Chapter Text
When SHE first entered class, wearing a dark green and grey striped wool hoodie casually showing one slender shoulder and pointing her gaze to the ground, my heart skipped a beat.
She looked around the room, eyes searching for an empty seat like a panicked animal.
I could see her chipped black nail polish while she fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve, her face pale and her voice high and faint when she excused herself for being late and sat down near a girl two seats from me.
After a boring explanation from some underpaid teacher, the first break and time for the class to get to know each other started.
For the first few minutes, I kept to myself and observed; she seemed to do the same. The rest of the class started to form small groups and to test social grounds against each other.
We observed.
For now, there was nothing to do, so I got up and headed for the exit, while no one else seemed to care or notice another student amongst many leaving for the yard; she sure did.
It was almost amusing how she would quickly lower her gaze whenever I turned to look, and intriguing once she stopped doing so.
Luckily for me, the small schoolyard had an area where the older students like myself were allowed to smoke alongside the teachers. I stood inside the line that socially allowed me to feed my chosen nicotine addiction, avoiding the main crowd of chattering students and teachers behind me when she came out.
Interesting; she didn't strike me as a smoker, and when she came to a halt right outside the line and buried her hands in her pockets, I started to doubt she was. And indeed, after a few moments of silence with her gaze still fixed on her heavy boots, she said, "It was too loud inside." That made sense.
"Not the best place here," I said while lighting my cigarette. "I don't know about our class... Hanna seems decent, I guess."
She kept looking down at her boots, not saying anything but also not turning away.
"Anyway, have you made any friends so far? I also feel a bit overwhelmed."
She took a moment, then answered, "No, I am not a friend person."
Now I needed a second. "I don't have to make small talk if you came out here to be alone; that is fine."
"I like listening," she replied softly.
Before I could answer, the bell called us back to class.
I walked to the ashtray at the rear wall. When I turned back, she was still waiting where she stood. As I walked up to her, she picked up her grey handbag from the stone ground, swung it over her shoulder, and began walking towards the door.
I quickened my pace and walked beside her through the floor, neither of us saying a word.
For Math class, I wanted to sit all the way in the back so as not to be annoyed by the teacher, and as I made my way through the table rows, she kept walking beside me until I sat down in the empty rear left corner of the room.
She stood beside me for a moment before setting her handbag down and taking the seat next to me.
While the teacher gave outdated frontal lessons about quadratic equations, I tried not to look over at her as she was scribbling on her paper with a bored expression.
After a while, she slowly tore a corner of her sheet and laid it on my still empty paper.
On it, in hastily written, shimmering light blue ink, in cursive, was a question: "You bored too?"
I put the torn piece into my pencil case and tore a corner of my own paper.
"I am trying to dissociate, u?" I wrote with black ink and slid the piece over to her.
The answer came once the teacher turned to the blackboard again.
"haha, I wish I could rn".
I dared a glance; I wanted to see her expression. Instead, I saw her light brown hair falling in slight curls to roughly a centimeter above her shoulder, the light from the window shining through her strands and shimmering on her silver rings.
I tore another piece of my increasingly small paper and wrote.
"Why can't you?"
When I looked up again, she seemed focused on the blackboard, and I hesitated. After a moment, though, she looked bored again, and I slipped the paper over.
She read it and looked back up at the blackboard for almost a minute before writing her answer. "PE next..."
Now I was interested and quickly wrote, "I hate running while getting yelled at too, but it wouldn't keep me from zoning out from this math bs."
This time the answer came quickly: "It's not PE, well, not just. I hate the changing room."
"Shit, why?" I thought, and after hesitating and failing to grasp something better to write, I wrote it.
After staring at the paper, which I was by now conspicuously hiding with one flat hand, not only from the teacher but also from her, I added "(you don't have 2 say)" and handed her the note.
She looked at it for a while and then put it into her handbag. Then she looked at the equations in front of her again, concentrating.
As the class was almost over, she slid another piece over: "I don't like how I look sometimes :P".
I read it again and wanted to answer, but she was already getting up, and saying something out loud was not an option. So I followed her in silence this time.
When we arrived at the changing room, she stopped, eyes big and fixed on the door.
"Don't say anything," she said quietly, and opened the door.
Inside, multiple women were already changing. We found an empty bench, and she set her backpack and handbag on it.
She pulled a dark blue shirt, black leggings, and a black Adidas jacket from her bag and lifted her striped pullover over her bra.
I tried not to look while I hung my coat on the hook in front of me before turning away from her. Then I lifted my plain white shirt to quickly exchange it for my blue sports suit.
When I looked up, she sat in front of me in a plain white bra, but more importantly, with scars all over her arms. She immediately seemed to notice me seeing them and quickly pulled her new shirt down before anyone else could.
"Don't say anything," she said more quietly than last time, not that I had any intention to, here in front of everyone.
I nodded, and we left for PE.
At the bench, a bit away from the rest of the class, she sat down next to me and said, still rather quietly, "They are old. I am not ready to talk about them."
I nodded again.
After class, we stood together at the bus stop. We had to take the same bus to the city center first and then split off onto different lines.
I did not know what to say, so we stood in silence.
When the bus finally came, she went in behind me and followed me through the rows. I found an empty double seat near the back and sat down.
She stopped next to my row and looked at me. I nodded, and she sat down beside me.
After passing a few blocks, she looked over and asked, "You wanna add me on WhatsApp?"
I had to smile. "I only have Signal, but I would like to chat."
She pulled her phone out and opened the Play Store, looking for Signal. After she installed it, we added each other via the QR code and sat in silence again.
The bus arrived at the city center, and we stepped out onto the central station. It was loud: hundreds of busy people chattering and walking by, and buses departing.
She looked at her phone and left for her bus. Before it came, she turned around and said, "bye."
I nodded and left for my bus.