The girl didn’t say a word. Shoving a piece of light-brown hair behind her ear, she nudged past me.
Behind me, I could still hear her though. “Looks like yet another person falling into the Ryan trap.”
“Didn’t you hear? Sounds like she did a little more than just falling. She practically laid down and spread her legs the moment he said so. Ryan might not be the shiny boy next door any longer now that he’s off the team.”
“Seriously?”
“In the library, no less.”
The other person started to laugh. “That’s so disgusting.”
I rolled my eyes as I headed toward the exit. So much for gossip fading quickly. By next weekend, hopefully something else more interesting would come along. There had to be a first-year set to make an embarrassing legacy for themselves on campus soon enough.
Still, who could’ve possibly started the rumor? The two of us spending the night in the library had been obvious to those who came in early the next morning. These things had a way of twisting and turning out of control, and yet I couldn’t help but think about the words I had heard about me the last time people on campus looked at me strange.
Could Ryan have done this for some reason?
I wanted it to sound ridiculous, and yet it didn’t, burning a flush to my face with consideration. This was Ryan after all. However sweet he might have been, he’d said cruel things about me before. This was Ryan, who a half hour ago, had passed by like I was a complete stranger to him.
It wasn’t as if I’d expected him to have a parade in my honor after helping him with his essay or anything, but a simple hello would’ve sufficed. It would’ve at least been enough for me not to spend otherwise perfectly good time thinking about him in a very unflattering way.
What else had I pictured from him though? Along with being a rude jokester for the football team, he should try out for theater.
I might have been making more out of this than there was, and yet I shook my head at myself, continuing the path of my normal schedule to the library.
This time, my area, per usual, was empty.
The scratched mahogany was cleared of random sheets of paper and cardboard pizza boxes, like it’d had the last time I sat. Everyone else surrounding me was going on with their own business. Some leaned back in their chairs with headphones in while others sipped thick smoothies through tiny straws and typed one letter at a time with the other hand on their computers. There were, thankfully, fewer glances my way.
I dug into my backpack to the back compartment until I found what I was looking for. I might have gotten down most of my work for the week, let alone for today, but it was still too early to head back to my dorm even if comfortable sweatpants were calling my name.
If I went back now, I would likely have to face another chance encounter with Natalie. I would also have to pretend not to be bothered—no, infuriated—by how loudly Natalie slammed the door into the wall whenever she entered.
Taking a deep breath, I refocused my energy away from Ryan and Natalie.
The list of people sending my blood pressure through the roof was growing, and I knew one way to fix that.
Carefully, I slipped out the bent composition notebook from the compartment of my book bag that it shared with my laptop. The edges were faded, and when I opened to the first page, I faced the loopy handwriting of my high school self. I declared the sad ninety-nine-cent notebook my personal book of shadows. The binding was frayed. Tiny pieces of string stuck out from pages I ripped out and stapled back together as I found a better organization method.
Beside the old, I laid out the new leather-bound journal I had purchased especially online. After looking at it for approximately three months, I’d finally convinced myself it was absolutely worth the money. From the tight embroidery on the outside of the leaves and a strap that wrapped around so that I could add as many pages as I wanted or needed in the future, it took me a bit to get over the fear of accidentally ruining it and writing inside, but it might have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever bought for myself.
I’d been slowly transcribing all the information from my past dingy notebook into my new journal, much more magical artifact than middle school diary—though it had served me well for long enough.
My book of shadows was getting a face-lift, and it was stunning.
If I did say so myself. And I was the only one who would ever see it, so I did.
The pages were slowly coming together with careful line drawings and pictures I’d previously been too nervous to draw, less of them looking amateurish. I took my time on each page, careful that nothing would smear. This way, I would be able to refer to all my herbs and their meanings as well as all the recipes and spells I’d been taught since I’d arrived at Barnett, and I planned to keep it with me for the rest of my life.
I had gotten to the second paragraph of a motivation jar charm, getting into an almost-meditative state of careful work, by the time a very different sort of shadow floated across my page.
“I figured you’d be here.”
I shut my eyes, and my body took over before I could think of whatever sort of condescending words I wanted to say to this wide-set block of a person in front of me. They’d surely be something good rather than the pitiful-sounding things I’d said to Vadika.
A girl was upset that the popular boy wasn’t talking to her.
That was what everyone thought of me as now, wasn’t it?
