Behind Our Masks

Chapter 3: First Impressions

                                         Penny

        ( Concentrate. )
                                                 ( Take advantage. )

                  ( Use this big guy. )

                                                           ( watch that arm. )

      ( Balance. Balance. )

                                    ( Lean here. )

         ( Hunch here. )                      ( slide there, )

                                ( Duck. )

                                         ( S T O P. )

                ( ...Now go. )

                                                    ( Go go go. )

In a matter of seconds, I was standing snuggly in the far corner of the room. The shadow of the cupboard beside me and the vantage point of the entire room made this the perfect hideaway for the time being. Or at least, it would have been perfect...

If not for the boy staring straight into my eye.

My first clue was that he was turned almost completely around, sitting sideways in his seat to look backward. At first I ignored the warning tingle, thinking it could have been a fluke, that he must've been looking at the kid sitting behind him. It was hard to tell with that hair covering his eyes, but there was absolutely no way he'd actually caught sight of me on his first try. No one did. Ever.

But then, oh, but then.

He smiled slightly and lifted his hand to part his hair just enough so that one eye was visible, and... alarm bells blared in my skull. A harsh chill ran down my spine as we made true eye contact, a rude reminder from my body that I was I fool not to have trusted my gut.

He only stayed that way for only a second before dropping his hand and turning around, just long enough to confirm that he was, in fact, looking directly at me. His way about it was infuriatingly deliberate; he knew I was there, and he wanted me to know that he knew. Cheeky bastard... Scary bastard. How the hell was he able to tell?
A little chat was definitely in order. Later. For the moment, I moved on to scanning the rest of the area for other possible threats to Daniel.

At first, classroom's contents weren't surprising in the least. There were the bullies and their victim, the vapid girls, the ugly girls, and... her? I wasn't expecting to see any familiar faces among the crowd, so I was surprised to lay eyes on the koala from the other day that had been clinging to that bully's arm. She looked to be good friends with girl she sat next to, a rare relationship considering the obvious social disparity between the two. Interesting.
Ah, but this was bad. If she was here... oh dear. Sure enough, there he was, just there by the window: Daniel's attacker. I never forgot a face, and that was definitely him. Even worse was the fact that the only empty seat in the entire class was directly to his left.

Daniel's luck was shit. And that was coming from me.

'Speaking of shit luck...'

When I looked to the source of the annoying breeze to my left, I found an unfortunate boy kneeling and fanning the air with his notebook like a Pharoah's slave. Whether it be a conference of government officials or a gang of piddling school children, every group had a weak link... and he was it. This boy was obviously the gazelle of the classroom, doomed by his weakness to be exploited and victimized.