CHAPTER 2
1405 Words
ARIA POV
Hanna found the cafeteria like she had a built-in sensor for food, walking through the doors and immediately brightening up.
"Okay this is actually nice," she said, looking around.
"Can we just get food, you said you were two minutes from being unpleasant."
"I said that four minutes ago, so technically I'm already there, let's go."
We grabbed trays and joined the line. The cafeteria was loud and full, every table already forming its own little ecosystem. I could already see how this place was going to work, who sat where, who looked at who, all of it establishing itself on day one like nobody could help it.
We got our food and I was scanning for somewhere to sit when Hanna grabbed my arm.
"There are two seats over there by the window," she said.
"Where?"
"By the window, come on before someone takes them."
We headed over and I had just put my tray down when a voice came from behind me.
The surrounding noise didn't disappear completely but went quite a bit.
Lower.
People were listening without looking like they were actually listening.
A few heads turned, just enough to notice her presence.
"Those are taken."
Hanna’s fingers tightened around her tray.
I felt it more than I saw it.
The small shift and sudden silence.
Like I suddenly understood something I didn't
I turned around.
The girl standing there was beautiful in that very specific way that came with a lot of money and a lot of time. Perfectly put together, not a single thing out of place, looking at me and Hanna like we had walked into her house uninvited.
"There's nobody sitting here," I said.
"I just said they're taken."
"I heard you, I'm just pointing out that there are no actual people in these actual seats."
The girl's eyes sharpened, "do you know who I am?"
"Should I?"
One of the girls behind her made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. The beautiful girl didn't find it funny.
"I'm Celeste Varon," a name that clearly meant something here, she said.
like that settled everything.
Not to me but to everyone else.
I could feel it in the way the table behind her went quiet.
She continues. "My father is the king's chief advisor. I've been coming to events at the royal palace since I was six years old. I have been on this campus longer than you have been in this city, and those seats are taken because I say they are."
I looked at the empty seats. I looked back at her.
"Cool origin story," I said, "but I still don't see anyone sitting here."
Hanna made a very small noise beside me that she quickly covered with a cough.
Celeste took one slow step forward. "You think you're funny."
"I think I'm hungry and my food is getting cold, so if you're not sitting here I'd really appreciate it if you let me eat."
"You have no idea how this campus works."
"It's the first day," I said, "nobody does."
"I do," she said simply, "and girls like you, you come here thinking it's a fresh start, thinking nobody knows you, thinking you can just walk in and be whatever you want, and then you figure out very quickly that there's an order to things here and you're at the bottom of it."
I pulled my chair out and sat down.
"Okay," I said, picking up my fork.
Celeste blinked, like she genuinely hadn't expected that.
"Excuse me?"
"I said, Okay," I looked up at her, "You've said your thing, I've heard it, I'm going to eat my food now."
"You're really not going to move."
"I'm really not."
There was a pause.
Not long.
But long enough that I felt like I had just crossed a line I couldn't see.
The girl to Celeste's left, tall with dark hair and a look on her face like she smelled something bad, stepped forward, "Celeste, she's not worth it, let's just go."
"She's sitting in my spot, Lena."
"Then let her sit there," Lena said, already losing interest, "there are other seats."
Celeste looked at me for a long moment, the kind of look that was supposed to make people uncomfortable. I picked up my glass and took a sip and waited.
"You're going to regret this," Celeste said quietly.
There was no scene or voice raised.
That was what made it worse.
It didn't sound like a threat to me.
It sounded like a fact.
"Maybe," I said, "but I'll regret it on a full stomach."
Hanna choked on her water.
Celeste's jaw tightened, she looked at me one more time, then turned and walked away, her girls falling into step behind her without a word.
Hanna waited exactly three seconds before she turned to me with both hands flat on the table.
"What is wrong with you," she whispered? "That is Celeste Varon, her father literally advised the king, “Aria… she doesn't just talk" People actually listen to her."
"She was going to do that anyway," I said, "girls like that don't need a reason, if I had moved she would have found something else."
"You don't know that."
"I do know that."
Hanna stared at me, then picked up her fork, "okay but if she makes our first semester a nightmare I'm blaming you."
"Fair."
We ate in peace for about ten minutes, which was nice while it lasted.
"She's staring at you," Hanna said without looking up.
"I know."
"She's been staring at you since she sat down."
"I know."
"And you're just going to sit there."
"I'm eating, Hanna."
"I'm just saying, she looks like she's planning something."
"Let her plan," I said, "I'm not going to spend my first day at college scared of a girl who's upset about a chair."
Hanna was quiet for a second, then, "you know what, you're right."
"I usually am."
"Don't push it."
I smiled and reached for my glass again, and that's when I noticed him across the cafeteria. Alexei, sitting at the biggest table in the room like it had always belonged to him, his two friends from earlier on either side of him. Celeste was making her way toward him now, sliding into the seat beside him, her hand going to his arm immediately.
Of course.
She leaned in and said something to him, her eyes cutting across the room to me as she did. Alexei looked up.
We made eye contact for exactly two seconds.
Something shifted in his expression.
I knew he wasn't interested or annoyed.
Recognition.
Gone before I could be sure it was ever there.
His expression didn't change, but he looked away first.
Hanna followed my gaze and her eyes went wide, "oh no."
"What."
"She's his girlfriend, Aria, Celeste is Alexei's girlfriend."
I turned back to my food.
"Good for them," I said.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Well…” I shrugged.
That’s when I felt it.
The specific, crawling certainty of being watched. Not by Celeste, whose stare I’d already catalogued and dismissed. Something else. Someone else.
I turned my head slowly toward the far side of the cafeteria.
There was a man standing near the exit. Not a student. Older, dark coat, completely still in the way that people only manage when they’re deliberately trying to be. He wasn’t looking at the room. He was looking at me.
Not like a stranger, like he already knew me.
Like he had been waiting.
And his expression was the strangest thing I had ever seen on a stranger’s face.
Not threatening. Not curious.
Relieved. Like he had been looking for something for a very long time and had just found it.
“Hanna,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“That man by the exit.” I kept my voice even. “Do you see him?”
Hanna turned and frowned. “What man?”
I looked back.
The exit was empty.
Too empty.
Like he had never been there at all.
The space where he’d been standing was just a wall, just air, like no one had ever been there at all.
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”
But I didn’t pick up my fork again. And I didn’t stop looking at that empty doorway for the rest of the meal.
- Writer
