Me & Her

Me

Lunch.

The time to leave comes too quick, too sudden.

I'm nowhere near ready to go.

Emma meets me after the first half of the Stats double, clutching a packed lunch. She laughs, joking our way past the staring faces towards a spot by the trees. Noah is already there, head bent over a History textbook on Elizabethan Culture. He glances up, grin as goofy as a caricature.

No wonder I am debating whether or not he's even real. They're just so nice, abnormally nice. I don't know how that works exactly, but people aren't usually this nice to me. They're usually kind of the opposite.

Mental issues have always meant 'problem child' in the eyes of education. They have always led to some tweed infested official pointing towards two opposing diagrams in a thesis, depicting the normal brain next to the abnormal brain. Then pointing to me. Someone to watch out for, to shun in front of others.

See this girl, see her sitting here, pretending to be one of us. She isn't. She doesn't belong.

Noah breaks into my thoughts with no more than a smirk. Closing the textbook, he jumps down to sit next to me. As soon as our proximities change, that same blush creeps in, while his fingers find a shirt button to fondle. He's no longer looking at me; he's staring at the ground.

Emma sighs, opening her lunchbox.

Clenching my palms, I will Dr. Light's car to break down or at least one of his tyres to burst. I pray for the highway to be blocked. I can't leave this place. I can't.

"You okay? You haven't eaten any lunch yet," says Emma. Her concern is as obvious to me as it as confusing for Alyssa.

"Well," I begin. I'm about to answer, to spill the words that have been scorching my stomach since this morning. But I see him too soon. He's standing across the campus, by the side entrance, refusing to be directed by the receptionist. As he meets my stare, I look away. Maybe he hasn't seen me. Or perhaps, if I pretend I haven't seen him, he'll vanish.

"Oh my god". Emma chokes on her salad. "Who's he? I could eat him. Meet him, I said meet him, right?" Noah groans sourly, shoving his lunch aside.

"He's my Doctor," I find myself saying. "He's come to take me home for a session. I'm sorry, I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to face the reality of leaving here". Emma rushes to my side in an instant, places her hand on my shoulder. I don't want her pity.

As Light makes his way across the grass, feet swallowing every inch, her dreamy expression crumbles.

"I take it back. I could punch him".

I think Alyssa has already beaten her to it.

Avoiding his gaze becomes the act of avoiding a magnet, where I'm the North Pole and he's the South. There's an avalanche behind his eyes, a thousand snow-tipped rocks falling to me. Falling for me. So many unspoken words, wrapped up tight as if we're never going to say them. We might not.

We might never breach the million questions ricocheting off that one word answer he left in my head.

"You".

Several of the girls have stopped their lunch to ogle at him as he strides past. A few of the boys join them. Emma catches me staring, while trying not to stare and gives me a little nudge.

"So, what's up with you and Stoic Simon over there?" she asks. Noah wakes from a trance, leans closer. He shuffles to my side, seemingly trying to protect me.

"What kind of Doctor is he? Frankenstein?"

'I like him,' decides Alyssa. This is really the wrong time to be discussing this.