Chapter 2: Hallways and Glances

I liked routines because routines made promises. If I got up at the same time every morning, packed my bag the night before, checked my deadlines twice, and kept my notes in order, then things stayed manageable. Predictable. The world didn’t exactly become easy, but it became something I could sort, stack, and deal with.

That was how I liked it. Tuesday started with a text from Clair before I’d even made it downstairs.

Don’t let me see that ugly tie today. Wear the navy one.

I stared at it for a second, then snorted to myself and swapped ties before heading to the bathroom. By the time I made it downstairs, my dad was at the kitchen counter reading emails on his phone and drinking coffee like it had personally offended him.

“You’ve got that university advisor thing next week, right?” he asked without looking up.

“Yeah.”

“You printed the course list?”

“I said I would.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s printed.”

That got a short nod out of him. Good enough. My mum was moving between the sink and the toaster with the kind of speed that made me tired just watching. “Eat something before you go.”

“I will.”

“You said that yesterday and then left half your toast on the bench.”

I pulled a face, grabbed two slices anyway, and headed for the door before breakfast turned into strategy planning for my entire future. I know my parents meant well, but it was exhausting.

Outside, the morning was colder than it looked, and I walked faster than usual just to get the blood moving. My bag dug into one shoulder. My finance prep folder was probably bending in a way that would annoy me later. I could feel the edge of my reading glasses case pressing against the inside pocket of my blazer.

The school gates were crowded by the time I got there. Someone was blasting music from a car parked illegally, half on the curb. A group of juniors were filming each other doing something stupid with an energy drink can. Two teachers stood near the entrance, pretending they had any control over any of it. Normal.

My phone buzzed again.

Clair: Better.

I looked up automatically and found her standing halfway up the front steps with two of her friends. She was smiling at me like she already knew I’d listened.

I don’t know what that says about me, exactly, that one approving look from her could improve my mood for the next hour, but there it is.

I made my way over and she reached for my hand without hesitation.

“You can be taught,” she said.

“I’m relieved to hear it.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. It ruins the effect.”

“Sorry. Deeply grateful for your guidance.”

“That’s better.”

She kissed my cheek, then adjusted the knot of the tie she’d bullied me into wearing like she was signing off on a project. Her friends smiled at me in that airy, practiced way people did when they knew me mostly as part of a pair.

One of them, Melissa, wrinkled her nose. “Are you coming to Ava’s thing on Friday?”

Clair looked at me before answering. “Maybe.”

“Maybe means no,” Melissa said.

“It means maybe if Clifford doesn’t have some tragic spreadsheet to finish.”

“I don’t make spreadsheets for fun.”

Clair gave me a look. “You absolutely would.”

She wasn’t wrong, which was irritating.

We walked inside together, and for the first ten minutes of the day, everything fit neatly into the shape it was supposed to have. Her hand in mine. The usual comments from people passing us. Her peeling away toward first period with a promise to find me at break. Me stopping at my locker, swapping out books, checking my planner.

Then, a basketball bounced once somewhere down the corridor. A lot of people at school had loud energy. Tyler had gravitational energy. It wasn’t even about noise. He could be saying nothing at all and half a hallway would still tilt toward him.

He was coming down from the gym end with Reece and Kyle, all three of them in partial uniform and school issued warm up jackets. Tyler had the ball tucked against his hip this time, one hand spread over the worn orange surface. Reece was saying something, Kyle was laughing, and Tyler looked like he was only paying attention with about ten percent of his brain.

He saw me near the lockers. That shouldn’t have mattered. It was a hallway. People looked at each other all the time. Still, there was a tiny beat where his eyes caught mine and held. Not long. Barely enough to call it anything. Then he dipped his chin once in what might’ve been acknowledgment, might’ve been habit, and kept walking.

Kyle glanced between us as he passed and smirked like he knew a joke nobody else had heard yet. I looked away first, more annoyed by my own reaction than by anything they’d done.

“You look thoughtful.”

I turned to find Leonard beside me, balancing three textbooks and a coffee that smelled strong enough to strip paint.

“That’s because I’m thinking,” I said.

“Dangerous hobby.”

“Why do I spend time with either you or Tara?”

“Because your social options are limited.”

That, unfortunately, also wasn’t wrong. We walked to class together, Leonard launching into an explanation of some article he’d read about a newly identified exoplanet atmosphere while I tried to pay enough attention to respond intelligently. He was one of the few people I knew who could make gases on a distant planet sound urgent.

By second period, I’d almost stopped thinking about the hallway. Almost.

Economics dragged. English was tolerable. In business studies, Mr. Calder actually praised my last assignment in front of the class, which should’ve felt better than it did. Normally I liked being good at things in obvious, measurable ways. Praise was simple. Earned. Useful.

That morning, it just made me aware that Clair hadn’t answered the message I’d sent twenty minutes earlier, and somehow that was what my brain kept circling instead.

At break, I found her by the courtyard wall with a cluster of girls from cheer. She brightened when she saw me and slipped naturally out of their circle to meet me.

“There you are.”

“I thought I was the one meant to say that.”

“You took too long.”

“It’s a big school.”

“Excuses.”

She looped her arms lightly around my neck, and I put my hands at her waist, pulling her in. She smelled like vanilla and expensive shampoo and the kind of effort I could never imagine putting into my own appearance.

“Are you coming Saturday?” I asked.

“To what?”

“Emily's party.”

Clair leaned back just enough to make a face.

“House party?”

“Probably.”

“Tara's cousin?”

“Yes.”

“That could mean anything from cheap drinks to minor property damage.”

“Maybe both.”

She laughed. “I’ll think about it.”

“You always say that when you mean no.”

"Not true.”

“It is absolutely true.”

She smiled in that way she had when she knew I was right and intended to ignore it. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”

Then someone behind me called her name, and just like that, I was sharing her again. She gave my chest a quick pat like I was a dog who’d done something right and drifted back into her group.

I stood there for a second longer than I should have. Not upset. Not exactly. It was just one of those moments where I felt the shape of our relationship more clearly than usual. Clair was all bright movement and constant attention. Being with her often meant waiting at the edge of whatever current she was caught in until she circled back.

Usually I didn’t mind. Today I did. By lunch, the cafeteria was louder than ever, full of overlapping conversations and the clatter of trays. Leonard was explaining, with suspicious passion, why all science fiction films mishandled orbital mechanics. Tara was pretending to care while stealing from everyone’s plates.

“I’m serious,” Leonard said. “They keep treating space like air.”

“Maybe space should try harder to be user friendly,” Tara said.

“You’re both exhausting,” I muttered.

“Clair not joining us?” Tara asked.

“She said she’d come.”

Tara looked over my shoulder toward the far side of the room. “She’s already eating.”

I turned. Clair was at her usual table near the windows, half listening to one of her friends and laughing at something else entirely. There were three guys from the senior soccer team nearby, leaning in and talking to the group. One of them said something that made Clair smile and touch his arm for a second.

Nothing weird about that. She was social. She touched everyone. That was just how she was. I looked away before my brain could make more of it.

“She’ll come over,” I said.

Tara gave me a look I didn’t like. Not because it was cruel. Because it was too observant.

“Right,” she said.

Leonard, thankfully, rescued me by shoving his phone at us. “Look.”

On the screen was a blurry photo someone had already posted from that morning’s practice. Tyler mid jump shot, body stretched, expression locked in concentration, two defenders nowhere near him.

Tara whistled. “Honestly, if I had cheekbones like that, I’d be unbearable.”

Leonard deadpanned, “Your personality already covers it.”

She kicked his chair. At the table behind us, a couple of girls were talking loudly enough that half the room could hear.

“I’m telling you, he’s bi,” one of them said.

“Who?”

“Tyler. Obviously.”

Another girl laughed. “Please. He just likes attention.”

I didn’t mean to listen, but it was hard not to when a name got dropped like that in a room full of gossip hungry people.

“Britney asked him out last month,” the first girl continued. “He literally walked away while she was still talking.”

Tara lifted a brow. “Brave.”

“Stupid,” the girl behind us said. “Nobody embarrasses Britney and gets away with it.”

That made Tara grin in open delight. I found myself looking toward the basketball table without meaning to. Tyler was there with Reece and Kyle, one foot hooked under the bench, sleeves shoved up, saying something that made Kyle nearly choke laughing. He looked relaxed. Untouchable, almost. Like rumours belonged to everybody else.

Maybe he felt me looking, because he glanced up. Again, it was just a second.

Still, something small and strange moved low in my stomach before I killed it dead out of sheer annoyance.

Clair finally came over near the end of lunch and slid into the spot beside me like she’d never been anywhere else.

“Miss me?” she asked.

“You were twenty feet away.”

“And yet.”

She stole one of my fries, then made a face at Tara. “Are you still trying to drag us to your cousin's disaster party?”

“It’s not a disaster party.”

“You set fire to a microwave last month.”

“That was one time,” Tara said. “And in my defense, the noodles were suspicious.”

Clair laughed and leaned her shoulder against mine. “Maybe we’ll come.”

Tara pointed at her. “That’s legally binding.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is in my heart.”

The bell saved us from hearing Tara argue constitutional law she definitely did not understand.

The rest of the afternoon passed in neat blocks of work and noise. In history, I answered too many questions and got told by Tara afterward that I had “teacher’s pet energy,” which was unfair because I didn’t even like that teacher. In study period, I finished half an assignment and planned the other half. In the corridor after class, I passed Tyler near the science wing and he stepped aside without making me flatten against the wall, which in our school counted as uncommon courtesy.

“Hayes,” he said as I moved by.

“Cross.”

His mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh at something. That should’ve been nothing. It kept replaying anyway.

After the final bell, most of the school emptied fast, everyone pouring out toward buses, parking lots, practice, jobs, whatever waited for them outside the building. I headed for the library with my notes and found Leonard already there, naturally, because if Leonard ever vanished, the library was statistically the first place to check.

He looked up as I dropped into the chair opposite him. “Voluntary or court ordered?”

“Homework.”

“Tragic.”

We worked in relative silence for half an hour before Tara appeared, breathless from athletics and glowing with the kind of energy I usually found suspicious in people who claimed to enjoy running.

“You two really do live here,” she said.

“We’re cultivating character,” I replied.

“You’re cultivating eye strain.”

She drank half Leonard’s water without permission, then leaned one hip against the table. “Friday. You’re both coming.”

Leonard sighed. “Will there be loud music?”

“Yes.”

“People?”

“Obviously.”

“Then no.”

She turned to me. “You.”

“I said maybe.”

“That means yes. I know your language.”

“I thought Clair was your socially acceptable backup plan.”

“She is, but you’re the one I like.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“I’m a disturbing person.”

This was true enough that neither of us argued. We packed up just after five. The library windows had gone dim with late afternoon light, the parking lot outside washed in gold and long shadows. As we headed down the steps, I heard the rhythmic thud of basketballs from the gym annex and turned my head automatically.

Practice was finishing. A side door had been propped open, and players were coming out in waves, laughing, shoving each other, dripping sweat onto the pavement. Reece came first, then Kyle, and then Tyler, carrying his duffel over one shoulder.

He was flushed from practice, hair damp at the temples, jersey darkened in places. He was saying something over his shoulder to someone still inside when his gaze cut across the lot and landed on me.

He stopped for half a heartbeat. Not long enough for anyone else to notice. Long enough for me to. Then he lifted two fingers off the strap of his bag in a lazy little salute and kept walking.

Tara followed my line of sight. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Why does everyone say ‘nothing’ when they clearly mean something?”

“Because it’s more fun.”

I rolled my eyes, but my attention stayed snagged for another second on Tyler’s retreating back, on the easy way he moved through space like he trusted it to make room for him.

Then my phone buzzed.

Clair: Come by before dinner? Miss you.

The weird tension in my chest eased almost immediately. I texted back. On my way, tucked my phone into my pocket, and started toward the gate.

Because that was still my life then. Clair’s texts. Leonard’s sarcasm. Tara’s chaos. My grades, my plans, my future lined up in clean, sensible rows.

And Tyler Cross was still just a glance in a hallway. Just a pause I didn’t understand. Just a moment my body seemed to register before the rest of me did.