Page 10 of Bows & Eros
"Stay with the kids," he said to Hazel, this time takingmeby the elbow. "We'll root them out. Ask around about Aaron until we get back, will you?"
"I will," she answered, still apparently dumbstruck.
"C'mon, Miss Avri," he said, tugging me along down the hallway. "It's a good thing this school hasn't changed since my days here. We'd better start with the bleachers."
"The bleachers," I repeated with a wrinkle of my nose.
Somehow I could picture all too well what this man got up to under the bleachers in his teen years. I didn't argue, though, just stumbled along after him, pausing each time he threw open a classroom door and broke up another rabid couple, ranging in age from adolescence to golden years.
By the time we got to the gym, we had a small coterie of sheepish, giggling followers who couldn't be trusted on their own. I stood with them while Ethan strode over to the bleachers and began to extract teen boys like a grizzly bear snatching salmon from a stream.
I just watched, honestly a little bit in awe as our collection of embarrassed would-be lovers grew larger by the second, pink-faced and smeared with an array of glittery lip glosses.
We didn't find Aaron there (thank God!), but we did discover that the paper airplanes’ effect could be weakened (though not completely broken) with sufficient splashes of cold water and a bit of good, old-fashioned embarrassment.
It was a small win in a day of humbling losses, but as we herded our teenagers back toward Hazel's classroom, I caught Ethan's eye and gave him a tight smile.
He returned it with a quirk of his lips, not even breaking stride as he pulled a couple that had drifted too close together again back apart.
"If we keep them separated, we can probably assign them tasks," he said to me in a low enough tone to avoid being overheard and sparking an outcry. "We'll be able to cover more ground that way."
I nodded, doing my best not to blush at the way this little whisper between us had made my skin prickle. There were more important things to focus on right now than how attractive it was watching this man clear lover's lane in quick and efficient order.
Admittedly, I thought the romantic fever sweeping over Crete might be a little contagious. It was a shame I had such control over myself, or I might have tried to steer him into a utility closet of our own rather than attempt to wrangle a town gone mad.
I slowed my pace so that I could walk behind our gaggle of miscreants, keeping an eye on them from a second vantage point as we made our way back to Hazel's classroom. It was only a happy coincidence that this angle also presented me with a renewed view of Mr. Weaver's exceptional backside.
CHAPTER5
In the end, we spread out over five rooms, including the reclaimed auditorium. The teens we'd found eating the Family Fun Day buffet when we'd first arrived at the school were our first choices for leadership, given that they appeared to have avoided any contact with the paper airplanes. The ones we'd rooted out from the bleachers kept trying to reattach into their pairs and sneak off again, so at least it was easy enough to know who to separate.
"Any news of Aaron?" I asked Hazel, who had been trying in futility to dial our little two-man police station for the last fifteen minutes.
She threw me a sharp look and gave her cell phone a hard tap, cutting off the busy signal that was radiating through the earpiece. "No."
I sighed. He probably wasn't in any real danger. After all, today's explosion of ill-advised decisions all seemed mostly harmless, at least from what we'd observed here at the school.
We'd sent the teenagers to scour the town square and other areas of town to make sure that people weren't frolicking in the snow without proper winter wear, and to encourage as many people to go back inside as possible. The snow was coming down in sheets now, and if magically falling in love had one effect on absolutely everyone, it seemed to be a marked loss of rational thought.
The teens were told to report back to the school before it got dark, which didn't leave us much time in February, when the sun started retreating below the frosty horizon almost the instant the last school bell rang around four.
We still hadn't found Ms. Mayflower and Bert the custodian.
A brief respite to the ladies’ room allowed me my first good look at myself since this morning, and it was not a pretty sight. I pulled the silly red cap off my head and attempted to tame my hair with my fingers. I looked alert, at least, if disheveled. My eyes stared back at me, wide and brown, through the chipped bathroom mirror as though my own reflection had her own questions about what exactly was going on here.
I sighed and gave my face a quick splash of water. There was no time for vanity just now. We had a child to find.
I walked directly for Ethan when I got back into the classroom, the red and white beanie gripped in my hands. He turned to me with raised brows, clearly as at a loss as I was about what we should do next.
I had a lot of questions for him, especially after the way he'd reacted to our story. He knew Mr. Curie, somehow, and knowing him had given him just enough information that he hadn't questioned our story about magic airplanes. There was clearly a fascinating history at work here, and I intended to discover it once we'd found our missing boy.
"Where does Aaron like to go on the weekends?" I asked, coming up just short of colliding with the man. "Where would he go if he had a free day to do anything he liked?"
Ethan blew out a gust of air, scratching at the stubble on his chin. "Maybe the park?" he suggested, in a tone that relayed that his guess was as good as mine. "He likes the park."
I stared at him for a moment, tempted to say something cutting and sarcastic. I opened my mouth twice before an appropriate response could exit, which amounted to a baffled, "You don't know?"
"I know he likes the park!" said Ethan Weaver, crossing his arms tightly. "And the diner, too, when I've given him some fun money."
