Running a hand through her hair, Ava pretended she was invisible. No one could see her. No one at all. Her blond hair was covering her face and her freckles were peeking out. Of course, everyone could see her and everyone watched her. She always sat by herself, she never ate, and she always stared without seeing. She sat at the same round table in the back of the cafeteria by herself, running another hand through her wavy hair.
Sighing, Ava thought. She normally didn't sit and not think, but today, she tried not to. She couldn't help it. She tried to remember a poem by Frost. Fire and Ice? Nothing Gold Can Stay? She sighed. Could she remember the first line from act two of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream? No. She sighed. She tried to remember her favorite verse from a song in the book Scarlett. She couldn't do this either. She was too distracted. She was so frustrated, she smacked the table with her palm. She was just too damn distracted by-
"Is this seat taken?" Ava gasped, taken off guard, and her blue-grey eyes got wide. The asker's eyes went soft, and they crinkled around the corners as his lips parted and the soft whisper-laugh passed his pale-rose lips. Ava's heart quickened, but she commanded it to stop.
"Uh, n-no," she whispered through a dry mouth.
He chuckled quietly, then sat too close to her. Then he looked her honestly in the eye. They were a soft, pure brown. So beautiful....
"Did I scare you?"
She chuckled dryly. "Just a little." she really fully looked at him, taking her chin away from her chest and asking her eyes to quit being down cast. "Why aren't you sitting with your friends?" she asked.
His eyes got dark for a second. "Oh? And who would those friends be?" Ava's tongue twisted. "Where do I sit at lunch, Miss Sinclair?"
"I..."
"I-I-I, I nothing. I don't sit anywhere. I hid in the bathroom so Rance and his gang can't find me. I don't..." he looked down. "I don't have any friends. Not since I came to the academy. I've been here since I was 12. I never return home except summer. I don't even go home for Christmas. My mom sends me a sweater. Ava...I'm truthfully nobody."
She reached across without looking at him and touched his pale little hand. Her fingertips ran over his palm and he closed his eyes.
"Then we are kindred spirits. Do two nobodies make a somebody? No...I guess not. Just somebodies to each other. What do you say we make friends? You the nobody, and I the nobody?"
He reached out and stroked her cheek and she closed her eyes (she almost was worried she shifted a bit in that moment) "Then nobody is indeed perfect. What does that make two nobodies?"
"Everything..."she breathed.
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