He Could See My Comments, I Used Them To Tease Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Caterpillars at a Funeral
Miranda types nonsense about Griffin's eyebrows in the silent library and he reacts, then laughs out loud. He crosses the floor and asks, 'Seventy percent of what, Miranda?'
The first time Griffin Standridge touched his own eyebrow in the library, I had just typed that they looked like two caterpillars at a funeral.
We were on the quiet floor, and he sat two tables away, and nobody had spoken in forty minutes.
I need to explain the comments.
Since the first week of September, words had been floating in the air around me.
I typed by tapping my fingertips on my thigh.
My words came out white and drifted up over my head, so I called them my comments.
The other lines came from somewhere else.
They were grey, they sat in square brackets, and they only showed up when Griffin was in the room.
I had decided they were a commentary track for people with nothing better to do.
Griffin was the captain of the men's rowing team, and the campus heartthrob, and the owner of the best forearms at Carroway College.
For five weeks I had been typing about him.
"He has a nice jaw, unfortunately."
"He held the door for forty people and didn't count."
"It's the forearms. Don't look at the forearms."
Then I typed the caterpillar line, and he reached up and smoothed his left eyebrow with one finger.
He looked around the floor.
Rosetta, my roommate, leaned over her anatomy flashcards.
"Why are you tapping your leg like a rabbit?" she whispered.
"Stats problem," I whispered back.
I tapped again.
"His left shoe is a lawyer, and it's losing."
Griffin looked down at his left shoe.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then his eyes came up and found me across two tables.
I put my hands flat on the table and stared at a page about confidence intervals.
My fingers wanted to type something sensible, like how do I make this stop.
Instead I made a decision, and I made it in one plain sentence.
So I started typing nonsense on purpose.
I tapped my thigh again, harder, under the table.
"He is three raccoons in a trench coat, and the top raccoon is nervous."
Griffin made a sound.
It started as a cough and finished as a bark, and it rolled across the quiet floor.
Forty heads turned.
The librarian rose behind her desk.
"Quiet floor," she said.
"Sorry," Griffin said, with his hand over his mouth and his shoulders still shaking.
Beau Tennant, who had been holding Griffin's backpack for him, stared at his friend.
"Who are you laughing at?" Beau whispered.
"Nobody," Griffin said.
His eyes slid to me again, and the corner of his mouth went up.
"Oh no," Rosetta whispered. "Is he looking at you? He's looking at you."
"He's looking at the clock behind me."
"There is no clock behind you."
A hand touched my shoulder, light and warm.
I nearly typed out loud.
It was Camille Doran, the student council president, who had lent me her phone charger an hour ago and never asked for it back.
She wore a pressed blazer and carried a clipboard.
"He does that," she whispered, and rolled her eyes kindly. "He's very sweet, but he's loud. Don't let him break your concentration. You're Miranda, right? The stats genius?"
"Not a genius," I said. "Just very nervous about confidence intervals."
"I'll find you something easier," she said, and squeezed my shoulder.
She went back to her table, where her phone leaned against her water bottle with the camera facing our way.
I thought she was reading something on it.
I did not think about it again for a long time.
I put my head down and tried to read.
A grey line slid into the corner of my eye, in its square brackets.
"[Griffin has no idea Miranda is the girl he's meant for.]"
I had been seeing lines like that for weeks, and I always found them embarrassing.
Another one slid in under it.
"[Miranda's crush meter just hit seventy percent. Is today the day she makes a move?]"
I glanced up through my hair.
Griffin had put his hand in his pocket, and his thumb was dragging across his palm.
He does that when he's nervous, I thought, and went back to my page.
Then Griffin stood up.
He walked straight across the floor, past Beau, past the librarian's lighthouse stare, and stopped at the end of my table.
Rosetta dropped a flashcard.
He was taller up close, which is a rude thing for a man to be.
"Miranda Hathaway," he said, very quietly. "Statistics, right? Third floor of Pike Hall?"
"I don't know you," I said.
"Seventy percent," he said, "of what?"
The grey line was still sitting in the air over his shoulder.
He could see it too.
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