Three of Hearts

Three of Hearts By Stephanie Park Noah McCauslin sat on a bench and watched his fellow students walk by, in all their endless variety. He liked people watching. It was a good way to pass the time when he had a break between classes that wasn’t long enough to be worth going back to his off-campus apartment. Short and tall, male and female, thin and fat, even old and young, though mostly young, Noah watched them all. He smiled at brightly colored hair, and at interesting personal styles, sighed faintly at little clusters of gossipy girls dressed almost identically, rolled his eyes at guys strutting for said girls, and watched with extra interest whenever a particularly good-looking guy who wasn’t strutting for the girls walked along. He watched those for as long as he could, though he often used the mirrored windows of the new library building, both to get a different angle and to make it less obvious that he was staring. The two young men holding hands definitely caught his attention. They went right by his bench, so he got a good look at both of them. One was fairly tall, with jet black hair in a shoulder-length ponytail that contrasted starkly with his pale, pale skin. The other was short, nearly as short as Noah himself, and had striking dark orange hair that was an untidy mess of curls. His skin was a light olive, a natural dusky color that probably would have been deep bronze if he tanned, but it looked like he didn’t get any more sun than his boyfriend. His eyes were hazel green, and they caught Noah’s for a moment as the pair walked by. Noah flushed faintly and looked away, seeking their reflection to watch them there instead. He couldn’t find it. Blinking in surprise he looked back and forth between the two scenes, the real campus in front of him and the mirror on the far side of the sidewalk, but though the pair were clearly present in real life—now walking away from him but still close enough to be almost within reach—they were definitely absent from the reflection. What the hell? His mind immediately went to the supernatural. He did a lot of reading, including a fair amount of paranormal and fantasy, but you probably didn’t have to read much to think of vampires when seeing people with no reflection. He looked between the couple and the blank spot in the mirrored windows where they should be a few more times before they finally passed out of sight. There couldn’t actually be a couple of gay vampires attending Barnett State, could there? And it was the middle of the day, with bright sunlight streaming down all around them. So whatever the pair were, creatures of the night seemed unlikely. Then again, Dracula went out by daylight with no trouble in the book, thought Noah, still staring after the vanished pair. He kept sitting on the bench until it was time to go to his class, but he wasn’t really paying any more attention to the people passing by, except the check all of them against their reflections in the mirrored windows. All the other students reflected normally. Noah started to wonder, as he finally got up and headed to class, if maybe he’d been seeing things. He resolved to keep his eyes open for the pair. They were distinctive enough he was sure he’d know them if he saw them again. It was a fairly small campus compared to some. He hadn’t been to all his classes yet, it was just the first week of school. For all he knew he might have a class with one or the other of them.