Page 6 of When October Starts

Why was he staring? He was my teacher. Teachers shouldn’t stare, right? But after a while, and after feeling my cheeks heat up, I started to enjoy his eyes on me. No man has ever looked at me the way Ezra had.

I put the camera down to look at him, and as I caught him look at my lips, he didn’t bother to look away. He kept his eyes right there, and after a few seconds, they moved up to mine.

“What’s the movie about?” he asked, not acknowledging the fact that he had just been staring at me.

“Uh, I haven’t finished the script yet, but it’s about nostalgia. That’s what I feel when I’m here,” I told him. “It’s silly, but in a place this empty, my heart couldn’t get any fuller.” I looked around, watching the trees sway in the wind and single drops of rain falling around us.

We stopped by the Ferris wheel, and as I looked up, I could feel Ezra’s eyes on me again. “What else do you feel when you’re here?”

I smiled at his question and turned to look into his eyes. “Joy. Tranquility. Comfort.”

“And what do you feel when you’re not here?”

He was trying to help me with my project, and I appreciated it. His questions made me think, and it helped me set the mood for the movie I wanted to shoot.

“Nervousness,” I replied, keeping my eyes on his. “As if there’s a storm inside of me.”

*

Ezra

There was a lot going on in her head. Her way of talking fascinated me. She chose her words carefully, yet it seemed as if she just let them run free without thinking too much about it.

Maybe it was a mistake coming here with her, but there was something so fucking intriguing about Juno that I couldn’t stay away from. She pulled me in, and I let her. Of course, I worried about someone seeing us hang out, but on Clark Island, I felt that we were hidden from the world.

I still had to be careful. I didn’t want to get fired for spending time with a student outside of school, and although I didn’t intend on getting too close to her, there was always the possibility of people interpreting it wrong and getting me fired.

Staring at her would also have to stop. She was beautiful. Her hair was a dark shade of red. It probably got lighter in the summer, but in this time of year, it matched the red leaves falling from the trees. Her deep blue eyes matched the lake surrounding us, and I slowly started to understand why she liked this place so much. She fit right in. Not just the colors, but also her personality. Her characteristics. She was quiet when she needed to be. She was sarcastic, and whenever she did open her mouth to talk, her words made you think.

“Wanna sit down?” she asked, pointing to an old, rusty carousel a few feet away from the Ferris wheel. Everything about this park was impressive.

“Do you know how old this park is?” I asked, following her to the carousel where she sat down in what looked like a tea cup. I sat down too, making sure to leave enough space between us.

“It was built in the sixties, but it was quickly abandoned after the people who worked here didn’t get paid enough. Visitors didn’t have to pay to ride any of these rides, so they protested. It went downhill from there,” she said with a shrug.

“How do you know all this?” I asked, watching her closely as she lifted the camera and pointed it in my direction. “What are you doing?” I chuckled, running my hand through my hair.

“Don’t move,” she said, looking through the camera while she answered my first question. “I’ve done some research. Wrote a paper about it,” she explained.

She kept filming me, and her smile slowly faded.

“Juno,” I said in a low voice. “You’ll have to delete that footage.”

I didn’t wanna risk anything, and she knew what we were doing wasn’t okay. Even though we were just hanging out…a teacher shouldn’t spend time with his student outside of school.

“I know. I will,” she said softly, finally putting down the camera and setting it back into her lap. Her eyes were on mine again, and the depth in them was astonishing. She didn’t look away, and I was trying my best not to get lost in them.

Chapter Seven

Juno

I took videos of almost every single part of the island. I had an exact vision of what my movie would be like when it’s done, and what I had on my camera made me excited to put everything together.

“Maybe I don’t have to use Pixie in my movie. Maybe I can focus my movie on nature.” We were walking along the path leading back to the ferry. It was already getting dark out, and I was expected home before eight.

“I mean…” I looked up at Ezra. We were walking next to each other, a little closer than we should’ve. “I would’ve used her to spice the whole movie up a little with her looks. Sometimes she doesn’t seem real to me,” I said quietly, looking back to my camera and replaying the videos I recorded.

“She does look like she came straight out of a fantasy movie,” Ezra agreed.

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