Swept Away

IT WAS POURING AS I MADE MY WAY to the Schermerhorn building. My clothes were soaked through to my skin, my hair was tied up in a sloppy bun that was molded to the top of my head, and I was almost certain I looked like a drowned sewer rat that someone had fished out of the drain. On top of my horrible appearance¬-and quite possibly the one thing that made me hate the beautiful weather phenomenon called precipitation, was the fact that I could not stand outside and have a cigarette. Because of this, I was abnormally anxious. My nerves were dancing under my skin, making every little noise that sounded around me cause them to react, making Goosebumps erupt on the surface of my arms and the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on edge.

Entering the building, I took a moment to let the excess water drip off of my clothes. Wiping the water from my eyes, and wringing out the end of my sweater, I let a heavy sigh pass my lips as a large puddle collected under me. It looked like I had my own rain cloud hanging over my head, letting its beads of water fall on only me.

Luckily, I had managed to make it to the building fifteen minutes before class had started, which left me a ample amount of time to head to the girls bathroom a few doors down from my classroom and try to soak up and dry out my clothes before sitting through an hour and a half lecture about how the mind was a very marvelous thing and not only worked in ways where people turned out like Einstein but also in ways where people turned out like Ted Bundy.

Smiling to myself as I made my way down the hall, I felt my heart start to beat faster as I picture the man that would be standing in front of the classroom today, his bright blue eyes filled with excitement as he lectured to us. The thought of hearing his smooth voice or smelling his nicotine infused cologne made winged creatures awaken in my stomach. It wasn’t so much the idea of seeing him, but the idea of hearing him. He was brilliant after all, and psychology was always something that interested me. To have a teacher just as enthusiastic about it made me only want to learn every single term, theory, and test that was in the text book more.

Once I reached the bathroom, I dropped my book bag onto the floor next to the line of sinks and looked up at my reflection. I was instantly horrified as I noticed most of the makeup I had smeared across my skin had washed off in the rain. The deep purple bruise that had formed around my eye was now partially visible as it circled my eye and cascaded down my cheek. The lingering makeup didn’t make it look as bad as it really way, but it still looked horrible.

Carefully dabbing paper towels against my face, I crumpled them up and threw them into the garbage behind me. Towel after towel I tried to soak up some of the water from my hair and face. Once my skin was dry, I walked over to the hand dryers and hit the button with my fingertips. Dryer coming to life, I pulled my hair from the messy bun that I had put it in on my walk here and bent my head under the vent, letting the strong gust of air beat down against my wet hair in the hopes that it could dry it so I could wear it down along my face in an attempt shield my bruise from sight.

I had spent ten minutes trying to dry myself off, and at the end of it all, I was dissatisfied with the results. My hair was still dripping wet, my clothes were still damp, and the bruise that plagued my skin was still visible. My body didn’t cross the through the door way into the classroom yet, and my cheeks were already a deep shade of red projecting to the world how utterly embarrassed I was.

Sure, no one would say anything to my face, but I knew they would mention it amongst themselves. I would be forever known in Professor Collins class as the ginger with the black eye. Just the thought made my stomach sick.

Walking through the hall once I exited the vacant girls bathroom, I kept my eyes connected with the ugly tiles of the floor. People passed me, and I felt the gut wrenching, nerve splitting, skin crawling, feeling of their stares, not directly at me, but at the purple skin on my face.

If there was one moment in my life where I really needed a cigarette, it was right now.

My chest tightened as I walked into the classroom and felt the few students that were already seated look at me. Their gazes followed me as I walked across the front of the room, down the third aisle, and slid into my desk, two seats form the back. Dropping my bag to the floor, my fingers calmly pulled zippers and flipped through papers until I found the notebook and textbook for this class. Pulling them out, I set them down on my desk and in a moment of complete stupidity about the predicament I found myself in, I looked up.

Right at him. My head tilted to the exact angle that was perfect for my lazy and anxious gaze to fall right in line with the bright blue eyes of the man that was teaching this class. It didn’t take long to remember why I was focusing on the floor for the past five minutes. The second my eyes hit his, and his eyes hit the mark on my face, the normally bright blue darkened. It was like the weather conditions outside were suddenly reflected in his eyes.

From that moment on, I kept my vision limited to only my notebook. The class started, his normal enthusiastic voice would ramble on about the Frontal lobe or the different hemispheres, he would add on interesting facts that he had read about in countless books about the brain and what not, and he would ask people for their input, their educated guesses and ideas. It was all fascinating, and as my eyes stayed on my lined papers, I jotted down almost every single word he said. It was a messy pile of notes, but I found myself adding stars next to different books and movies, heavily underlining the names or the authors so when I looked back I would remember to read up on his suggestions.

The class flew by, which I was thankful for. My note taking and his words flowing through one of my ears and out of the other kept my nerves silenced for the whole hour and thirty minutes of class. Unfortunately, as he dismissed us, and I was shuffling papers together to neatly stack into my book bag, his voice called out a string of words that shattered the temporary tranquility the lesson had set up in my head.

“Harper, can you hang back for a moment, please?”

I had never felt my fingertips dig into the fabric of my jeans as hard as they did at that very moment. My heart was about to explode in my chest as I pulled the zipper on my bag and then pulled it onto the top of my desk. Standing up, my hands started to shake as I grabbed my book bag and slung it over my shoulder. With every tiny step I took toward the front of the classroom, my heartbeat grew faster and more erratic.

By the time I had reached the desk placed in the front of the room, I thought I was going to crumble to the floor and die of cardiac arrest. The beat in my chest was so loud, it was impossible that the man now standing on the other side of the desk couldn’t hear it. Professor Collins had this absurd way of making interactions between us horribly silent, and now was one of those times.

“Care to explain what’s going on?” The words that slipped through his teeth were stern, and sounded foreign coming from him. It was off-putting for a moment, but as I swallowed hard and glanced up at his face, his jaw clenched and eyes dark, my lips parted and spewed words I knew could potentially make him angry, but it was worth a shot to play dumb.

“I have pages of notes.” I could feel the annoyance radiate from him. “Would you like me to pull them-“

Professor Collins grinded his teeth together for a moment before walking around the desk and stopping nearly two feet in front of me. As his chest rose, he crossed his strong arms across it and leaned back a little, staring directly at me. “If I wasn’t already aware of your intelligence level and trained in reading peoples thought processes and emotions, the ‘playing dumb’ comments would have worked.” My cheeks grew hot under his gaze. “Unfortunately for you, I am.” His words held an edge to them that I couldn’t quite place.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Prof-“

“Riley.” He corrected.

“Professor.” I finished, my eyes quickly scanning the room and then falling back on the man in front of me, his eyes half way through a large circular motion that screamed how utterly annoyed he was with me. As my word fell into the air, the man before me sighed heavily and ran a hand through his short brown hair before he looked back at me, a sad expression fixing itself on his features.

Lifting his hand to my face, his fingertips lightly grazed my skin as he pushed back some of the loose strands of wavy hair from my face giving him a better view of the bruise around my eye. “Who?”

“Please”, I breathed as his fingers pulled away from my skin, letting the strands of hair fall back in front of my eye. “I do not feel up to having a conversation about this.” I urged him, my eyes widening in an attempt to coax him into letting me leave, even though in reality there was absolutely nothing stopping me.

“Harper, I don’t think you understand that you are my… student.” His eyes met mine as he nodded a little, as if to remind himself that I was, in fact, his student. “If there is someone harming you, it is partially my responsibility to make sue that it doesn’t happen again. I don’t feel comfortable knowing something is going on and not doing a damned thing about it.” Anger flared half way through his sentence, but died down as soon as his eyes landed back on me.

My teeth grinded against each other as my fingertips started to create bruises on the tops of my thighs from the anxiety pumping through my veins. I didn’t want to be analyzed, I didn’t want to spill my guts to my professor, and I sure as hell didn’t want any one of higher authority to be involved.

“This is none of your damn business!” I snapped, my hand balling into a fist at my side as our eyes held each other’s. “Whatever happens to me is no ones problem but my own. I appreciate your concern, but it is completely unnecessary.”

“Harper-“

“I need to get home, and I need a fucking cigarette. May I leave?” I asked through gritted teeth as anger and pure embarrassment pumped through my veins. Being rude and direct was not a major part of my personality. In fact, it had been concealed and pushed to the back of my head for a long time. But somehow, Professor Collins had managed to yank it out of me in a matter of minutes.

Exhaling heavily, the brunette straightened his back and walked around his desk, grabbing his jacket and his messenger bag that was hanging over the edge of his chair. Shrugging into the coat, he pulled the strap over his head and adjusted the bag for a moment before turning to me and nodding a little.

Without a single word, I followed him over to the classroom door and out into the hallway. Shuffling my feet down the hall, I watched as the man in front of me walked with his head held high, his short brown locks moving every so slightly as his head bobbed up and down.

Once we exited the building, a small smile formed on my lips. The rain had stopped, and the sky above was now clear and showing off what felt like hundreds of little diamonds suspended in the air. Inhaling slowly, my pace behind the man slowed as I kept my eyes locked on the sky as my right hand easily worked its way through the compartments of my backpack and pulled out my pack of American Spirits and lighter.

Rolled piece of paper between my lips, I lit the end and looked back up at the stars, my mind trying to ingrain the image into my brain. Sunsets and Sunrises were beautiful for their swirls of colors and bright sunrays, but there was something distinctly beautiful about the stars that propelled the starry night sky to the best view in the world.

A part of me believed that because it was so simple and so magnificently beautiful at the same time, it was the most beautiful site in the world. I was a minimalist at heart, and there was nothing more minimal than diamonds on a black sheet of velvet.

“I’m sorry for being so harsh.” Professor Collin’s voice was a soft whisper as he walked up next to me, pulling the cigarette from his lips and tilting his head up so he could focus on the stars above. “I don’t like seeing my student, or anyone, being abused like that. Pulls at my heart strings.”

“Heart strings?” I whispered, my voice coming across more as a question than a simple echo.

“They’re real, you know”, he chuckled, his lips parting as a long stream of grey smoke appeared in the air above him. Nodding a little, I pulled the paper from my lips and looked out across the large maze of brick faced buildings before me.

As the word floated through my head, I smiled a little and sucked on my cigarette one more time before exhaling and turning to the man next to me. “'Tis not that the flowers of twenty springs, which have wither'd as they rose, lie dead on my heart-strings, with the weight of an age of snows.”

“Hmm”, the brunette hummed as he dropped the butt of his cigarette and pressed the heel of his shoe into it. “Do you have a poetic comeback for everything I say, Ms. Snow?” A smile surfaced on his lips as he turned to me, the bright blue orbs in his head shimmering under the moonlight.

Swallowing hard, I pulled the paper from my lips and sighed. “Almost.”

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.”

We stood in silence as I felt a huge smile work its way onto my lips. “Emerson, good choice.”

“I thought you would appreciate it.” He breathed, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “You ought to bee getting home, Ms. Snow.” I looked away from him and back up at the star. “See you next class, Harper.”

“Have a goodnight, Riley.” I whispered back, looking into his eyes one last time before we turned fro each other and headed in different directions, our heads tilted back as our eyes traced the stars.