In Stone Read Online Free Page B

smearing blank canvasses with stripes and circles. The smell of P.V.C-based paint hangs solidly in the air. I pause mid-tread to breathe it in. It’s bliss. The sort of smell that I want to eat. Leah is in our usual spot by the window. The best spot because, come rain or shine, natural light pours in through the  giant windows. As usual,  Leah sits so far forward on her stool it looks like she’s trying to make out with her canvas. She has a slushy in her hand.
    “Sup?” I greet, dumping my bag beside her.
    “Buenos dias,” Leah says. “Como esta?” Leah isn’t Spanish. She just likes to mix up inane chat by throwing some foreign in there.
    “I’m good. You got new streaks.”
    “You like?” Leah wiggles her head. A vibrant cocktail of blue, green, and pink curls bounce around like excited snakes. “Your new do inspired a change.” She flicks a length of my hair. The hairdressers cut two inches off my brown locks so it sits just above my shoulders. They turned her into a firework display. I should have asked for that.
    “I love it.”
    It’s the crazy-good kind of extreme. Leah is the queen of pretty-in-punk, has been since she was fourteen. Her skirts are always short. Her tights holey. Her tops decorated with skulls and safety pins.
    I like tight jeans and slogan t-shirts. My eyes are really dark, and I have a platoon of freckles camped out on my face. Excessive black eyeliner is my edge. A bunch of kids once called me Goth when I walked by. I can’t be sure if I’m Goth, but then I can’t be sure if I’m not.
    “So, what happened to you this weekend?” Leah asks as I pull up a stool and haul my canvas on to my easel.
    “I got lost in a Chemistry homework tornado.”
    “And by Chemistry homework tornado you mean you spent the weekend listening to sad love songs and sobbing over Mark.”
    “Did not.”
    “Yeah right.”
    “Really. Over it. Finito. Totally forgotten. Like, who’s Mark?”
    “Overkill,” she replies bluntly.
    “Okay you guys, listen up.” Jan, our pint-sized-pot-of-enthusiasm art teacher,  bounds into the room. She slaps a sheet of paper down onto the projector and flicks on the light. My heart leaps into my throat, and I’m back in  the park on Saturday night, listening to an almost-dead-guy tell me he’s one of the gargoyle. I eyeball the picture projected on the whiteboard. I know this picture. I’ve seen it a thousand times. It’s Notre Dame Cathedral, and casually leaning on one of the stone walls is a gargoyle. It’s just art, right? But I’m locked in a stare-down with the grotesque creature; its giant eyes threatening to swallow me.
    “So,” Jan is saying, “given this morning’s headlines, I thought it might be fun to…” 
    “This morning’s headlines?” I whisper to Leah. She nods. She’s in the zone;  snapping gum, slushy in one hand, paintbrush tracing lines with the other.
      “Yeah. Apparently, there’s a stone statue thief on the loose. There’s this big who-ha, because a few gargoyles went missing from Saint Sebastian’s over the weekend. They’re worth a fortune you know.” My blood runs cold.
    Jan stops talking and starts drawing on the A3 pad she has clipped to the  whiteboard with reckless abandon, steam rising off her charcoal. I’ve never approached painting with caution before, but I draw the first line on my canvas like my life depends on getting it straight.  
    Everything falls silent between Leah and me. She ditches the cheery yellows and oranges she’s been painting with and starts smearing her canvas with big black streaks. She makes a hissing sound through her bucked front teeth. This is a Leah-ism that tells me something’s up. I watch her through squinted eyes until she gives me a sideways glance.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Are you still on a social media sabbatical?” she asks after an extra-large slurp of her slushy.
    You can go one of two ways when you and your ex-boyfriend share the same social networking