Mirrors

I saw Billie the nest day in class. It didn't really look like him, though; he was wearing this ski-mask-type thing on his head with the top, eyes, and mouth cut out. The mask had a black-and-white striped pattern.

I just stared at him for a second as he sat down. He was also wearing a shiny orange suit, but he didn't have a tie on. "Billie?"

His head snapped over to look at me at the quiet call of what I assumed to still be his name. He hadn't mentioned anything about a name change yesterday or any other day, so I don't know why this Billie look-alike wasn't responding to the call of his name. "Are you talking to me?" he asked. I merely nodded. I normally wouldn't be so shy, but given the circumstances of my current relationship with Billie, I didn't give a verbal reply. "Well, my name's Fink," the masked Billie look-alike continued.

"Fink?" I repeated, confused.

He nodded. "Yeah. Like 'think,' expect with an f, and not a th."

"Okay," I said simply. I turned back to my miniature cartoon doodles in the margin of my notebook. I overslept quite significantly, so I had no time to grab my sketchbook or drawing pencils. I seemed to be working the shading pretty well with the mechanical one I had, though.

Jonsohn walked in and stopped for a second when he put his books down on the front table. "Fiesco, you don't have your sketchbook today," he called. I looked up and just glared at him. It was too early for criticism, and I was in an unfavorable mood. "This morning's lesson will be on section 5.3, Inverse Functions."

"You always carry a sketchbook?" Fink asked quietly.

I turned to him shyly. "Yeah. I draw a lot."

A small smile came across his face, and he nodded, as if he were impressed. "Cool. What kind of stuff do you draw?"

"A lot of portraits. People and things."

"Also cool." I chuckled softly. "Do you do album art?" Fink asked.

I smiled lightly. "Yeah, but only because someone's asked me to do a cover for their band's album."

"Dammit! My band and I are looking for a album artist because we want to release our first album. It's all recorded and awesome, we just need an equally awesome album cover to accompany it," Fink explained briefly.

"Well, maybe you should come check out some of the work I've done before you go deciding I'm the one you want to hire," I suggested.

Fink shook his head. "It's a nice offer, but I don't need to."

I raised an eyebrow in confusion. "You don't?"

Fink shook his head again. "Nope."

I paused. "Why?"

"Because if someone's already hired you, that means you must be pretty good," he said.

I blushed a light pink and smiled lightly again. "Thanks."

"Yeah. You let me know when you're available again, okay?"

"Yeah," I said after a moment's hesitation. "I will."

"Cool, thanks," Fink said, and shot me a quick smile before turning to his notebook and frantically scribbling down the notes on the board he wasn't paying attention to before they got erased and written over by new material.

We didn't speak for the rest of the class. I kept looking over at Fink, because I wanted to tell him how he look uncannily like the guy I was kissing in my dorm room yesterday afternoon, but he never looked back over at me.

"See you around," Fink said to me as he was leaving. Scribbling down the last of the notes, I didn't realize he was speaking to me. "Hey." I stopped my pencil and looked up. "See you around," Fink repeated.

"Yeah," I replied, smiling weakly. When I saw he had left the room, I sighed deeply. I really wanted to see Billie, mainly because I wanted to talk to him about the events of yesterday afternoon, but I didn't know where on campus he lived, so I just had to wait until our next math class and hope he's there.

My loudly growling stomach snapped me out of my little depressed reverie. I looked down at it quickly, and then resumed packing up my books. It growled again, still very loudly, and I was thankful no one was left in here to hear it. I looked back down at my stomach as I shoved the last book into my messenger bag, and said, "Shut up, I know, I know," as I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder. "Can you hold on for five more minutes?"