Teaching Mr. Graham

Chapter Eleven

    "Mr. Mysterious?" he repeated.

    "My nickname for you," Tatiana said, and walked away from him. She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, knowing he would follow.

    He joined her in the hallway. "You already have a nickname for me?" he asked with a grin. "That's sweet."

    "I didn't know what else to call you," she said with a shrug, walking down the hall aimlessly.

    He walked alongside her. "The fact that you think about me enough to have to come up with a nickname is flattering."

    "Are you a psych major?" she questioned, arching a look at him.

    "Haha...not quite."

    "And I don't think about you a lot," she muttered defensively. "You just...keep tilting your head down like you're on the run from the cops or something. I never get to see your eyes. Hence the nickname Mr. Mysterious."

    He nodded. "I get the connection now."

    She self-consciously tugged on her hair.

    "Care to tell me how this is the first party you've ever come to?" he asked.

    "Depends - care to tell me how you know everything my friend and I have said to each other?" she countered, tilting her head to the side.

    He stopped in his tracks.

    She continued walking.

    He jogged to catch up with her. "I may have caught a few things you said to each other."

    "You may have caught?" she echoed, giving him the side eye. "That was you who I saw in the coffee shop, wasn't it? You followed us here? And then in the hallway...you were following us then, too. Do you make a habit of stalking young girls on campus? Is that your thing?"

    "No," he said emphatically. "Not at all. I was just...I was..."

    She arched a slender eyebrow at him.

    "I was just curious," he said. "About you."

    She looked at him, and there it was again: she could see his eyes gleaming, kind of sort of make out the whites of his eyes.

    He turned his head away from her.

    "Why do you keep doing that?" she demanded.

    "Because..."

    They reached the end of the hallway. She folded her arms across her chest as they turned around. "So...you can stalk me and my friend. Twice. That I know of. But I can't even see your face?"

    "Not right now."

    Her voice quieted as she asked, "Are you deformed?"

    He laughed. "What?"

    "Do you have some kind of deformity that you're trying to hide?"

    He shook his head, still laughing. "No."

    She looked up at him, confused. There was something so familiar about him, and that feeling only intensified when he laughed. It was as if she'd heard his laugh before, but that was impossible, wasn't it? "Have you ever been to Elm Grove, Wisconsin?"

    "Where?"

    "Never mind." She chewed on the inside of her cheek. Where do I know you from? This is going to bother me.

    He glanced at a watch on his wrist. "I should probably head home."

    She reached out and grabbed his arm, and a bunch of tiny little shocks prickled her fingers and shot up her arm. She gasped and removed her hand from his arm.