Graceful Deception

2. If I Remember Correctly, The Last Time I Saw You, You Shot Me

Chapter 2

If I Remember Correctly, The Last Time I Saw You, You Shot Me

 

 

A day later?  I was acting completely paranoid. 

A week later?  Yeah, still paranoid, even when classes started and Stella and I were getting to know each other more and more, becoming friends even. 

And when September faded into October, when the air cooled and the leaves on the trees changed color?  Still, everywhere I looked, I was seeing things in people who I knew were nothing but ordinary. 

Let’s face it.  I had reached one of the highest levels of paranoia known to man. 

I had gotten no word from John or Elena, like I would have expected to.  I mean, the very sound of the word ‘Knight’ coming from my lips in the message I’d sent that day should have caused enough stir for them to come barging into my dorm room.  But did they?  No. 

Maybe that number wasn’t theirs anymore.

Stella noticed my preoccupation, that’s for sure.  Even Ren did in the week that he stayed in Boston before heading back to D.C. and the few weekends when he came up for a visit.  I would always find her watching me when I looked back at her after staring down a suspicious-looking person until they left the building. 

“You’re doing it again,” she’d say almost every time. 

“I just…got distracted,” I would answer.  It was my answer anytime she said it to me, but she would always try to dig a little more.  I wouldn’t give her anything, though. 

“And you’re not going to tell me just what got you distracted either, are you, like you never do?”

“Sorry,” I winced.  “I’m just…I keep thinking that I’m seeing people that I know.”

She sighed, shaking her head as she eyeballed before rolling her eyes and going back to highlighting her textbook and notes. 

She knew something was going on with me.  But like a good roommate and friend, she didn’t pry too much besides trying to get it out of me the second time of asking.  If it were me, though…it would have totally been the reverse.  Heck, I was even getting on my own nerves.  My mind was on anything but school, which wasn’t the best thing, I must admit. 

And as we walked to our class, Lost Languages and Decipherments, one Thursday morning, I tried my best to concentrate on what Stella was saying about our next paper that was coming up the next week. 

“…even started it yet?  You know it’s due in a week, right?  How are you going to finish a ten page paper in that short a time period?”

My eyebrows furrowed as I glanced over at her before we crossed the street to get to our building.  “What are you talking about?  I thought the paper was due two weeks ago.”

“That was the first one, Em,” she said, staring at me.  “You’ve seriously forgotten, haven’t you?  I wrote it on our assignment calendar like I told you I would.  Didn’t you see it?  It’s been there since Professor Turrings set the due date!”

“I didn’t, but it shouldn’t take me all week to get it done.”

She just sighed, shaking her head.  “Well, that’s the truth.  You could knock it out the night before in just an hour or two…freak,” she mumbled, smiling, though I could clearly hear it.  

“Shorty,” I grinned, looking straight ahead.  She absolutely hated it whenever anyone called her short.  I learned that our first day as roommates, when Ren had called her short.  She definitely made up for it in attitude, though.