Sticky Soap, Stubborn Boy
Memory 0
As I look back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if things could’ve ended differently.
I suppose it's a fruitless train of thought; the past is the past, and all that. They say hindsight is “twenty/twenty”, but I don’t believe that to be the case, either.
No, every time I remember, I grind and polish the gems of my past, smoothing out its imperfections so it can glisten in the light of my selective attention. I can still faintly recall the feeling of digging it out of the ground for the first time, cradling the raw, craggy mineral of freshly lived experiences in my mind’s eye in adoration and awe. Formed by the cruel, crushing pressures of nature and nurture, hardening it into something precious and unique.
I was desperate to preserve its value to me. So I cherished it as I only knew how. I chipped away the superfluous, surrounding ore cocooning the beauty inside. Then I cut it into a sphere, perfectly rotund and sleek in the nest of my palms. I replayed the moment over and over, smoothing it in my hands, maintaining its perfection.
If only I’d known that its true value was in its origin.
As I hand over my collection of gems to you, I am sad to say that these are but hollow remnants of how they once were. My selfish need for preservation only ruined their innate worth. I cannot hope to show you the intricate details of their extrication from the earth, as they were meant to be experienced.
Instead, their rich, saturated hues have faded and bled away from years of being rubbed raw in my hands. Their opaque insides, filled with sensation and emotion, have melted away from the heat of my skin, the friction of my frequent abrasions through recollections. All color drained away until transparent.
I only say this as a warning. Don’t let yourself be caught in its empty glimmer. These jewels are only pyrite, fool’s gold, except the fool was, and is, me. I was a fool for trying to preserve them as I did. I am a fool for continuing to do so now.
But I finally decided that I needn’t blame myself for the inevitable. That while my gems have lost their luster, they’ve also transformed under novel pressures in my mind into something entirely new.
Glass.
Maybe this one last time, I’ll be able to see it all clearly.
Memory 1
The Wizard of Oz, despite its enchanting tale, proved to be horrifically inaccurate to Wanda.
As a young child, Wanda had been fascinated by TV and cinema. Her adoptive parents had a penchant for family sitcoms, and they dutifully passed that trait onto her. Some of her fondest memories are of snuggling into her parents on the couch late at night as they watched reruns way past her usual bedtime, time blurring into an illusion as they shared laughter over the antics on TV.
Then they showed her The Wizard of Oz, and she fell in love. While she was no stranger to black and white films, she hadn’t been expecting the sudden switch to color. The magic of Dorothy stepping into a new, vibrant world, filled with life and intrigue and adventure, left her staring in wonder, enraptured as if under a spell.
To her parents’ eventual dismay and dread, she watched the movie on repeat, over and over and over. Singing along off-key to every number, able to recite almost every line along with the characters. She couldn’t get enough of it.
She particularly loved Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Wanda admired her wisdom and dreamed of having her powers. What would it be like, to fly away in a large pink bubble, unrestrained by gravity and the mortal mundanities of everyday life?
As she hopped out of her parents’ SUV and onto the sidewalk in front of Westview Academy, she grimaced at her newfound familiarity with what she assumed that might feel like.
A perfectly trimmed, rectangular courtyard stretched before her, covered with skittering children rushing on legs of various heights to their first day of classes, all herding towards the school’s doors, backpacks jostling and swaying as they went. It elicited a memory of the munchkins all tumbling out of their homes to greet Dorothy when she arrived in the Land of Oz.
Exhaling a sigh not bothered to be heard by anyone over the collective chatter of all the other students, Wanda reluctantly walks into the school.
Stepping through those doors signified her passing through the barrier into the academy’s “bubble”. Upon entering, a sterile scent invades her nostrils, almost making her sneeze. The smell of a freshly washed and polished school, ready to welcome a new year.
Wanda tries breathing through her mouth to suppress the sneeze, but the odor sticks to her tongue, coating the roof of her mouth in a bitter taste that evokes her gag reflex.
This is what it’s like to live in a bubble. It’s suffocating.
Wanda isn’t magically whisked away to another fairytale location like Glinda, freed from her academic burdens. Rather, it entraps her, soaking her in its sticky suds. Cleansing her of any outside influences or improper etiquette, prettying and polishing her until she’s a prim and proper lady. She ought to be intelligent, but not belligerent; any cries of outrage are fixed with a bar of soap in her mouth.
To have her insides flushed and purified as well was the worst part. The soap, a foreign substance to the natural processes of her body, scalded her all the way down her esophagus, blistering her vital components. Melting her organs down until they can be recast and hardened under fire and brimstone into the girl they wanted her to be.
All the other girls basked in the soap as if it was a bubble bath. Already adept at navigating their responsibilities and expectations, they frolicked in their social circles, completely unaware of the toxicity in their lungs.
Wanda tried to join them. Tried to fit in with them, to see this tiny world the way they saw it. But the foam would fill her airways, choking her with its acidic poison. Leaving her spluttering and coughing on the noxious fumes, eyes burning from the mixture of soap and tears.
They thought she was strange. Couldn’t understand why Wanda didn’t just breathe normally, like them. Just breathe, they’d tell her.
Thankfully, she had ways of getting by.
Wanda sat by the window at the end of the row of seats in her chemistry class that morning, her view of the world outside a wisp of fresh air. Just enough oxygen to keep the soap of the bubble from overwhelming her.
The professor, a stout, little old lady, introduced herself, and reached for the syllabus before snapping her fingers to herself.
"Oh! I almost forgot, silly me. We have a new transfer student I'd like to introduce to the class. Victor, would you like to come up here and introduce yourself?"
Wanda leaned forward with her face in one hand, perking an eyebrow. A slight turn of events. A new kid. Rare for a school with grades roughly sixty kids large. Maybe she could actually make a friend. One that wouldn’t be as suffocating as the rest.
A lanky boy rose from his seat in the front row, and he swiveled on his heels to face the class.
The first thing that caught her attention was how tall he was. Sitting down, everyone seemed the same height. Watching him maneuver out of the chair and unfold to his full height was how she imagined clowns felt getting out of a clown car.
The next thing she noticed, cliche as it was, was his eyes. Wanda wasn’t one to swoon over appearances, let alone something as simple as someone’s eyes, but it was hard not to notice. She’d seen plenty of blonde, blue-eyed people before, but this was different. His eyes were a highly concentrated, electric, almost inhuman blue, piercing through the objects of their focus with a calculated ease. His hair color was just as stunning - so blonde that you could easily mistake it for white under the right lighting. And under the artificial, bright LEDs of the chemistry lab, his impossibly pale skin almost seemed translucent, the only reminder of his solidity being the faint splatter of freckles brushed across the bridge of his nose and cheeks.
It can’t be overstated that Wanda did absolutely NOT swoon over boys. But his appearance was what she could only describe as striking. He possessed all the features of any other American boy, sure, but they were so intense, so vibrant, like his body was emitting its own light, as if he was a walking picture with the saturation and brightness turned up all the way.
He definitely wasn’t American.
The boy raised his hand in an awkward, half wave as his eyes nervously flitted around the room, examining the faces of his classmates.
"Hello, my name's Victor Shade. I'm from London, if you couldn't tell by my accent already. And yes, I know my name makes me sound like a supervillain, but I promise I'm not one."
British accent. Called it.
He was undeniably exotic. For Westview Academy in the middle of Suburban Nowhere, New Jersey, anyways.
As the class chuckled at his joke, Wanda saw the faces of the girls' of the class light up, mesmerized by his awkward charm and natural glow. Which, she didn’t blame them for - God knew pickings were slim at this academy. The other boys bristled slightly in inferiority. Victor simply chuckled along with the class, flashing a small grin before rocking back on his heels nervously, hands clasped behind his back.
With such a loud appearance (though not because of any volition of his own), he’d surely garner a lot of attention. This place would be hell for him for the first month, at least, if not longer. And she wasn’t interested in getting caught up in that whirlwind of attention.
So Wanda turned her gaze back down to her paper. She elected to ignore him. For now.
Memory 2
The first month of school had flashed by Victor in a blur, and for that, he was glad. So far, everything has been going according to plan.
He'd grown up on the tales of his older brother Jarvis's experiences at Westview Academy. How everyone was expected to be perfect, the future pillars of society, born from money and molded to breed even more money in their careers. How the competition between students was ruthless, where grades were openly discussed, and you were looked down upon if you weren't good enough. But Victor knew he was good enough. Rather, he knew he had to be.
So the plan was simple enough. Be likable - but not too likable. Which wasn't very hard to do. If you wanted people to like you, all you needed to do was listen and occasionally make them laugh. Victor excelled in listening, and by leaning into his socially-awkward persona, he was able to make people laugh through the occasionally well-placed self-deprecating jokes.
But even easier than being liked was being boring. Victor knew he was boring, and he wasn't afraid to use that to his advantage. It was so easy to let conversations peeter out, to silently slip away from social interactions. Easy to hide away in the library during all of his free time so no one could bother him, earbuds in and his neck craned over a textbook. He was just a background character, shutting out the world, and that was fine. There was already too much noise in his mind, so he didn't want to hear the melody. Only the background drums, the steady beat of his daily life. Four more years, and then he'll go to the college of his dreams. And this will have all been worth it.
He had just started to get used to this beat. Every day, there were less and less interruptions in his carefully orchestrated life as his peers lost interest in his novelty. As they stopped trying to "get to know him". And on that Thursday afternoon, as he read through his history textbook, the intrusive thought popped into his head that no one had bothered him all week. He was approaching a new record, and that knowledge washed over him with a mind-numbing relief.
And of course he had to jinx himself. Because just as Victor had felt his shoulders relax a bit with an exhale, a new melody barged into his life.
He felt the quick rap of four fingers against his desk and looked up with a start. One of his earbuds caught on the corner of the desk from his movement and was ripped out of his ear as his eyes rose from the intruding hand up to its owner.
A girl. One he recognized. Wanda, from his chemistry class. A year above him, as was everyone in that class. She leaned over slightly, looking down at him with a smirk and one eyebrow tilted up in interest. The fingers of her right hand rapped against the desk again, and he glanced back down at her hand. Black nail polish, partially chipped. Silver rings, bracelets hung loosely on her wrist. Her sleeves were rolled up - a charcoal plaid shirt.
He redirected his attention back to her face and swallowed involuntarily, scrambling to think of something to say, caught off guard, thoughts scattered as if he’d dropped a stack of loose-leaf paper.
Her fingers rapped against the table again.
Surely this silence had been going on too long. Victor needed to say something. He didn’t remember looking up, but as he blinked away the sting of his wide-eyed stare, he realized he was now staring at her face. Dark brown curls were pulled over her shoulders from leaning over his desk, frizzy but soft. But his attention was torn away again by the soft scrape of his textbook being slid across the desk by slender fingers.
"What'cha doin?"
She asked him as if they already knew each other. As if it was her business to know. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. But it wasn't. Why did it feel that way to him?
A strangled chuckle bubbled out of him as he gently reached out his hand and straightened his textbook back towards himself, averting his gaze back down to his reading.
"Um... homework?"
She huffed out a laugh. Her fingers rapped against the table again for what Victor had counted to be the fourth time.
"Yeah, no shit Sherlock. I was asking about the content of said homework."
He looked at her sideways. There she still was, one eyebrow still raised, smirking at him expectantly, patiently awaiting an answer. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious he was reading a history textbook.
"History."
A beat of silence. Another rap of her fingertips. He really wished she'd stop doing that. Every time she did, his attention was drawn back to her. To reality.
"Well, I've got a study room rented out. I'm in there with a couple of people. Want to join?"
So that's what this was about. She was just another student vying for his attention. Whether to use him to improve their own grades, or just to sample his novelty, like an hors d'oeuvre at a cocktail party. Jarvis had warned him of this. Victor had already dealt with this multiple times the past month.
He let himself stutter a bit, tripping over his words like an actor in a Shakespearean play dramatically falling to the stage floor. Practiced to perfection, exaggerated but endearing enough so others wanted to believe him. So she would believe him.
"Oh, well uh, actually... I really need to get this done, and I don't want to get distracted, so..."
Annnnnnd… scene. His conductor faded out the melody of his words, his character stuck in dramatic pose, waiting for the curtain call so he could return backstage, to the world of background music.
But then there it was again.
Tr-r-r-rap.
The gentle tap of those fingernails against his desk, disrupting his play. Not following the script.
"Ah, alright. Maybe next time then."
He looked up in confusion, not expecting her to give up that easily. But he simply watched her walk away, dramatically exiting to stage left, the rhythm of her fingernails leaving the auditorium of his mind hauntingly silent, the scene left unfinished.
Memory 3
He should've predicted his plan might need some alterations. Victor had let himself get swept up in the thought of creating his perfect life, this perfect version of himself, that he had forgotten to account for unexpected deviations. Well, that was fine. The deviations were minor enough, he figured.
That girl, Wanda. He knew that first interaction seemed weird. He should've guessed that wouldn't be the last of her. But he still found himself just as startled when those same fingertips graced his presence once again on his desk. And again, she asked him to come with her to a study room with her friends. And again, he rejected her just as swiftly, coming up with another reason why. And she accepted it just as easily. A perfect re-enactment of their previous encounter, like they were rehearsing for a performance.
She kept coming back. Again and again, like clockwork. Every other day, Victor would be in the library at 1pm for study hall. And every time, ten minutes into the period, Wanda would approach him. Even when he hid in the back corner of the library, she still found him. And when she did find him, she would give any excuse to drag out the conversation. To make meaningless small talk about his homework, what he was listening to, his plans for the weekend, oh, is that a new haircut?
Maybe if it was just that, he could put up with it. But now she was onto him in chemistry as well.
Victor sat at the front of class, wanting to make a good impression on the professor and give his full attention. The front of the class was also, understandably, not a popular seat, making the desk next to him frequently wide open. Hers for the taking.
Now he had to deal with her incessant tapping in class as well. It was torture. He had read before that a man had once been tortured by being blind folded and water slowly dripped upon his forehead. The constant anticipation of not knowing when the next drop would land slowly drove him to insanity. Victor couldn't fully understand it before - but he could now.
It was always just as he thought maybe she'd stopped, that maybe he was safe to exhale, that she did it again. Slow, languid, methodic. Magnetic. Pulling his attention back to her.
Moments felt like hours with her, and the march of time felt completely out of whack. Crawling to almost a standstill when she would lean closer to him to talk about chemistry, her words dribbling slowly out of whispered lips like maple syrup, cooling the blood pumping in his ears. Sprinting when the clack of chalk against the board drew him out of his reverie, his attention desperate to escape her, thoughts swirling directly behind his eyes with his notes as class raced by.
The stop-and-go traffic of time created the illusion that time was slow, when in fact, it was moving faster than ever. One moment, they were strangers. The next, Wanda had become an expected, everyday occurrence in his life. Time advanced in bounds from the first week they’d spoken to months into the semester. Victor attempted to regain control of the time gods running amok in his head by constantly checking his watch, taking note of how long interactions between him and Wanda truly lasted, clinging to the facts to still his rapidly beating, adrenaline-fueled heart.
It didn’t work.
His rudely-stolen attention began to catalog facts about her to ground himself. Eyes sunken and dark from a lack of sleep (something she loved to complain about), her green eyes swallowed in shadow like a grotto deep in the forest hidden by thick oak trees. Her forehead would scrunch in concentration as she listened to the professor, head tilted slightly to the side as she leaned closer to her notes. Occasionally, she’d wrinkle her nose up when she got a problem wrong, pursing her lips to the side as she viciously scrubbed her paper clean of the offending marks. And when Wanda caught him glancing at her, her face would relax into a mischievous smirk that always made him look away in a hurry.
Despite Victor being much larger than her, he felt a twinge of fear when they locked eyes. Like she wanted to eat him alive, a predator stalking its prey. And he was powerless to stop her, unable to escape her gaze, her heavy eyelids weighed down by exhaustion that barely contained the overflowing electric potential energy underneath, moments away from triggering a reaction. All he could do was focus on his breathing, struggle to maintain his composure. Hope he didn't look as anxious as he felt.
In the moments where they were forced to work together in class in pairs, the charged silence between them lifted, and Victor felt he could breathe a bit easier. Listening to her ramble about everything and nothing as they worked calmed his nerves a bit, a soothing song. A temporary truce in this never-ending battle they were silently waging. While it wasn't in his plan to get to know someone as well as he was beginning to know her, he would rather listen to her talk than go back to their mental warfare.
So, a slight deviation in his plan to rule one - do not become close to anyone - , he concluded, was necessary. Everything was still fine.
Victor quietly put up with her complaining about her lack of sleep, how tired she always was, nodding to affirm his commissary. He listened to her talk about her classes, and which professors she liked and didn’t like. While Victor didn’t care enough to form opinions on their teachers as long as they gave him good grades, Wanda had very outspoken opinions, clear criteria on what made some teachers likable, sometimes better than their peers, and other times, completely unbearable to her. She spoke of her love for English and art, her dreams of authoring and illustrating her own books one day. She bemoaned how so few people at this school had a genuine appreciation for the arts and humanities, always being overshadowed by the hard sciences, something he found himself agreeing with, despite his own lack of talent in those fields. Victor gathered Wanda enjoyed chemistry as well, but she wouldn’t dare admit it, too staunch in her defense for the arts to concede she was fraternizing with the enemy. She also would rattle off her various duties as a part of the school’s literary magazine club, maybe more as a reminder to herself of what she still needed to do, though he could tell she enjoyed it from the poorly hidden smile and puff in her chest.
And through all of this, even though Victor knew Wanda was talking to him only to distract him, to get a rise out of him with her devious smirks and incessant tapping, he found himself feeling… not very annoyed. Wanda understood the character he played well, and they would fall easily into a sort of comedic banter, him playing into his socially-awkward persona, and her leaning into her witty, impish nature. Playing those practiced roles began to feel relieving to him, reaffirming his cover identity. Even when Wanda got started on a heated rant, the cadence of her voice began to become a welcome backtrack of his chemistry classes.
And while Victor still refused to accept her invitations to go to a study room… he found his resolve to win this faux-battle between them slowly beginning to melt away.
Memory 4
Wanda wasn’t sure why she’d commit to this bit as much as she had. At first, it was a good joke. Tease the shy new boy, get a bit of a thrill out of it, then get rejected and get back to her normal life. But when she realized what an easy target he was, and that she had nothing better to do… it was hard to resist.
He was practically begging for it. Sitting all alone in the library, day in and day out. Looking as lonely and mysterious as always. A silent rebel against the social system this school forced its students to conform to - kind and sociable enough, but refusing to make any real friends. And that intrigued her.
At first, Victor’s rejection had deflated her a bit. Not that Wanda would ever let him see that - see weakness. But the challenge only made her more determined. Wanda didn’t lose. Especially not to some shy Beatles understudy.
So she continued to ask him and tease him, determined to wear him down. She would at least admit he was a worthy adversary. He wore a neutral expression well, managing to seem simultaneously anxious but controlled. His eyebrows would scrunch together, thin lips pursed in contemplation. Victor always held his head high when spoken to, never hunched over. Sure of himself, or sure enough. But his anxiety seeped through in the way he’d chew on his chapped bottom lip or the inside of his cheek. Or by the way he fiddled with his hands under the table, behind his back. Out of sight, but not hidden well enough to escape Wanda’s eye.
When Wanda realized she could bother Victor in chemistry as well, she jumped on the opportunity. Sitting next to him would be much more interesting than listening to another girl recount last week’s episode of The Bachelor. He was also willing to listen to her when she talked, which was a very welcome bonus. Wanda liked to talk, and most people got bored of her. But he didn’t.
It was a Tuesday the week before Thanksgiving break when Victor finally caved in.
In the morning, they had chemistry together, like always. They were both attentively listening to the lecture, scribbling away in their notes. As Wanda was writing something down, she looked up only to see the professor already erasing what had been on the board. Great.
Not wanting the teacher to notice since they were already sitting so close to the front, Wanda conjured a small, devilish idea to get Victor’s attention. In the rhythm she normally reserved for desktops, she lightly tapped her fingers on his knee under the desk.
His knee violently jerked at her touch, slamming against the bottom of his desk, narrowly avoiding crushing her hand as well. Wanda’s hand shot up to cover her mouth, barely suppressing a laugh inside her cheeks.
Thankfully, since the class was in a moment of transition, busy getting out their textbooks, the rustle of movement from the students covered up the sound well enough, blending in with the sound of the hardcovers smacking onto the desks. She peeked at him through her periphery view, stifling more giggles from the blush that had crept up his neck and covered his cheeks. He glared back at her with accusatory eyes, jaw clenched, clearly awaiting an answer for why she’d done that to him. She removed her hand to reveal the grin underneath, and leaned toward him slightly, speaking in a hushed tone.
“Sorry… I didn’t think I’d startle you that badly,” she chuckled under her breath.
“What do you want?” He snapped back in a distressed whisper.
“I missed the last of the notes before the professor erased them. Could you show me yours after class?”
He blinked at her, seeming to not have expected her to ask that. Which didn’t make any sense to Wanda - they’re in science class. What the hell had he been expecting her to say?
Victor seemed to deliberate for only a few seconds before delivering a response.
“Ah, well… sure, I suppose.”
“Great! Guess you’ll finally come to the study room, eh?”
She couldn’t help the swell of triumph she felt as she watched him struggle to suppress a grin, eyebrows creased in defeat.
“Yes, I… I suppose so.”
Wanda quietly cheered to herself, and Victor watched her merriment, rolling his eyes.
Wanda - 1. Victor - 0.
—
Victor steeled his nerves as he opened the clear glass door to the study room. Today, he’d lost the battle with Wanda. And this was the reward she’d wrenched from him.
Before he’d entered the room, he saw Wanda sitting in there with two other girls who he recognized from his club activities, Darcy and Monica. They seemed to be chatting away, books and laptops left open but unattended on the shared table. He swallowed a tsk of annoyance. This was what he wanted to avoid - wasting time. Why rent out a study room only to not do any studying?
But that didn’t matter now; Victor had to shove down his pride. He had committed to this, having been cornered in their psychological warfare by a dirty tactic - asking for his help with schoolwork. He couldn’t in good conscience deny her, not when he was fairly certain there wasn’t anyone else she’d willingly ask. He also just wasn’t willing to be callous enough to not help someone when the request was easy enough - that’d break the rule of his plan to be polite and likable. So, his hand had been forced, he surmised, and he accepted her request, and his subsequent defeat. That was the only reason why he accepted.
Victor definitely did not secretly wish to spend more time with her.
As the door’s wooden frame creaked open, Wanda clapped slowly at his arrival, and Darcy let out a dramatic gasp.
“Wanda, do my eyes deceive me? Is that THE Victor Shade, British wonder-boy extraordinaire, in OUR study room?”
Wanda had a wide grin on her face, and Victor simply dipped his head as an attempt to hide his tangibly growing embarrassment and anxiety as he slid into the seat closest to the door, considering the possibility of making a quick escape.
“They said it couldn’t be done, yet here we are. Never underestimate the magical powers of a Maximoff!” Wanda quipped back, gesturing to herself with exaggerated self-aggrandizement.
Monica, who had been furiously typing away on her laptop, the only one in the room who seemed to be actually working, let out a huff of laughter at Wanda’s smug comment without looking up from her work.
“The only thing remotely magical about you is how relentless you are.”
Wanda raised her hands in surrender as Victor began to retrieve his chemistry notes, not able to suppress the small smile on his face from listening to their banter.
“Hey, I don’t shy away from a challenge, what can I say?”
With a small cough, he slid his notes across the table to Wanda, and she quickly thanked him before her focus shifted onto the papers splayed before her. Victor watched as she copied down his notes, her eyes darting between their notebooks. Her writing was much different than his - it was small, tight, scratch-like, yet there was a method to the madness of her organization. She gripped her pencil tightly, the veins in her hand flexing and protruding as she flicked her wrist methodically across the page,
“Thanks Vic; you’re a lifesaver.”
Victor was torn from his thoughts as Wanda pushed his notes back towards him, a warm look of gratitude on her face, contrasting her words twinged with the slightest tease. Which only added to his surprise. While he was used to how blunt she could be about her feelings, she had never expressed genuine gratitude to him before. It was strange, seeing her step out of the sarcastic, smug persona she played around him, even if only for a brief moment.
It definitely didn’t make his heart flutter. No, that was just his usual anxiety. Right. Of course.
He told her it was no problem and began to gather his things, only to be stopped by Wanda’s hand darting across the table to snatch his wrist. He froze under her surprisingly strong grip, his brain shut down by the feeling of her hand. Her skin was surprisingly soft, and his own skin flared under her touch, only to be soothed by the cool metal of her rings.
“Aw, c’mon, don’t leave so soon! Stay a while. Just this once? Please?”
Victor looked up into her eyes, pleading with him to stay, an overdramatic pout on her face punctuated by her protruding bottom lip and puppy-dog eyes. He knew she was just teasing him again. And yet…
His body went on autopilot as he sat back down without a word, causing the girls in the room to cheer in victory.
He barely heard much of what they said for the rest of the period. While they chattered away about their homework and classes, Victor dumbly nodded along, his mind reeling to catch up with everything that had happened between them.
First, it was in chemistry class. As the period started, he had been waiting, bracing himself for the usual rhythmic bounce of her leg, or tap of her fingers on the desk, preparing to wrench his attention back from her hypnotism. But minutes passed, and it never came.
Just as he’d consider glancing over at her, he felt it. Her hand on his knee, just barely grazing his thigh. The same fingertips that had been haunting him for months. It was so brief, but so unexpected, so electrifying, that Victor couldn’t help but jump under her touch, as if she’d pressed a button to make him move.
And just now, he’d felt her hand on his skin. He paired that with the earlier feeling of her hand on his thigh, and his brain short-circuited. He wasn’t sure why this was happening to him - the touches had been innocent enough. It’s not like he’d never been brushed by girls or hugged friends who were girls in the past. But Wanda’s touch was a shock to his whole system, leaving him dazed for the rest of the day. And honestly, he felt pathetic.
It was just one touch, for Christ’s sake.
What the hell was she doing to him?