You Can Run To Me

Twelve

This is beginning to become a little cliché, but it was time for another Law lesson. Natalie arrived perfectly on time that day, and took her "reserved" seat beside Sylvia. She got her laptop out of her satchel, opened it and turned it on. She opened the periodically lengthening document named quite self-explanatorily "Law", and tabbed her way onto the next page.

Next to her, Sylvia was slightly abashedly setting out her notepad and ancient pencil case. Natalie was used to it by now, and didn't remark upon it. At first, she had tried to tell Sylvia that it was fine, that she didn't need to be ashamed because it wasn't her fault. That anyone who thought otherwise was dumb and didn't matter. Nowadays, Nat had decided that if Sylvia wanted to feel that way, it was her prerogative and it clearly made her more unhappy to not feel ashamed.

It came to about half-way through the lesson, and Nat began to feel as though there was something missing. What could it be? Had she left an essay behind that was due in today? Had she forgotten one of the textbooks? Or perhaps it was something else; a pen, or her phone. Momentarily distracted from the lesson, she riffled through her bag. Essay –check. Textbooks – one, two, three – check. Pens – check. Phone – check. Everything she needed today was there.

Then she realized what it must be; Sylvia hadn't interrupted her concentration to point out the guy staring at her. Surely that meant that he wasn't staring today. Nat glanced at Sylvia, and found her staring raptly at the professor. Nat guessed that Sylvia must just have been concentrating so hard that she hadn't noticed. Surely that was the best explanation. Nat was a little surprised at how accustomed she had become to Sylvia telling her she was being stared at each lesson.

So the question remained; was he staring at her? And the only way to find out was, of course, to look for herself. With a good deal of trepidation she slyly angled her head to look in his direction. There he was, staring right at... the professor at the front of the room.

Disappointment trickled through her, seeping into her bones. She mentally shook herself, telling herself that she didn't care. She looked closer at him, trying to come up with ways in which he repulsed her. That would definitely make her feel better. All she could see from that angle was the side of his face: his smooth sharp jawline, his wild hair, his... ears. She sighed quietly as she realized that she wasn't going to be able to find anything bad about him... from this angle at least.

Suddenly his head turned, allowing to see his nose, mouth, brows, and.... eyes. His eyes found hers almost as if they had been searching for them. She felt like she was drowning in them. She yearned to get closer, to study those bright beautiful eyes in proper detail. They seemed very familiar to her...

Dumbstruck, she realized that he was staring her, just as Sylvia had previously promised. Not only that, but she worked out where she had seen him last. Namely, in the hall, doing that ridiculous teamwork day. When he had been so cold and closed off to the lot of them. But he was staring at her. He had always been the one staring at her. That meant one of two things, given his behavior on that day. A, that he wasn't actually staring at her, he was glaring at her. That would make the most sense, of course. But there still remained the remote possibility of a "B". B being that he was staring at her because he liked her, and he'd only been pretending to be mean before. Natalie was inexplicably leaning towards B, even though she knew that A was really more likely. But one thing was for sure – she was going to be keeping an eye out for this guy from now on. Very carefully, though, obviously.

Over the course of a few weeks, Natalie began to pay very close attention to him. She still hadn't managed to remember or overhear his name, so for now she just dubbed him 'Mean Boy'. She wasn't exactly hiding it from the others, but nor did she tell them about it outright. She was constantly wary of them noticing and judging her for it, so she didn't even mention it to Penryn. They must have been a little suspicious, though. She tried not to let it distract her completely from her lessons so she wouldn't fall behind, but it was a challenge.

In Law, she would glance furtively past Sylvia to try and see if he was staring at her. Sometimes he was, and most of the time he wasn't. It was as if by looking at him, she had scared him off a little. She checked in all her other classes, but it seemed that the only class they shared was Law. That was a bit of a relief, as it meant that she could just forget about it in Maths and Psychology and so on. She noticed him in the cafeteria, though, and they crossed paths in the corridor surprisingly often.

Once, she was walking through the college and she could see him just ahead of her in the corridor. It was as though he was following her, because she had intentionally gone a different way that day in order to stay out of his way. She wasn't sure if he was looking at her, but she knew she didn't want to get too close. It would be too weird. So she looked hurriedly around for some kind of exit. There! A door was open to her left. She didn't know or care where it lead, she just dived on through it.

She found herself stood in the corridor of one of the English lecture halls. She was about to walk back out again when she saw him in the throng outside the door, staring at her. She quickly located a seat and dropped into it like a stone, her face quite a few shades paler than before. She sat there for a little while, trying to calm herself, and counting the seconds. How would she know when it was safe to leave?

Surely it had been long enough by now. She turned to look at the doors, and found that they were tightly shut. The lady at the front of the room had already gotten up from her chair with the clicker in hand, and was strolling in front of the screen.

"Hello, my dears. How lovely to see you all again. Have you all brought your assignments?"

Natalie was startled to hear a chorus of yeses from the students in the room.

"Well, wave them in the air for me then, won't you?"

Natalie looked around, somewhat bewildered, as each student produced a sheaf of paper and brandished it in the air like a torch. What the hell is going on here?

"Marvelous! And now it's time for your weekly improvised short story. You're going to be writing for the full hour my dears, so make sure your handies are all nicely stretched up."

Nat stared at the eclectic woman taking the class with utter disbelief. Who was she? Ridiculous, that was a given. Thinking about it for a moment, Nat fathomed that this must be a creative writing class. She definitely needed to get out of here; it was practically an asylum. She tried to quietly sneak out of her chair at the back of the room. She got as far as the door handle when-

"Who's that slinking off?"

Natalie froze.

"Coo-eee?"

Natalie cringed and slowly turned, fighting the temptation to just carry on out of the room. After all, it wasn't rude if you didn't know them, was it? If only she'd just kept her cool in the corridor. Now he probably thought she was a total weirdo.

"Sorry," she blurted awkwardly, before yanking open the door and fleeing to the relative safety of the corridor. Thank God she had chosen not to take creative writing.

She had only passed three library doors, however, when she spotted him in the slightly-emptier corridors ahead of her, going in the same direction. She stopped in the middle corridor, in exactly the annoying way she hated other people to do, closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. There was absolutely no way he was there again. She must be imagining thing. She took a deep breath in, oblivious to the furious students shoving past her with a glare, and warily looked again.

Nothing.

There were plenty of students there, but he wasn't one of them. She scanned the faces carefully. There was one boy far ahead of her, roughly where she might expect him to have reached in the time she'd had her eyes shut. His hair was blond, and ruffled in a fairly similar way to Mean Boy's. Clearly she just must have mistook him for Mean Boy.

She took a moment to convince herself of this, and then carried on down the corridor. As evidenced by the creative writing lesson she'd walked in on, lessons were starting, and that meant that all the people in these corridors were late. She didn't want to be any later for Biochem than she already was. Nat started walking faster.