Page 12 of Hidden Lies

7

It was to my immense relief that Micah was not in my pre-calc class. I didn’t know if I could take another hour with him, playing a game I hadn’t signed up for, with rules I didn’t understand, and yet somehow I definitely appeared to be losing.

Thankfully, neither Garrett nor the other one—Devan—was in the class either, nor was Drew or any of my roommates. I recognized the freckled red-headed girl from my drawing class, but other than that there was no one familiar, and I spent a blessedly peaceful hour listening to Professor James drone on about functions.

English lit was another story. Both Nora and Julie were in the class, as well as Garrett Silver and Devan. The class set-up reminded me of a corporate boardroom more than a classroom, with a single large circular table dominating the space, ringed by comfortable chairs. To my relief, I was able to choose a seat next to Nora, with a boy I didn’t know on the other side, though I realized my mistake when that put me directly across the table from Garrett.

I needn’t have worried though, because he ignored me throughout the duration of the class, keeping his head down as if intently interested in the syllabus and reading list the teacher was describing. And though his pent-up energy leaked out in the form of the ceaseless tapping of his pencil against the tabletop, I still escaped the class feeling like maybe I’d imagined my interactions with him the previous day, misheard his humorless chuckle as I’d fled from him on the path, misremembered his eyes on me in the dining hall. I hoped so.

Maybe I had even over exaggerated my interactions with Micah in art class that morning. Honestly, it was just a drawing, and I probably had been in his way in the supply closet. I’d just inflated everything in my mind, my sleepless night and discomfort at my new surroundings translating into paranoia and overreacting.

Yes. I would keep my head down and ignore them both, and they would ignore me right back.

How wrong I was.

* * *

My last class of the day was organic chemistry, and the second I walked into the room I felt the weight of eyes on me. Drew had a seat up front, and I noticed other familiar faces as well. The room was filled with two-person lab benches, and the only one with both seats still empty was directly in front of the table occupied by both Garrett and Micah. I kept my spine straight as I approached, and their conversation fell silent as I slung my bag over the chair and stiffly settled into it.

“Camilla.”

The voice was Micah’s, and he didn’t say anything other than my name, and yet in that single word he managed to erase any question of whether I’d perhaps misinterpreted our interactions that morning.

I turned to glare at him and blinked as I found Garrett doing the same thing, his dark expression trained on his friend.

“Micah,” I gritted out in greeting, then turned back, watching as the room slowly filled with students until the only empty seat was next to me. I crossed my fingers beneath the smooth black table, hoping the seat would remain open, and breathed out a sigh of relief when the teacher finally stepped in and pulled the door shut behind her.

She was a tall lady with short, white hair and colorful glasses on a lanyard around her neck, and she took up residence behind the desk at the front, glancing over the class.

“Good,” she announced. “I believe I had most of you last year in Chem II. This class builds on the foundation we built there. It’ll be a mixture of lecture and lab work, and the person you’re sitting next to now will be your lab partner for the semester.” She glanced around, and her gaze zeroed in on me. “Camilla, you’re new.”

I nodded.

“I assume you’ve taken the chemistry prerequisites, or they wouldn’t have placed you in my class.”

It seemed like a rhetorical question, but I nodded again anyway.

“Good. Since you don’t have a lab partner, you can join—”

I tensed, hoping my choice of an empty table wasn’t about to backfire on me, but at that moment the door swung open and another figure entered the room. My heart sank into my shoes.

“Ah, Mr. Moore, so good of you to join us. You are aware that class starts at two p.m., even on the first day?”

“My apologies, Professor Svirsky. It won’t happen again.”

“Well, go join Miss Kaplan.”

She gestured toward me, and I sighed as the towering figure of Devan Moore crossed the room to take the seat next to me. At well over six feet, with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, he took up more space than any one person had a right to, and I scooted to the side to give him room. He had his hair down, the dark red shoulder length strands framing a face with a square jaw and heavy brows, and his eyes were a sparkling pale blue as he looked me over, then leaned in close.

“Why did the physics teacher break up with the biology teacher?” he asked in a whisper.

I furrowed my brow in bafflement. “What?”

He winked at me. “Because there was no chemistry.”

I squinted at him. “Are you seriously telling chemistry jokes?”

“You’re the new girl,” he observed with a smile as the teacher went on with her overview.

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