Reclusive- s.r

one

Vega Auclair

With each tick of the clock on the wall, I feel my patience growing thinner and thinner.

My foot taps anxiously against the floor of the lecture hall, and my hand is cramping from attempting to scribble down last minute notes of what the professor is saying. I shake my wrist out quickly and return to my paper, the ink smudging slightly as my hand drags over the fresh words. My right hand fiddles with a loose thread on my jeans, and my head aches from all the information its been trying to digest for the last two hours.

During a moment of silence from the front, I use the short break to my advantage to remove the pen from my left hand. My eyes subconsciously drift to the row in front of me, where I get a clear view of a shaggy head of brown hair, and can't help but wonder what would happen if I were to kick the back of his seat right now.

Probably not a good idea, I conclude.

I can't help but feel envy as I watch him with a pen in his hands, barely having anything written on the notebook in front of him. That stupid eidetic memory that he's always bragging about. As if he can sense my gaze on him, he turns his head around to look directly at me, and I turn my eyes away before he has the chance to realize I was staring, willing him to fall through the floor with my eyes.

When I see him still looking at me in my peripheral, I bite and turn my head toward him once more. His eyes show amusement, and I want to smack him on the back of the head for looking at me like that with those eyes- No, stop it. He's the devil, remember?

"On your way out, please come and pick up your most recent assessment which has been marked. If you have any questions or concerns, please come see me during office hours." At her words, everyone slowly starts to stand up from their chairs and make their way down the stairs to the front of the room. As Professor Edwards hands me my graded paper, I notice the small smile on her face when she nods her head in approval, and that's all I need to know.

I definitely aced it.

And if I didn't, I'd be completely and totally surprised. I poured my blood sweat and tears into this paper, and the oral component, worked on it into the wee hours in the morning, and any free time I got at work. I swear that if you looked closely enough, you could see my physical tear stains on the paper form how many times I cried over it. Not because I was sad, but more so frustrated.

Once I'm outside the classroom, I lean against the wall and hold the paper to my chest, still not looked at it. I count down in my head and turn the paper around, seeing the bright 97 in bright letters at the top. I feel a sense of pride in my chest as the numbers continue to smile back at me. I quickly flip through, seeing small notes in the margins about areas of improvement, and I remind myself to go through them more thoroughly tonight when I get home.

All my life I've been smart, but during my first year at college, my marks had definitely dropped to a level I wasn't used to. So I did the only logical thing I could think of, which is staying up late every night, fuelling solely on coffee, until I worked my way back up to my desired marks and saved my average.

"How'd you do?" Spencer glances over my shoulder, trying to peek at my paper. He always does. Because nine out of ten times, he knows that he did better than me, and he'll look for any excuse to gloat about it.

"You first." I raise an eyebrow at him in a challenge and hide the number at the top of the paper. Knowing him, he probably got 100 and he's just waiting to rub it in my face. Having the same major, I've seen Spencer Reid more in the past two years than I ever would in my entire life. He's the only person who can both challenge me, and make me want to rip my fucking hair out.