In the Nest

4.

The first thing Odyssey did was run.

Lily wasn't even sure if Odyssey had ever looked up to see who she was; she just bolted, right back the way she'd come. Lily took a step forward with a little exclamation of surprise, but she sunk back onto her heels again, deciding that it would be a bad idea to run after Odyssey. She watched for a moment as Odyssey weaved through the crowd, her dark hair waving behind her like it was in a hurry of its own. Lily thought she must have seen and recognized her when they ran into one another, or she wouldn't have turned away so quickly. Lily sighed, just enough to feel it, and checked her phone. 7:28, her lock screen informed her. With one last look in Odyssey's direction, she turned and headed the other way.

As she stood at the crosswalk nearest her school, Lily thought that there must be some reason why she and Odyssey kept running into one another.

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Odyssey didn't know why she'd turned around. She ran because she knew that girl, that was the girl who'd seen her cry. She didn't look at the other girl's face but she saw her shoes and her coat and it was definitely the same girl. But Odyssey had run the same direction she'd come from, and she didn't know why she'd done that. Now she had to turn around and follow the girl again. She hoped they didn't go to the same school because then she might meet the girl in the hall at some point and that would be awkward and Odyssey didn't like awkward. She knew because there was a boy she liked once and she tried to talk to him but he didn't hear her so he asked her to say it again and that was awkward and Odyssey had hated it so she turned and ran. There was also a kid that she tried to make friends with once and that didn't go well either. It had been awkward then too and Odyssey didn't want to be awkward again by trying to make another friend. Hmm, Odyssey ran from people a lot.

That made sense to her. People are terrible.

Odyssey was a little bit late to school that day but nobody ever noticed her anyway so nobody cared. She slipped into her math class and sat at the very back and prepared not to understand any of it because she was really bad at math.

That's when everything started to end.

Odyssey had never been kicked out of a class before, she had been kicked off the gym floor and out of the library but that was always by other students. Today her teacher told her about her failing grade (which she already knew about) and her low attendance rate (which she also already knew about) and told her she couldn't come back to class. The same thing happened in history, and her science teacher liked her but he said if she missed one more class he'd have to kick her out too. There wasn't an empty table in the lunch room that day and the last time she tried to sit with people they noticed her and told her how stupid she was, so she didn't eat that day, she just sat in the bathroom for thirty minutes. She didn't cry but she felt like she was going to and then she realized that she didn't care about any of it anymore.

In English at the end of the day they all paired off into teams of three and nobody would let her in on their team until one group couldn't find a third person and had to take her. But they didn't even acknowledge her for the entire session and she felt like she must be a ghost. She knew she should be upset that they were ignoring her and she knew she should speak up so they would have to listen to her but she'd tried that once and everyone just talked over her.

But then she realized that she liked being a ghost.

She thought about that and she wondered for how long she'd been a ghost and she realized it had been a very long time.