his eyes. He started to stir, and she turned away to go back to her bed. She didn’t want to get caught looking at him like a schoolgirl. She got a slight smile on her face when the thought popped into her head that perhaps he had watched her sleeping, too, when he came in earlier.

After Davis got back to her bed, she picked up her entertainment console and was going to look up something to read or watch. But suddenly, her little smile turned sad and dark. She realized it didn’t matter how she felt about Brookshire or what he may think of her. She was going to be expected to marry President Everett. And if she weren’t successful in her task, she would be married to President Everett. Her stepdad. The mere idea spun her head and churned her stomach. Equally disconcerting was the fact that if she were successful, she would be a murderess. For not the first time, she wondered if she could ever justify murder and if she could go through with it. Brookshire couldn’t be with her if she were Everett’s wife, and she didn’t think he would want to be with her if she were a killer. And she had no desire to murder someone; it was as unsavory to her now as it had been the first time that she heard the plan. A no-win situation, she thought glumly.

As she lay there, Davis was figuring she should try to get some sleep. She didn’t even know what time it was, but she didn’t feel tired. It felt late, though. A sleepy feeling hung in the air; Davis thought it was just out of her reach, but she could sense it. It was dark and quiet in the hallways. She could barely see a nurses’ station down the hall, but it was the only illumination in the section except for the hazy blue light that hung from the middle of each ceiling and at every doorway. It gave off an eerie feeling. Barely illuminated, everything swathed in a gauzy veil of blue light. Davis had a desk lamp, but she didn’t want to draw the nurse’s attention by turning it on, so she lay quietly in the blue-tinged room and tried to quiet her mind.

At some point, Davis drifted off. It was sort of a hazy, vague sleep, a rest reminiscent of that blue light that shone above her.

~

The first week that passed was largely uneventful. Davis tried to find amusing things on her entertainment console, which grew tiresome after a while even though she loved reading books and watching old movies. All the nurses and orderlies were kind enough but standoffish. The exception was Hernandez; he was funny and always had a joke and a few kind words for Davis. That was the fun part of Davis’s day. The bright part of her day was when Duffy popped in, at least once or twice a day, to say hi, see how she was doing, or chat for a few minutes. Duffy could never stay long as she had other patients to attend to and, as she put it, “an endless mountain of paperwork that outweighed any patient roster.” Then there were two days when she wasn’t there because of her days off. The doctor on call when Duffy wasn’t there, Abell, wasn’t kind or courteous. She barely spoke to Davis at all and was curt when she did ask questions. Abell looked at Davis as if she expected her to spontaneously explode into a cloud of germs and viruses at any moment. Abell’s harsh, angular features were not complemented by her dark eyes that looked full of malice or her hair in a bob style, which also had angular cuts due to how straight and thick her dark brown hair was.

Those were the fun and happy parts of Davis’s day, minus Abell. But, the joyous part of her day, the thing that made even the fun and happy parts seem less than they were, was when she got to interact with Brookshire a little bit. He had a way of bringing in something she had never seen or experienced before. Every day, he would grab his writing pad and a pen and write out little notes saying hi and asking how she was, and they would have a conversation that way. Sometimes he would draw her a smiling face or flower. One day, he grabbed his paper pad and a marker and indicated she should do the same thing. Then he wrote, “Guess what I’m drawing?” First, he drew a typical stick figure girl in an outline of a dress and a stick boy next to her. Next, he drew the hand on the stick girl, out toward the boy. He put in a few music notes and some streamers in the corners and background of the picture. Last, he drew the arm of the stick boy and encircled the ends of the girl and boy’s arms at the bottom. He had made them hold hands.

Of course, Davis knew right away Brookshire was drawing the dance where they held hands.