Control Freak ✔️

04 gone and forgotten

"You walked out before I had a chance to do yours. Didn't you want it back?"

Her voice, he thought. He wondered why he had never recognized that before. Where do I recognize her voice from?

Caleb whipped his head over his shoulder as he nervously eyeballed his surroundings in every direction.

"It's okay. No one's here. Surprised to see anyone still here, actually," she continued, peering around the empty hall. "Pretty much everybody couldn't wait to run out of here."

The silence had long been unsettling, and it was congealing over into the irreconcilably awkward. Enough time had passed for his brain to grow tired of entertaining every single running thought, and for his balls to find themselves. His brain and balls both came to the table and all finally agreed: say something, you idiot.

"Oh yeah, thanks," he sighed with a believable shrug. "I must've— forgotten." He put his hand on the book to retrieve it, but she didn't move hers right away. It was maybe only a second, just one long, confusing second. She gave a timid laugh as she dipped her nose and swept her hair behind her ear.

"Do we know each other?" she asked hesitantly.

"Uh, well—"

"It's just that you asked me to sign your yearbook and I felt so bad because I couldn't remember off the top of my head where I remember you from."

"Biology," he blurted out, instantly regretting it. She seemed taken aback, at least judging by the way her tiny lips fixed themselves wide apart.

"Oh," she finally managed.

"Um, yeah."

"No, yeah, I felt like— that's all? I feel like I knew you from something else."

"Yeah, it's nothing, ya know, I probably shouldn't have asked, so, ya know, I'll just take my book back and—"

"There were no other signatures in there," she pressed, though he had already started backpedaling, nearly tripping over himself as he took off. "Was I the only one you asked?"

"Yeah, ya know, I just really enjoyed that Biology class and—"

"'Ya— know,'" she slowly repeated to herself. "Hey wait!" she cried. "Won't you sign mine!"

He stopped in his tracks. Though his entire brain told him to flee, his feet took him back to her. "Uh, well, sure, I guess."

She gave him her electric green gel pen. It still felt warm from her writing with it. She set her bag down, retrieved her yearbook, and handed it to him.

"Just sign it anywhere," she said. First, he opened it to the inside cover. It was doused in multicolored ink, not just signatures but complete with heartfelt messages and mini-letters from her adoring friends. He flipped through the book, scanning the similarly covered pages.

"It's weird. I really don't feel anything for this place," she declared. "Now that it's quiet, to be honest, I think I like it better this way."

"You've got so many signatures in this thing," he muttered, still shuffling through the pages.

"I made an effort to get everyone to sign it, not as a memento, but something else."

"'Something else?'"

"I wanted to be sure of something. See, for a long time I've had this fantasy that all these people around me were in the way of someone really special, someone who'd be waiting for me outside of class when the bell rang. Someone waiting for me, but I never know who. I feel like if things were a little different, I would've enjoyed school. I would've done whatever and not been worried about who I had to impress. But even so, now that my family's moving away, I feel like I just can't walk away, because I feel like I'd be leaving something behind. Something I didn't notice."