I had one hand on the chair back, and every jaw in that hall had gone still mid-bite.
A room full of people, and I could hear a fork get set down three tables away.
Cormac looked up at me, and his fork stopped in the air.
Not a glare. More like I'd walked into his house and put my feet on the table.
Cormac: You can't sit there.
Nell: It's a chair. It's got legs and everything.
He didn't answer. He looked at me the way you'd look at a rule that had gotten up and walked off a page.
Cormac: Nobody sits here.
Nell: I keep hearing that. It's turning into my favorite sentence.
I set my tray down across from him. It made this small wooden sound, and somehow that was the loudest thing in the room.
Sable: Oh, look at that. The blank's got a boyfriend.
Sable: Sit with the fucking animal and that name sticks to you. Enjoy it, blank.
Bram: You want to be a joke that bad? Fine.
Bram: Sit there and nobody at this school says your name again. Not once.
My ears went hot. That's my tell, and every single one of them knew it.
I sat down anyway.
Cormac: Get up.
Nell: No.
Cormac: They'll be worse to you than they are to me. Get up.
He said it fast and quiet, and not mean. Like he was trying to hand me a rope.
Nell: They've been worse to me since day one. I'm used to it.
He watched me without blinking for a while. Then his tray scraped sideways, and suddenly there was somewhere for my elbows to go.
Nell: So. How's the food?
Cormac: It's food.
Nell: Wow. Poetic.
Something happened at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The paperwork for a smile.
Up close, there were things the rumors hadn't bothered to mention.
A thin pale scar around one wrist, like something had been locked there once. And his tray pushed so far to his side that he was eating off the edge.
Cormac: Why are you doing this?
Nell: Doing what? Eating?
Cormac: Sitting here. Being nice. What do you want?
It was the most honest question anyone had asked me all week.
Nell: I'm not nice. I'm stubborn. There's a difference, and it's mostly in the follow-through.
He huffed. That almost-laugh again, like a muscle he hadn't used in a while.
Cormac: What are you?
Not like the office lady with her folder. Like he actually wanted the answer.
Nell: Pending. That's the word on my file.
Nell: No shifting, no spells, and nobody's bothered to tell me what I'm supposed to be.
I braced for the look. The one where somebody decides you're a problem and stops asking.
He didn't give me that look.
He leaned back and studied me like a lock he hadn't tried yet, and the whole loud hall went quiet around us.
Cormac: Interesting.