Falling From Grace Read Online Free PDF

dozens of pairs of eyes on me, burning through my bag, my shirt, my hair.
    My hair!   I forgot to brush it!  
    Quickly, my hand reached up to what I hoped was a few neatly disorganized strands, knowing full well that the wrath my hair could put down on me probably meant something much worse.   What I felt was my own embarrassment doubling, all in the palm of my hand.   My hair—or what should have been my hair—felt like I had a blind ostrich’s nest attached to the back of my head, the unruly weave of tangles and knots forming an unrecognizable mass that sat at the base of my neck in a heap.  
    I would need to get to a bathroom quickly to try and fix this, though I was certain that enough eyes had seen the horror that was my hair and the news would spread throughout the school before I’d even gotten a chance to see the damage for myself.   I stared at the registrar, trying to will her to hurry up.   She rifled through several sheets of paper and finally pulled out what I hoped was my schedule.
    “Here you go, sugar.   Have a great first day!” she said in a sing-song voice, a broad and cheerful smile stretching across her pretty round face.
    I snatched it out of her hand and stepped backwards, trying to get as far away from the cooing, the syrupy sweet endearments, and the pair of jade-green eyes that I could see staring at me from the corner of my eye as quickly as possible.   I backed up…right into a wall that had not been there a minute ago.
    I turned around to see what it was that had obstructed my escape, and ended up giving one of my best glares to a button.   An expensive button, judging by the logo stamped on it.   There were many of them, too; I counted them, my gaze going higher, the look in my eyes becoming less mean and more…confused.   Five buttons later, I was staring into a pair of gray eyes nestled in a face that I didn’t recognize — not that I could have recognized half of the faces at Heath anyway—but I thought I had made mental images of every senior here, if only to know who to avoid.   He was new.   He had dark hair.   He was tall.  
    He was…beautiful.
    “Um’scusemesorrygottago,” I quickly mumbled with no breath, no pause, and no thought as to what I sounded like.   I had spent a lifetime staring into the perfection that was Graham’s face, and not once had I ever been at a loss for coherency.   Yet here I was, mush-mouthed, a gigantic bird’s nest in my hair, and an eager and willing audience that included Graham just 6 feet away.   And so I did what any reasonable person would do in such a situation.  
    I bolted.  
    I felt like such a coward, but self-preservation screamed at me, urging me to go, pulling me away as quickly as my feet could carry me.   I found an empty girls restroom as far away from the office as possible, threw myself into a stall, and felt my breathing stumble and falter as I sat down on the seat, locking the door as my backpack tumbled to the ground by my feet.  
    My chest rose and fell like a teeter-totter; I couldn’t seem to find a pace that mimicked normal breathing.   It seemed that the more I focused on doing it as naturally as possible, the more odd it felt, out of place.   
    How many breaths per minute were enough to keep you alive?   How many would be enough to get you to start hyperventilating?   Where among those numbers was I?   Not wanting to lose this inner battle, I concentrated on trying to keep the burning in my eyes from unleashing its fire in the form of tears instead.   That seemed to be easier.  
    I hadn’t cried in school since the seventh grade, when Patricia Daniels had lifted my shirt in front of the entire junior high student body…and I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
    Oh God, why did I remind myself of that?   The heat that rimmed my eyes was growing ever stronger.   I needed to think about something else before I turned into a bawling, babbling mess in the girls’ bathroom.
    I looked