Ghost Bird Fanfiction: Sang's Lyric, The Story of Sang Sorenson's Mother

Garret

I walked into my art class,  still smiling broadly and keeping my face turned to the floor.

"I'd like to know what put that look on your face," a voice said and a hand dropped to my shoulder.

I jumped. I took a step away and met the curious blue eyes staring at mine, before taking a step back and away again.

A man was staring at me. He was vaguely familiar, and he watched me with a half smile that made me slightly uncomfortable. And I remembered; this was the man from the library.

"Nothing," I answered quietly, the smile slipping from my face as I took yet another step back.

The man took a step forward with each step back I took, until my butt hit a desk, pushing it so it squeaked noisily against the tile.

He leaned his face toward me. "You don't have to run, Lyric," he said, conspiratorially. "I don't bite... much."

I was uncomfortable and looked around for an escape before I heard my teacher. "Garret?" she called. He turned his head to look at her and I sidled away, sitting at a desk quickly and staring at the ground.

I saw his shoes move to the front of my desk, but I refused to look up and a moment later, they moved away.

"Class!" I heard my teacher calling us to attention, and I looked over warily.

Garret was staring at me and rocking back and forth on his heels.

"This is Garret Sorenson," she said. "He's a local architect and engineer, and he's volunteered to lead us through the next few week's lessons on the history of architecture."

Wait, I thought. Sorenson?

He smiled directly at me and I got the feeling that he was here for me. 

But that is silly, I told myself. It was just a coincidence.

"Garret," my teacher said. "Why don't you tell us about yourself?"

"Thanks Greta," he said and stepped forward. "Right, so my name is Garret Sorenson, and I work at Leland, Keller and Keller in Kennebunk. We design mostly office buildings, but even do things like airport wings and parking garages. I got my degree at Rhode Island School of Design or RISD." He pronounced it like rizdy.

"I'm from Maine, but worked for a while in Chicago before coming back to Maine and settling with my family close to Kennebunk," he watched me while he talked and I looked around the room, trying to remain polite but detached.

The truth was; he was making me nervous. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. He was handsome, tall with light brown hair. He was slightly lanky, but in the way of a runner, not like he was out of shape. He was wearing fashionable clothes, and his fingers were long and danced around his body while he spoke. He had blue eyes, and I found myself comparing him to the boys, and how different their attention felt. When the guys looked at me, or touched me, it felt like a gift, but Garret's glances made me feel like I was doing something wrong.

Garret was still talking and I realized I hadn't been listening, but staring out the window as I thought about the guys. I caught his eye and saw him frowning slightly. I could feel my cheeks redden, as he watched me, and he smiled at me with something like triumph.

My teacher slid a piece of graph paper in front of me, along with a slide ruler and mechanical pencil and I heard Garret explaining our assignment working on scale. I was pretty good at drawing things to scale. When I was very little, I had seen the movie Top Gun on t.v. and became obsessed with planes. I wasn't interested much in the movie. It was way above my head, but I would watch the planes land on the ship, or watch them take off. I had drawn a few models of various jets, like mechanical specs in my Discreet Math class, and my math teacher had shared them with the art teacher, who was his wife.