Andrew Kelly

And so, on a bluebird day in September, she packed up her things and she went. To conquer the world, and maybe some others. To prove that she could.

She took a breath and she took a step.

And the shadows followed

Everything else was black, down to the dark matte of her lips. She wore her hair in two high pigtails. Like she was going to a comic book convention and not to class. Like this was Ivy League cosplay and she was Wednesday Addams. The white-blond spill deepened to a pale violet coil at the ends.

He wasn’t supposed to talk to her.

He knew it, and yet he couldn’t keep the words from carving out of him anyway.

“Personally, I’m partial to ‘lump of foul deformity.’ ”

She pinned him in a withering stare. “I think I’ll stick with ‘asshole.’ ”

and Lane stared dead ahead, making a terrific show of not paying him any attention

He still couldn’t believe she was here. Little rainbow Lane who’d held his hand. Feeling him staring, she let her gaze slip back to his. This time, he didn’t bother looking away

to find Lane already there. Another change. Another hiccup in his routine. He drew up short in the open door, caught off guard by her presence. She was dressed all in black, her hair a waterfall of color, and for several seconds he wasn’t entirely sure which instructions he was meant to follow. He was expected to be in class fifteen minutes before students arrived. He was expected to stay away from Lane. He couldn’t obey one directive without forgoing the other.

Maybe, he reasoned, if he managed to look convincingly engrossed in his task, she’d lose interest. Instead, her stare lingered. He closed one browser and pulled open another, clicking aimlessly through his inbox. The force of her scrutiny clawed through him

She looked fully engrossed in her reading, and he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t heard him come in or if it was a part of her grand plan to pretend like he didn’t exist

Her delivery came out too quiet for the theater’s carpeted sprawl. Like she wasn’t sure how powerfully she needed to project in order to be heard. Like she was worried about her voice taking up too much space.

“Can I ask you something?”

He deleted a counterfeit invoice from his spam folder. “Is it related to the coursework?”

“No.” Her swinging boot fell still. “Not exactly.”

“Then no,” he said, though he was fiercely intrigued. “I have several things to get through before class starts, and your incessant talking is deeply distracting.”