Light in Dawn

Chapter Twelve - Celebrity Effect

An unsuspecting Julyan placed his hands back in pockets, still on his way back to the common room with Andriana. "What happened to Lucy?"

"Lucy?" Her pace continued rhythmically, seemingly unaffected, but he sensed a distinct chill in her air. "Do you remember Jeana? The one with green hair?"

"She's in your Spanish class too?"

How does he know that I had Spanish? Andriana dropped her own question to answer his. "Yes, and so is Lucy. When we arrived to class, Lucy was worried about losing her pencil case and notebook before school. Now guess who found them?"

"Jeana."

She nodded passively. "Can you imagine how she did it? The teacher asked her to read out her translation for something. Instead, she read out an ethereal poem completely irrelevant to the question - and she had that despicable smirk on her face. Then the half of the class just burst out laughing, and someone recognized Lucy's pencil case on her desk."

"The poem is Lucy's?"

"Lucy keeps a notebook for poetry and prose she write for leisure. By the looks of it she's filled about a hundred pages."

"She's a keen writer then."

"Jeana was about to destroy them. She's embarrassed Lucy by reading her personal work out in class and added obscene doodles on the pages, and even then she was going to rip up the pages and destroy all of Lucy's work -" Her breath was uneven. "And then there's Lucy's pencil case. She thought she had saved it, but inside, all of her pens were snapped."

Ah. So Andriana had saved the notebook from destruction, and that had attracted the mad herd. "Andriana. There's nothing more you could have done."

Silence. Andriana inhaled deeply, trying to steady her heartbeat again. It had been so long since she had unleashed her emotions in front of someone else. As the bell struck signaling the end of lunch, she whispered a "thank you" to Julyan, unsure if he had heard it at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

Andriana flipped through her Art portfolio with a crayon between her fingers. The bell had gone three minutes ago, but half of the desks were still vacant; it was normal for students to be tardy after lunch. Every few seconds someone would barge in and fling his or her books on a desk.

The seats in a class wasn't designated, but usually after the first week the class would reach an unspoken agreement on the seating arrangement. Anyone who transgressed would be frowned upon.

Until a week ago, the seat next to Andriana was always unoccupied - but now this was true only for her Spanish class. In every other class it was a given that Julyan would automatically fill that spot. So right now, when he wasn't yet in class, his absence was easily felt.

"Mind if I sit here?" Someone drew out the chair next to her.

It was a boy she didn't recognise. Neatly combed raven hair, stormless charcoal eyes; he wore his uniform like a prince's robes, with the sort of debonairness in his air that made girls swoon.

Strange that new students seem to find their way to her automatically.

The normal response would be to nod and greet him, but something must have possessed her that moment. She glanced at the door. "Sorry, this seat is taken."

The princely boy halted. There was a trace of surprise in his features. Andriana expected curses and insults, as she'd seen too often with the boys in this school. Apparently this one was different. "Oh it is? Bad luck for me then," he responded with a gracious smile.