Beneath The Surface

4

Cate

The classroom was stifling, the faint hum of the heater doing little to ease the tension of the last period of the day. A sea of bored faces stared back at me—or worse, they didn’t. Half the students were more interested in their phones than in anything I had to say about sentence structure and the art of concise writing.

I paused mid-sentence, waiting for the low murmur of side conversations to die down. Predictably, it didn’t.

"Marcus, if you’re done chatting, perhaps you’d like to explain the difference between a comma splice and a compound sentence?" My tone was even, the steel buried just beneath the surface.

Marcus flushed, sinking into his seat, mumbling something inaudible. That was as much as I could expect. I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose as I turned back to the whiteboard.

The minutes crawled by, punctuated by half-hearted attempts at engagement and the occasional scrape of a chair. By the time the bell rang, dismissing the lot of them, I was already counting the hours until I could leave.

I carried the stack of half-finished essays to my desk in the staffroom, settling into the chair with a heavy exhale. The sound of voices outside the window caught my attention—louder, more genuine than the forced classroom chatter I’d endured all day.

Through the glass, I spotted them.

Sophie Carrington was sitting with her usual group—Mia, Ethan, and Liam. The four of them lounged on the courtyard benches, their postures relaxed, their laughter filling the crisp afternoon air.

At first, I tried to ignore them, focusing instead on the red pen in my hand. But the scene had a gravitational pull I couldn’t resist.

Liam, with his effortless charm, was gesturing animatedly, his words punctuated by exaggerated movements. His knee brushed Sophie’s as he leaned in, and she didn’t pull away. Instead, she laughed—a soft, melodic sound that tugged at something deep in me.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t.

And yet, the sight of her—leaning toward him, her golden hair glinting in the sunlight, her eyes crinkling with amusement—made my stomach twist.

The essays blurred. I could hear Mia’s teasing voice, Ethan’s easy chuckle, and Liam’s confident tone. But it was Sophie who held my attention, quiet yet vivid, as though the world had rearranged itself around her.

A sharp, unwelcome irritation prickled at the edges of my composure. It wasn’t the group itself that annoyed me—students would always cluster and chatter and waste their youth on fleeting moments like these. No, it was something else.

Perhaps it was how easily Liam commanded her attention, the way he made her laugh without effort. Or maybe it was the fact that I noticed at all.

I sat back in my chair, forcing myself to look away. The staffroom walls closed in, sterile and unyielding.

"Focus," I muttered to myself. I picked up the next essay, red pen poised, but my hand didn’t move.

The faint echo of Sophie’s laughter lingered, refusing to be drowned out by the dull monotony of my work.

The essays were finally done, stacked neatly on my desk, each one more uninspired than the last. It felt like an eternity before the final bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. But there was still one more class to go—my English class with Sophie and Liam.

I stood up, stretching stiffly, the weight of the day still pressing on my shoulders. It didn’t help that my mind kept returning to the image of Sophie in the courtyard, her attention fixed on Liam, laughing at something he said. The memory gnawed at the edges of my thoughts, making it harder to focus.