Say My Name [ Teacher-Student Romance -- Robert Downey Jr ]

Ch.5 - School Tour

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Scuffed up sneakers, worn through dance parties and hiking, echo down open halls. Planting cautious feet on marble tiles, tossing the yellowing laces from left to right with each step she takes, she inches along.

There should be holes in her cheeks where she keeps gnawing anxiously or fashioning a fat lip, plump from being bitten thru one too many times. The habits that won't stop. Tugging helplessly at the bottom of her sleeves, stretching tight fabric over her fingers and holding them as if a last life line, hands balled into iron fists. Lanky arms crossed across her chest just as tersely as the rest of her. A rigid stick walking down daunting halls.

The only thing about her stance that's free flowing is her hair flowing down knotted shoulders and a rigid back. Her silky locks shifting with the awkward shuffle she seems to deem defined as 'exploring'.

She will not admit that she is lost. No.

If she does that, lets herself fall apart for literally only a handful of minutes alone, her heart will hammer against creaky ribs, hitting past important organs till it reaches the batting cage that protects it and will break loose, most likely to leap clean from her chest and she'll die.

Maybe not quite that colourful but thats exactly what it feels like.

This silly new irrational fear of being lost. Of being vulnerable. Especially heightened here in a building (city, state) she has no clue how to navigate through. No one knows her, wouldn't care if something were to happen to her. She's just a dumb girl from Miami who has had bad things happen to her. So who says it's not easy to happen again?

Anyways.

Getting lost was never a problem in Miami. Miami had been where she was born, Molly was born, her Dad too, and she had intended on staying there. Charlotte knew every nook and cranny of the place. Had explored every living inch she could manage, ducking under chain linked fences, hopping active railroads, and trespassing. Point an index at any section of that city and rich memories will burst from Charlottes mouth.

Her pride just couldn't take another hit like that. To admit she is terrified of something so simple. Like she was six again, lost in the super market, sat under a bunch of produce, crying out for her Dad, clutching her teddy to her chest.

So maybe this whole thing, this whole fear she's feeling right now, is just simply misplacing ones self inside of a contained structure. That's all. Right?

She should've just kept her wits about her, kept an eye on wandering, and she thought she was, had convinced herself to just walk around a few corners and turn back, but instead she must've messed up. Too preoccupied in thought. Running over conflicting and confusing theories to as why Mr.Roberts touch didn't jolt the feeling of death back into her.

Ugh.

Mr.Roberts.

In all genuine honesty she is kinda surprised he works here, in this palace of education, after seeing him so casual the night before. He seems... Nice. She doesn't really know him but from the few moments she has seen him, he seems like the good kind of guy.

But she's just met him. He could be anyone behind that first layers mask.

And Charlotte can't trust her conscious, can't depend on something that can't decipher between friendly and manipulative.

But there is something undeniably different about this new brown eyed man. There's something, something she just can't quite put her finger on. Nervous, anxious and rigid are traits she knows all too well, but what seems like that sorta sadness (maybe) that he has derives from a different disruption of personal space.