Page 78 of Hidden

Two days of silence from a ghost and I've checked the screen more times than I want to count, which tells me something about myself. I am crazy.

I can’t believe I threw it all away, the photos on the memory card, the bracelet on my wrist, and then me deciding to throw everything away.

Apparently, my decision has a shelf life of forty-eight hours before it starts feeling like a loss.

I look back at the contact sheets, telling myself to focus, but I keep on glancing around the library to see who else is here. I don’t know who I expect to see, I don’t even know who the ghost is.

Then I see him. Miles Crawford. He’s four tables away, slightly angled away from me, he has two laptops open in front of him. One of them is running something I can't see from here, the other looks like he has a document open. He has his headphones on, and he’s completely absorbed in whatever he’s doing.

The two laptops make me wonder what degree requires two laptops simultaneously.

He hasn't looked up once; he’s engrossed in whatever he’s working on.

I look back at my contact sheets, but they don’t keep my attention like they usually do. I only last about ten seconds, and then I’m looking back at him again.

The thing is, and I've been trying not to think about this, I like him. Not Ghost, not the flowers. Miles. I have no idea what it is about him that keeps taking my attention. He’s hardly spoken to me, but yet, I like him and want to get to know him better.

I don't know what to do with that when everything else is so complicated around me. I start tapping my fingers on the table wondering if I can talk myself into going over and talking to him.

I close the contact sheets and stand up before I can talk myself out of it. Yet, my feet aren’t moving, I’m telling myself to move. It takes me longer to move up four tables than it should. I stop, convincing myself that I’m about to do something embarrassing, then keep going because standing in the middle of a library aisle is actually more embarrassing as other students are looking at me.

I stop beside his table, he doesn’t look up, so I tap his shoulder. He goes still for a fraction of a second, but he’s not startled. I honestly don’t think anything startles him.

He pulls one headphone off and looks up at me.

I smile. Probably a bit too wide, but I don’t care. No, that’s a lie, I do care. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Can I…" I gesture at the empty chair across from him. "Is this taken?"

He looks at the chair, something moves through his expression that I can't read, consideration, maybe, or something else entirely and then he pulls the chair out slightly with one hand.

“It’s free,” he replies with a smile.

I sit down, hoping he’ll talk to me. He doesn’t, instead he goes back to his laptop almost immediately, which should feel dismissive but somehow it doesn't. Maybe whatever he’s working on is important. I pull my own work out, spread the contact sheets, and start with my own work.

I feel him glancing over at me, and I’m doing everything not to smile at the feeling.

"What are you working on?" he asks.

"Photography assignment." I turn the contact sheet toward him. "I have to submit a series of ten images, a unified concept, and an artist statement. I keep changing my mind about what the concept actually is," I tell him. I’m impressed with myself because I’m not stuttering.

He leans forward to look properly. Then he pulls his chair slightly closer and angles himself toward the sheet. His arm comes to rest on the back of my chair, he’s not touching me, it’s just there.

There are more than a few things going through my head right now. How would his body feel against mine? Does he have a sexy body under those clothes? How many girls has he been with this year? I don’t know where that thought comes from, but it annoys me. It shouldn’t but it does.

"What were you thinking when you took this one?" He points at the third image, the library light shot, the one I keep returning to.

"That the light was doing something interesting," I say. "The way it hit the edge of the shelf made it look like the books were on fire. Just the edges."

"So, the concept is edges."

I look at him. "What?"

"Every image you keep coming back to…," he gestures across the sheet, "...has something at the edge of the frame doing something the center isn't. In this one, it’s the light. This one, the person is halfway out of shot. This one, the shadow is there." He sits back slightly. "You're not photographing subjects. You're photographing thresholds."

I stare at the contact sheet for a moment, and I can’t believe I didn’t see it myself. He's right. He's completely right and I've been looking at these for two weeks without seeing it.