Amy thought that there was absolutely nothing that she couldn't see coming her way. Until it was too late to think otherwise.
She was confident enough. Maybe even a touch more than necessarily healthy. She foresaw the grade that would stare at her angrily from the top of her most recent history assignment. Amy predicted the question Mr. Hanes posed in literature correctly, but failed to answer it so. Her thoughts on the matter differed greatly from his - as his response elucidated in his drawling, dull baritone.
She blew a long strand of hair away from her face, contemplating again whether she should tread the diplomatic route. When the bell signaling the end of the class rang, Amy wanted to be among the first students out of the door.
"Miss Irvine, a moment please?" Mr. Hanes called out.
Amy stopped. She cursed herself for wondering if this would happen and turned on the spot. Her fleeting screwed up expression was replaced by a practiced look of polite expectance.
"Your answers border on two facts. Either you have not read The Crucible, or you vehemently disagree with the popular opinion on it. Be careful." He regarded her with acute apathy, his round glasses perched crookedly on his nose. Amy considered his opinion before quickly disregarding it with a wave of her hand.
"As long as you teach this class, I will take my chances Mr. Hanes," she said indifferently, not wishing to discuss it any further. Mr. Hanes unashamedly disliked his own subject but was not above the usual hypocrisy of teachers and forced his students to love it. A small town in northern Georgia could hardly be expected to be a radical example of novel educational practices. Sirencester High School was no exception.
Amy did not claim to be an overachiever but she was not too bad.
Bored with the proceedings of an extra slow day, she looked around. The halls of the school were filled with people scrambling to get to their respective final classes of the day.
Amy leaned against her locker, pulling her Atlanta Braves cap lower on her forehead. She closed her eyes and the chaotic sounds of slamming lockers, shuffling feet, buzzing conversations, and the odd shrieking laughter filled her ears. Before she knew it, an unnecessarily cheerful voice shattered her peaceful torpor.
"Ames, you are going to be so proud of this bad boy," Gemma said.
Amy straightened up and smiled down at her. She looked at the B+ Gemma was brandishing in her face. "Impressive. Now you can brag about being almost as dumb as the other nine hundred and eighty-one people in this place."
Gemma pretended to look miffed. But before Amy could take the sting out of the jibe, a puzzled look appeared on her face and she asked, "Wait, does that include the teachers too?"
Amy shook her head and chuckled. She looked into the sincere brown eyes of her friend and weaved her arm through hers. "I would very much like to say yes, but I won't. I am proud of you, Gemma," she said, beaming with earnest admiration.
Together, they made their way to History. She set the pace and Gemma followed, another common occurrence. Amy never doubted the pattern she had become so good at analyzing. She saw Henry striding towards them and like clockwork his eyes caught up with Gemma's and a slow smile crept across his face. Both of them were head over heels for each other.
Older but not necessarily wiser, Henry had been a notorious party animal since his freshman year. Now however, those days were behind him. The death of his grandmother, the formidable Mrs. Wigmore, had left a gaping hole in the small-town community of Sirencester and an equally deep impact on Henry.
His senior year now included just one blonde, petite and chirpy indulgence. Gemma was smitten the moment she had seen him playing beer pong with his buddies at what she and Amy remembered as their first high school party. Curly-haired, tall and popular, he had been 'too cool' for her back then. But Gemma had persevered and here they were.
Henry stopped in front of them and kissed Gemma lightly on her cheek. He nodded in Amy's direction and asked, "I hope the school bully has had no new victims on this beautiful day?"
"Only the ones who got in my way," Amy said, grinning. "Or on Gemma's nerves."
Henry shrugged. He hadn't missed the faint warning that Amy's words carried. He had no business messing with her and like him, the whole school was irrefutably aware of it. Almost after a year of the infamous nose-breaking, Amy still maintained that Henry's nose was ever so delicately off-center. "Freeman?" he asked.
"Aplin, but she is cool with dawdlers," Gemma replied. "Besides, she becomes slow after noon."
They had reached Mrs. Aplin's classroom. Gemma and Henry had to hastily conclude their debate ('Aplin or Freeman: History's worst tyrant').
Amy wanted the day to end. Her life was pretty plain and the predictability of virtually everything did not help. Her mind drifted to a crazy song she had recently looped and she almost gave in to the mad urge to shimmy and dance in the middle of the school corridor. She imagined the expressions on the wishy-washy bystanders and smiled to herself.
Amy was infamously weird. She got it from her great-grandmother.
A flurry of movement caught Amy's attention and she reflexively turned towards it. Standing in the front doors, a tall and vaguely pleasing figure stood silhouetted against the afternoon sun. It took a moment for Amy to distinguish the chiseled face because the light played strikingly with the boy's features. Then he stepped inside the hallway and that beautiful moment of sexual appraisal was over.
Amy realized she knew exactly who it was. Caleb Dawson, she thought with distaste.
It was not like she hated him. However, she was convinced that her emotions mainly comprised of above-average dislike. Amy knew him only by reputation and a few conversations which she would gladly forget. He was such a fart-face.
Caleb hesitantly started walking down the middle of the emptying passage. Remarkably, no one stopped to openly gape at his gorgeous face like usual. No one even spared him a single flirtatious look.
He seemed different too. The maddening look of superiority he usually had plastered on his helium-filled head was missing. Caleb looked under duress, his eyes wide with palpable desperation or fear.
He looked lost.
Amy couldn't remember seeing him like this and she doubted anyone familiar with his arrogant swagger would say otherwise. She noted that almost everyone had disappeared into the various classrooms that lined the school corridor.
Amy recalled bumping into him the night of the school carnival. He had been his usual conceited self.
"Get this out of my face," he had muttered menacingly, his cobalt eyes hardening as he tried to dislodge himself from the stuffed toy cart she was pushing. With a pink unicorn on his head, he wasn't very convincing. Amy had rushed in to help him but his jerk majesty had already thrown a tantrum and was swearing at the top of his lungs. It wasn't her fault he was blind. Apologies never came effortlessly to her but that night he had set fire to the line she drew when it came to contemptuous assholes.
Even after her heated shouting match with Caleb, Amy was finding it hard to summon the anger she had felt that night.
Caleb pulled roughly at his dark hair and looked around with wild abandon. Amy's breath hitched when his shattered gaze met hers. She had never seen someone in such pain.
"Amy?" Gemma called out to her, from halfway inside the class, and she snapped out of Caleb's spell.
He wasn't Amy's friend. In a small town in Georgia where everybody knew everybody, Amy had never known Caleb Dawson. Hell, the only proper conversation she could remember having with him had involved some choice curses and the slight possibility of murder. Still, his face had seared itself onto her brain. Despite of all that, she wanted to comfort that hurt, lost boy.
But she couldn't.
His beautiful blue eyes widened with disbelief and Amy thought he must feel the same way about her. So she raised her hand and gave him a small, reluctant wave.
Amy wanted him to know that inexplicably in that empty school corridor, she had understood him perfectly.
✧
A/N: And we are off to the races! Thank you for reading Near Touch, it really means the world to me. I won't keep you any longer if you wish to find out what happened to the troubled boy in the corridor. See you in the next one!