Two
He settled into a seat at the back of the classroom, taking a quick sip of his coffee before flipping his sketchbook to a page that wasn’t filled with doodles of this and that—some for things he intended to make, others just observations. There were already at least a half-dozen sketches of her in that sketchbook.
What if she really is real?
Nick exhaled a silent sigh. What if, indeed. The odds of actually being able to find her were astronomical, even if he had known her last name. He just couldn’t seem to remember enough details to really get to who she really was. At least, that was what he’d been telling himself all summer.
In truth, it really was fear that kept him from searching—though he wasn’t sure if he was afraid that he’d find out she was real or if she really was a dream. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, really.
Stop lying to yourself. You know which is worse.
He took another sip of coffee as his professor arrived, a stack of syllabi in one arm. Just looking at the bean-pole of a man with thinning black hair and the male equivalent of resting bitch face gave Nick a sense of instant dislike and he sank back in his chair, clutching his cup a little tighter.
It’s going to be a bloody long semester.
While Dr. Ronstein started handing out the syllabus for the class and saying something about his teaching assistant being unavoidably detained that morning, Nick started to doodle in his sketchbook, almost unconsciously. He paused to glance over the syllabus when a copy found its way to him, frowning slightly as he flipped through the schedule of the class.
Heavy reading, light assignments. That’s a small favor, I guess.
His attention wandered again and he sat, half-listening to Ronstein as he went over the syllabus in greater detail. His hand and the pencil in it seemed to move of their own accord even as he cultivated the appearance of paying rapt attention to his professor. In truth, he only gleaned the most important parts, his thoughts elsewhere—on the self-appointed projects he wanted to start, on trying to piece together more scraps of the last few dreams even as they continued to fade from his memory, on the other three classes he’d have to make it through over the next few days before he could safely say that he’d been to all of his classes and had an idea of what to expect—and what he could skip and learn on his own.
It wasn’t until class was nearly over that he caught sight of the girl watching him. He only saw her doing it from the corner of his eye and he frowned briefly, trying not to stare back at her. She wasn’t really looking at him, though—she was looking at his sketchpad, and what he’d drawn there.
“That’s all I have for you today,” Ronstein said, and the words jarred Nick, drawing his attention back to the front of the classroom. “Please read the first three chapters of the Daley text for next time and be prepared to discuss what he had to say about urban settings in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”
Nick flipped his sketchbook closed and stood up, starting to tuck it and his pencil into his bag. Discreetly, he glanced in the direction of the girl again, hoping for a better look while she wasn’t paying attention.
There’s something familiar about her.
It wasn’t like she was the girl from his dream—far from it. This girl was dark-haired and gray-eyed and of a slightly more broad build than the elfin red-head that he dreamed of every night. Still, there was something damnably familiar about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
At least not yet.
He shouldered his bag and turned away before she could notice him staring. There would be time enough to figure out why she was familiar over the coming days and weeks, he was sure of that much—assuming she stayed in the class, anyway. The first couple of weeks were always full of drops and new adds as people realized classes weren’t for them and changed their schedule around one last time before they were locked in for the rest of the semester.
What bothered him more than not being able to figure out why she was familiar was how intently she’d been staring at his sketch of Roiya, the girl from his dreams.
Maybe she’s just into messy sketches, he thought as he gulped down the last of his coffee and pitched the cup on his way out of the classroom. That’s got to be it. Hell. Watching me draw was probably more interesting than whatever Ronstein was saying. I know I sure as hell feel that way.
The sun was higher, now, and even more intense as he stepped out of the building and into midday sunshine of an August Tuesday. Still, a shiver shot down his spine. The familiarity bothered him in a way that was more unsettling than it should have been—like it was on the very edge of his memory but was something he couldn’t quite wrap his fingers around.
At least not yet.
Sighing quietly, Nick turned and headed for the dining commons, hoping that he’d find Thad there. They hadn’t done much discussion of their class schedules in the last weeks before the semester’s start except to know that at least some of their class times would overlap and that Thad would be lingering on campus whenever his father was teaching. The freshman had opted to live at home, though what calculus had led to that decision, Nick wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have lived on campus—the dorms weren’t full and enrollment was down slightly. It would have been easy to get a slot if he’d wanted one. Instead, Thad was apparently content to live at home with his parents and his younger sister, in a house that was an easy bike or bus ride to campus. It bothered Nick a little, but not enough to ask why. At least not yet.
There were a lot of things that seemed to be falling into that category these days.
Not yet.
He shivered again despite the sunshine and the heat, shifting his backpack and starting to walk a little faster. Maybe things had always been this way and he was only just now starting to notice. Maybe it was something else. He wasn’t sure.
He fit his earbuds into his ears as he passed the arboretum, starting some music on his phone. He crossed the bridge through the shade of trees, trying to let the music soothe suddenly ragged nerves and trying to ignore the other students that thronged around him, crowded the bridge and the sidewalks on that sunny second day of the semester. The press of people bothered him, but he knew by the following week the crowds would die away until midterms, and then after that they’d die away again until the week before finals. He just had to grin and bear it for a little while.
He almost laughed. If that didn’t seem like an allegory for life, he wasn’t sure what did.
The dining commons were as crowded as he worried they might be, but he pushed that aside, scanning the faces in the crowd for the familiar one he sought. He didn’t see Thad immediately, but that didn’t mean that his friend wasn’t among the students already settled at tables, possibly somewhere tucked into a corner and out of sight.
Steeling himself, he headed for the food court, intending to snag a sandwich or some Chinese food—depending on which line was shorter. A quick survey of the activity in the area made the decision for him and he settled into he line in front of the stir-fry counter, then cranked the volume up on his music.
His throat tightened slightly as the words filled his ears, the swell of the notes, their ebb and flow. Somehow, it reminded him of her, of Roiya. The ghost of her face filled his mind’s eye the way it filled the pages of his sketchbook, crowding out everything else. He wondered, if she really was real, did she do that when she entered a room? Was she suddenly the center of every gaze? Or did she slide in quietly, like a dagger through a chink in armor, not there until you tried to move and then suddenly—
A hand tapped his shoulder and he jumped, every muscle suddenly taut, coiled like a spring, ready for a fight. He sucked in two breaths, blinking rapidly as his vision cleared enough for him to realize that it was Thad, that Thad had tapped him on the shoulder and scared the wits right out of him. Nick yanked out his earbuds.
“Are you okay?” Thad asked, his grin melting into an expression of concern—the furrowed brow, the slackened jaw, the strange look in his eye. “Did I scare you?”
“Yes,” Nick growled, turning off his music and shoving his phone and headphones back into his pocket. He checked his tone and started again. “I was distracted. That’s all.”
Thad nodded. “Thought you might be. Physics sucked. How was Ronstein?”
“There’s going to be a TA but he wasn’t here today,” Nick said. “Something about being unavoidably detained.”
“That is some choice of words.” Thad shook his head. “Well, better for you if he’s got a TA. That means you’ll get grades back faster and lectures will probably be more interesting.”
“Here’s to hoping because right now I’m definitely not finding that class very stimulating at all.”
“Let’s be real, here,” Thad said as they slowly advanced in the stir fry line. “Would you be finding any sort of class very stimulating right now?”
Nick sighed. “Probably not.”
“There you go.” Thad nodded firmly. “I’ve got a gap for a few hours. You?”
“Same.”
“Want to walk after lunch?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Something happened during class that’s bugging me and I want your read on it.”
“My read? The lowly freshman?”
Nick snorted, turning away to order his food. Thad ordered his just after, and then the two headed out into the dining area to find a secluded table, juggling bowls and drinks as they went. Thad nudged his elbow after a few minutes of fruitless searching and pointed to a table in a corner near some windows, overlooking some of the wooded areas that peppered their campus. There were still two people sitting at the table.
“We can go sit over there,” Thad said.
“It doesn’t look like they’re ready to leave yet.”
“Trust me,” Thad said. He didn’t wait for Nick to answer, just started heading for that table in the corner. Nick blinked for a second, then followed. Sure enough, as Thad drew within about ten feet of the table, the pair that had been sitting there stood up, gathering their things. They were gone before he and Thad reached the table. Nick just shook his head.
“How the hell did you know?” he asked.
Thad shrugged. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, Nick.” He settled down in the chair, his back to one of the building’s support beams. “So what happened during your class that’s got you rattled?”
“What?”
Thad canted his head to one side, a brow arching. “You said something happened in class. What was it? I’m pretty damn sure it’s not something Ronstein said.”
Nick choked on a laugh. “No. No, it wasn’t. Something else. There was this girl.”
“Not dreamgirl,” Thad guessed.
“No,” Nick said, spearing some snow peas and chicken with his fork. “Someone I’m pretty sure I’ve never met before, but she was watching me.”
“Like, you specifically? With some kind of purpose? Or just staring off into space because Ronstein is just that boring and her gaze just happened to end up landing on you for an extended period of time?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said quietly. He shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth, using the time it took to chew and swallow to buy himself time to decide exactly how he was going to phrase what he was about to say. “She wasn’t really even looking that closely at me. You know me, I was doodling in my sketchbook while Ronstein was droning on about the syllabus and what we can expect in the class. I wasn’t even really paying attention to what I was doodling, either.”
“What were you doodling?”
“Her,” Nick said, feeling his cheeks warm for a second. “The girl from the dreams. I was drawing her. I’ve been doing it for weeks.”
“Really,” Thad said. There was no judgement in his tone, only a vague sort of curiosity—as if he was at least mildly intrigued, or as if he thought that meant something more than it probably really did. Since he’d met the other teenager, Nick had gotten the impression that Thad read into a lot of things. Granted, he hadn’t seen evidence that it was necessarily a bad thing but again, there was that feeling of not yet.
Nick squirmed slightly. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal.”
“Are you sure?” Thad shook his head. “I mean, if you can remember her clearly enough to keep—”
“Half the time I’m not even paying attention to doing it,” Nick said. “I just do it. I could be thinking about drawing something else and then all of a sudden it’s ten minutes later and I’ve drawn her again.”
“You’ve never shown me.”
“Of course I have,” Nick said even as his stomach dropped. He had, hadn’t he?
“Nope, we’ve just talked about the dreams. You never told me that you kept doodling her in your sketchbook. You’ve never shown me anything in your sketchbook.”
Nick felt dizzy. “I could have sworn—”
“You haven’t,” Thad said. His brows knit again. “Are you okay? You look—I don’t know. Weird. Like you’re about to bolt.”
Nick shook himself. “What? No. No, sorry. I just—I could have sworn I had.” He dug the sketchpad out of his backpack and held it out to his friend. “Here. I just—I don’t know what to think about all of it, Thad. The girl in my class wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at what I was drawing. I couldn’t tell what she thought of it or why she was looking and she bailed out fast after class. What the hell does that mean?”
“Maybe she was embarrassed to have been caught staring,” Thad said, taking the sketchpad. He leaned back in his chair, taking a last sip of his drink before he flipped the sketchbook open, beginning to thumb through the pages. “That kind of thing…happens…”
His voice trailed away and some of the blood drained from his face. Nick leaned forward slightly.
“Thad? Are you okay?”
Thad’s jaw hung slack for a few seconds. He swallowed hard, then turned the sketchbook around, pointing to one of the doodles there. “Is this her? The girl you’ve been dreaming about?”
She was smiling in the sketch, her hair hanging loose around her face, curling in wavy ringlets, her gaze soft but somehow intense at the same time. It was one of the newer sketches, one he’d done only a few days before. His mouth dried up and his throat tightened as he nodded.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I did that one last week. On Saturday, while I was watching TV.”
Thad carefully set down the sketchbook and dug his phone out of his pocket. He tapped a few things, clearly searching for something, and Nick felt his stomach get more and more unsettled as he did.
What the hell is going on?
Then Thad leaned across the table, a picture filling the screen of his phone—a red-haired girl grinning at the camera, her hand outstretched as if admonishing whoever was taking it. It looked like she was at the beach with someone, the sunlight painting gold highlights into flame-red hair.
His stomach dropped.
“Is this her?” Thad asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Nick, is this her?”
“Where did you get that?” Nick asked, his voice choked, almost inaudible. He slowly reached for the phone and Thad relinquished it, leaning even further forward toward him.
“Is it?”
Nick nodded, his heart pounding fast—too fast. “Thad, where did you get this?”
“From her. You idiot, you never told me her name.”
“I only knew her first name. I never—I could never remember the last name.”
“We need to talk,” Thad said. “Pack up your shit. Let’s go.”
Nick startled. “Wait, what?”
“Come on,” Thad said. “We’ll use my dad’s office. We’re not talking about this here.”
“I don’t—”
“I know that you don’t understand,” Thad said. “That’s why we need to talk. Come on. My dad’s office. Now.”
