Sloane Lindquist's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Sloane Lindquist closed her locker and walked away from the noise. Her circle was already gathering by the stairs, loud and watching. She wanted one thing this year: a quiet confession from the treasurer, on his terms. But every move she made near her friends got picked apart before lunch. She cut across the lawn and slipped through the iron gate of the small garden behind the chapel. A stone fountain trickled between trimmed hedges. No one came here. No one to read her face. She sat on the bench and thought about him. The thin silver spectacles he never took off. The way he pushed them up his nose mid-sentence, like punctuation. He always finished what he started. He never moved toward her. Her phone buzzed. Her friends asking where she went. She turned it face down. If she stayed in her crowd, he would never see her as anything but another performer. She needed neutral ground. Somewhere he already went. Somewhere her circle would not follow. Sloane stood and looked past the hedges toward the tall library on the edge of campus. Quiet. Public enough to be accidental. She started walking. Today she stopped being seen with them. Tomorrow she would be seen alone, where he studied.