My first class started at nine in a room with long tables and windows so tall they made everyone in it look small.
I got there early, because early means nobody has decided where you belong yet.
Tilda: Sit in the middle. Middle table, middle seat, middle of the room so hard nobody remembers your face.
Invisible sounded pretty great, honestly.
Professor Wexley had narrow glasses and a face like a closed door, and he took attendance without looking up once.
Wexley: Settle. Quickly.
Wexley: Before we begin. There is a table at the back of this room. You will not sit at it.
Nobody asked why. Nobody looked confused. Forty people all became fascinated by their own fingers at exactly the same time.
I put my hand up. I know. I know.
Nell: Sorry, which table?
Wexley: The one at the back. One student uses it. That is the arrangement, and it is not up for discussion.
Sable: Someone should warn the blank before she tries it. She's a fucking nobody already.
It was quiet enough to call a whisper and loud enough to be a warning, and every head in that row turned to check my face.
Bram: Let her learn it herself. She sits back there, she's nothing. Not a joke, not a story. Nothing.
A couple of people laughed. It was the kind of laugh that gets aimed at somebody.
I looked. Obviously I looked.
He sat at the back with his hands folded and his notebook shut, and the chairs on both sides of him had that careful empty look, like the room had agreed to leave a hole there.
Tilda: Don't. Nell. Please don't.
I stood up anyway, because I have never once in my life been good at being told where to sit.
The room did this thing where it got quiet in a way you can actually hear. My boots were too loud. My bag hit the corner of a table and I just kept going.
I put my bag on the chair beside him and sat down.
At the front, Professor Wexley stopped talking, which felt like a small personal achievement.
He didn't move. Not a flinch, not a glance.
He sat so still that I got the weird feeling that if I stayed quiet enough, he'd decide I was a draft and stop noticing me.
Then he turned his head, and up close his eyes were dark brown and there were about four different things going on in them at once.
Nobody was angrier than he expected. That was the thing. He looked braced. Like he was waiting for the punchline.
Cormac: You're in the wrong seat.
Nell: Is it taken?
Cormac: No.
Cormac: That isn't what I said.
Nell: It's the only part I cared about.
Somewhere behind us, Sable said, loud enough for the whole row, that I was out of my mind and should go sit with the animal if I liked him so much.
Bram: Then she's nothing, same as him. She picked it.
I wanted to say something clever. Nothing came. My ears went hot and I stared at the table like a coward.
And then Cormac looked at me like I'd said something in a language he used to speak and had mostly forgotten.
He smiled. Barely. One corner, gone in a second.
I felt stupidly proud of it, the way I felt about the vending machine that gave me two sodas.
Wexley: Miss. I won't say it twice.
Nell: Good, because I got it the first time.
Beside me, Cormac made a sound. It might have been a laugh. He covered it with a cough, and I decided it counted.
He didn't say anything else for the rest of the class.
But about halfway through, he moved his notebook an inch so it wasn't crowding my side of the table.
One tiny, careful inch. I stayed exactly where I was.