Page 19 of Rage
I pause and turn.
But it’s not him, the guy from the back row. It’s the one all the girls whispered about on my first day.
He doesn’t go unnoticed with his designer hoodie and gorgeous face. He’s leaning against the wall two feet away, arms crossed, eyes carrying a knowing expression.
Up close, he’s even more beautiful. And there is something about him that makes me believe he doesn’t believe it.
“Azriel,” he says, before I can ask. “We haven’t been formally introduced.”
I stare at him for a second too long.
Something moves behind his eyes fast, like a fish turning in dark water. “Why the rush? Not that the best part of running is being chased.” He pushes off the wall, straightening to his full height.
I step back.
“It was a warning, not a threat.”
“Those feel like the same thing,” I reply.
“Only if you don’t know which one to be afraid of.”
I tighten my grip on my bag strap. “Why are you talking to me?”
He looks at me for a long moment. The look isn’t predatory. It’s something more complicated than that, something careful, almost reluctant, like a man choosing his words in a room full of landmines.
“You should stay away from the back of lecture halls,” he says finally. “Sit closer to the front. Closer to the exits. Closer to other people.”
My stomach drops. “Why?”
He doesn’t answer. He just looks at me with those careful, guarded eyes, and then he pulls something from his jacket pocket and holds it out.
It’s a small card. Campus security extension, written in pen on the back.
“Keep it,” he says.
I take it with two fingers, almost reluctantly. Then he walks away without another word.
And I stand in the cold courtyard with a card with a security number in one hand and a note in my bag, trying to figure out whether the man who just left was trying to protect me or simply wanted me to know I needed protecting.
Saint
She sits in the middle.
I noted that the second I walked in, the third seat from the aisle, sixth row from the front, was angled slightly toward the left so she could see both the board and the door without being obvious about it.
She doesn’t realize she does it.
It’s instinctual.
The body mapping the exits before the mind consents to the fear.
I know this because I used to do it too. Before they took away rooms with doors.
The chair in the back corner of the lecture hall is undersized for me. My knees press against the seat back in front, which is empty, because no one sits directly in front of the man who materialized in that row this morning like something the campus exhaled.
I heard the whispers.
New student.
