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Elijah had been right. A week had passed and no one cared. Now that more than a year had gone by it definitely wasn't brought it up anymore - quickly labelled 'old news'. There were plenty of breakups, suspensions and fights that took its place, all far more interesting than an off-handed joke from a middle-aged man. She was no longer reminded with cruel jokes about the incident where everyone thought that she was in love with a boy who she had never even spoken to before.
Well . . . technically, hadn't spoken to but due to the whole ordeal that had changed. They hadn't spoken since but if she was going to be factual then they did have one very brief conversation.
The world went back to normal and she was, happily, once again irrelevant. She would much rather be ignored than laughed at.
They had all forgotten but she hadn't. Now she wouldn't even look in the general direction of Elijah, a conscious decision to avoid a repeat. She'd barely even look up from her paper anymore, just in case. School should've been her focus anyway, her mum said she would give her ten euros for every A that she got.
Since that week Elijah noticed her a lot more, now he would be the one occasionally looking at her. Unlike him, she was aware of every time he did so. It didn't help that in the classes they did have together (which was coincidentally most of them) he usually sat in front of her. He had to look over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of her quickly writing pages of explanation on Wuthering Heights. You can't be subtle when you had to turn around but October just ignored him.
He didn't do it much and only for a second at a time. Once she instinctively looked up when he had been staring for at least a minute, forgetting that she was meant to pretend like he didn't exist, and he just quickly looked away.
A lot had changed over the span of a year. October was now five foot six - her greatest accomplishment, though she was aiming for at least five foot seven before she stopped growing. She doesn't know why she had set herself that goal, especially since she had no control over it, but she strangely hoped for it. No particular reason except it felt like a good height to be.
Apart from needing to buy slightly longer trousers, nothing else had changed about her physically or mentally - if she was being honest she still felt fourteen, despite ageing a year.
Her friends hadn't changed much either except Maeve who now had a boyfriend, one that the other girls did not like. He thought he was funnier than he was, and his jokes weren't very nice - always at the expense of someone else. Though, Maeve insisted that he was nice to her but just acted like a complete knob in public - they weren't convinced. However, Maeve was insistent that it was true love.
