In My Skin

CH 21 || Library

A forest of overflowing bookshelves surrounded me. Pencils scratched against paper and occasionally a frustrated groan sounded. The scattered desks were equipped with large overhead lights, each one a little island of illumination in the otherwise dimly-lit room.

I skimmed over the main points I had summarized from the reference papers. Jules sat on my right, his sharp chin resting on his hands, gaze glued to his laptop. His brows snapped together in concentration and one brown lock kept falling into his eyes whenever he moved.

"I think Julian should present the theory part," Sam said, not meeting my gaze. He was only a few inches taller than me. His dark eyes and short black hair contrasted with the fair, pale color of his skin. He looked as if he was trying to avoid sunlight as much as possible. Like a vampire.

"We have to do it together anyways, but Tay should do this one. She explained it to me yesterday anyways," Jules commented, without lifting his eyes from the screen.

Sam glanced in my direction. "I have to get a good grade on this..."

My shoulders tensed. This was why I preferred to partner with Jules. But no, our professor thought we needed groups of at least four to practice teamwork.

"If that's settled," Jules continued, ignoring Sam's comment. "Let's do the exercises for SSP and be done with this."

SSP or solid-state physics was one of my better subjects.

"Let her do it," Liam, our forth group member, said and gave me a bright smile. His shoulder-length wavy, blond hair looked like it came straight out of a shampoo commercial. Jules and I called him Charming behind his back. But then again, his mismatched set of clothes destroyed the prince-like look. "We are one of the only groups with a girl," he added. "We should make use of that. Maybe it's gonna push our grade."

My hands clenched but I took a deep breath and relaxed them again. Why couldn't more girls be interested in physics? The few others in our year had sort of formed their own group and I never saw them outside of class. I'd barely exchanged two words with them.

"Alright," Sam relented, albeit his tone sounded doubtful.

Jules gave me a quick, reassuring smile and I rolled my eyes. I took out my copy of Solid-State Physics and got to work. The others followed suit.

I got to the last exercise when Sam asked, "Jules are you done? Can you help me with the second part?"

"I'm not done yet."

I hesitated. "What's the problem?"

Sam's brows furrowed. "...I'm getting a lattice constant of 500 nanometers."

My mouth twitched and I held out my hand. "Show me."

He grimaced. "It's fine. I'll figure it out."

Jules wordlessly snatched up Sam's notes and pushed them to me. Then he leaned back over his own as if nothing happened.

I skimmed over the calculation until I found a unit error. "You just forgot that it was given in centimeters, not meters. There's a rounding error."

Sam blinked. "Oh...thanks."

"No problem."

"So, Tay." Liam yawned. "Did you do anything fun over Halloween?"

I stilled. Fun? On Halloween? You could say so.

I hadn't considered myself a scared-y cat but after that night, I had woken up in cold sweat more than once. The nightmares were usually about me running through dark corridors, gripped by terror. My legs felt like lead and I could barely move. It was a relief when I woke up, but the fear lingered long after.