Quiet Hallways
1433 Words
Chapter Four: Quiet Hallways
Anne's POV
There was something strange about school hallways.
They weren’t like corridors at home — which breathed with old books and silence and soft, faraway voices. These ones echoed. Every sneaker that squeaked, every laugh too loud, every slammed locker door bounced off the walls and clung to Anne’s ears like static.
She kept her steps slow. Not hesitant. Just measured.
On the first day, she stood by the entrance longer than necessary, backpack high on her shoulders, watching the pulse of it all. Movement in waves — groups of girls clustered by lockers, tall boys with their uniform sleeves rolled up, teachers with clipboards speaking to themselves. No one was alone except her.
She liked it that way.
A girl eventually noticed her. Braids, bracelets, and too much bubble gum.
“You lost or just standing?”
Anne met her gaze. “Class B. Senior.”
The girl blinked. “Oh. Second floor. Past the science wing. You might wanna move. Morning bell’s chaos.”
Anne nodded once and turned.
She didn’t thank her.
---
Her classroom had too many windows and too little air. The desks were arranged in three tight rows. She took the seat by the wall, second row from the back. She didn’t ask if it was taken.
The girl beside her — pink nails, loud whisperer — leaned in almost immediately.
“You’re Anne Johnson, right?”
Anne didn’t answer.
“We heard you were homeschooled. Is it true? Like, all your life?”
Silence.
“You don’t talk much, huh?”
A shrug.
The girl leaned back with a smirk and turned to the others. “She’s cute. Like a vampire or something.”
Anne didn’t flinch.
---
By the end of the second week, they had started giving her names.
Some were curious. Some weren’t kind.
Wednesday Silence
Tie Girl
The Quiet One
Vincent’s Niece (how they knew, she had no idea)
A girl named Laura once whispered loudly during group work, “She looks like the type to hex someone. Don’t annoy her.”
Laughter followed. Anne didn’t blink.
When her name was called to read in literature class, she read with the kind of voice that turned the whole room toward her — not loud, but leveled and certain. One of the boys, Ben, had stared at her so hard his pen dropped.
She never looked back.
---
By mid-term, the attention shifted from novelty to irritation.
“She thinks she’s better than everyone,” said Bola, loud enough for Anne to hear.
“She’s always by herself,” added Hannah. “Like she’s allergic to people.”
Anne wrote notes without pausing. Her pen never trembled.
They started doing small things. Blocking the aisle on purpose. Refusing to pass her notebook down. Making her the only one left unpaired during practicals. A kind of soft hostility — not loud enough for teachers to notice, but just sharp enough to feel.
One afternoon, someone switched her lab stool with a broken one. She didn’t fall. She just stood and carried it out, replaced it without a word.
That night, Samantha noticed the silence was different.
"Hard day?" she asked gently.
Anne nodded once. That was all she gave.
Samantha didn’t push. But the next morning, her flask had a warm tea with lemon and ginger — no label, no note. Just waiting.
---
The only person who spoke to Anne more than once without mocking her was a boy named Ethan. He sat two rows ahead and passed her chalk sometimes during math.
“Your handwriting’s better than mine,” he said once. “You should write the answers.”
Anne said, “Then they’d all copy me.”
Ethan grinned. “Exactly.”
He wasn’t trying to be her friend. Which made it easier to like him.
---
She started noticing things.
The way Claire, the girl who had helped her on the first day, walked faster when she was in a group. How everyone seemed to orbit a boy named Richard in the courtyard — boys mimicking his walk, girls fixing their hair when he passed.
Anne heard his name almost every day.
“Richard was lead on the quiz team again.”
“Richard got first in Lit. Obviously.”
“Did you see the way Richard looked in that blazer?”
Anne didn’t care.
Not until the poetry competition.
It was near the end of term. Anne didn’t sign up. She didn’t volunteer. But Mr. Dada handed her a folded sheet one afternoon.
“Read it. I think it’s your voice.”
It was a poem about edges and silence and stars that refused to shine where they were told. Anne read it twice. Then wrote one of her own.
The next week, she stood at the mic.
The stage lights were hot. The podium was too tall.
She cleared her throat, then began:
> “Some things don’t scream. Some things grow in corners And become whole without noise…”
By the time she finished, there was no applause.
Just silence.
Then someone clapped. One beat. Then another. Then the room filled with it.
When she stepped down, she walked past rows of students — all quiet now. No one called her a vampire that week.
---
That was the first time Anne saw him clearly.
Richard.
He was in the front row. He hadn’t clapped right away. But he had watched. Really watched.
And when she passed, he nodded at her — slow, like a greeting.
She didn’t return it.
But she remembered it.
---
Weeks passed.
Anne didn’t become popular. She didn’t make friends. But people stopped blocking the aisle. No one switched her stool again.
Some began greeting her with tight nods. Some asked to borrow notes.
Once, Bola said, “You read like someone in a movie.” It wasn’t praise. But it wasn’t venom either.
Anne accepted it.
---
She didn’t speak to Richard.
But she saw him often.
At the library — surrounded but alone. His bag always too open, his smile always too easy. He laughed too loud sometimes, like he was feeding something.
She noticed the way he looked at teachers — always slightly amused, like he knew the answers already.
Once, they were both assigned as judges in a junior debate.
They didn’t speak.
But as she sat beside him, he passed her a mint.
She took it without looking at him.
His voice was quiet. “You’re better at hiding than I am.”
She said nothing.
But her hand closed around the mint tighter.
---
A week before the term ended, Anne was cornered near the art room during a break. A small group—Laura, Hannah, and two others—stood around her, asking questions that sounded polite but were barbed with challenge.
“So, you just don't talk to people?” Laura asked, smiling too sweetly.
Anne didn’t answer.
Hannah leaned in. “You think you're better than us, don’t you?”
“No,” Anne said quietly.
“Then why act like it?”
Anne turned to walk away.
But they blocked the path.
That’s when Richard appeared. His tone was even, but his presence changed everything.
“Is this a debate team tryout I wasn’t invited to?”
The girls froze. Laura chuckled nervously. “We were just talking.”
Richard raised an eyebrow. “Sounded more like cornering.”
They stepped aside. Anne walked past him without a word.
He didn’t follow.
But the next morning, someone had saved her a seat in class.
No one said who.
---
On the last Friday of the term, it rained.
The halls were wet with stamped mud. Umbrellas dripped against lockers.
Anne stood beneath the overhang near the back gate, waiting for Vincent’s car.
Richard was there too. Alone.
He nodded at her. “You like the quiet spots too.”
“I don’t like wet crowds.”
“Same difference.”
They stood in silence.
He pulled out a book. It was one she had read before.
“You’ll like page seventy,” she said.
He blinked. Then smiled. “Spoiler.”
“I didn’t say what happens.”
“That’s true.”
He closed the book gently. “What’s your name?”
She looked at him. Not sideways. Straight on.
“You already know.”
He tilted his head. “Say it anyway.”
She did.
Then turned toward the street as Vincent’s car pulled up.
She didn’t say goodbye.
But she didn’t walk fast either.
---
- Writer
