Ascend

Taken

It was just the briefest glimpse of a man, the same man from her dream.

She could see a smile gracing his chalky lips.

Cara blinked, and he disappeared.

"Hey, what are you-" Alex craned his neck to get a view over Cara's shoulder. "Oh."

Cara turned back to face him with widened eyes. "You see him too?"

"Him? No! Wait, what? Who are we referring to?"

Cara looked back. The man was surely gone, his place filled by a stream of students coming down from another bus.

"Who are you referring to?" Cara questioned.

"Well, Abigail's just right there. It's been a while between you and her, right?" Alex shrugged. "You guys were like the most complicated arch nemesis of all time."

Cara turned to see Abigail conversing with another brunette under the only tree in the entire school lawn. "Oh... yeah." Cara mumbled, despite Alex being entirely wrong. All they ever did was them trying yank each other's hair out. Complication only starts when either side actually gets bald from that.

She decided that she merely didn't get enough sleep, and walked into the school as quickly as her legs could take her.

Every morning, at exactly 7, the narrow school hall looked like a queue from an anime convention booth. People swarmed all over the locker halls like waves on an ocean, struggling to wriggle themselves into their classes. This had been a critical problem over the years, but no one bothered to widen the hallway, not restrict the amount of students coming in.

Cara took a deep breath and forced herself into the crowd. She felt someone push behind her, and toppled forward, knocking someone's shoulder.

Cara looked up to mumble an apology when her heart stopped.

Sky blue eyes hidden under sharply defined brows looked into her drab dark depths. Dirty blonde hair framed his face, his rosy cheeks faintly sprinkled with freckles, making him look even cuter.

Cara stared at the muscles that bulged under his skin as her stomach did somersaults. The feeling of being watched almost faded. "Uuh, Dalton, right?" She stammered.

Dalton looked at her and blinked slowly. "Yeah." His voice was gorgeously deep, nothing less than music to her ears.

Cara wanted to say so many things that were vaulted everytime she sees him pass. Compliments. Confessions. All of the words vanished as soon as they reached her tongue.

"S-Sorry." Cara stammered, and squeezed through the crowd harder than she ever did, hoping he never saw her burning face.

After many squished minutes and suppressed claustrophobic shrieks, she stumbled into the student's zone.

Anyone could look at the interior design of the room and tell that whoever designed it thought it was for a kindergarden. The ceiling and the walls were blue, decorated with minature cotton clouds and bird models that had googly eyes, and dried shrubs on the walls and red carpet.

Cara approached one of the stubby tables with a girl slumping on a seat, her swollen green eyes skirting through her iPad.

"Hey." Cara plopped onto the seat across her. "How's life?"

"Life is currently being chewed up in the depths of despair and taking the form of a requiem of hearlessness and being stuck to the butt of a cow."

"That's nice."

"I know." Nora flipped her locks of glossy dark hair from her face. "Maybe I'll stop crying next century. This drama show sucks." Her gaze shifted to Cara's still flushed cheeks.