I was walking along the sidewalk on an early summer morning, looking at my feet, and I bumped into someone. Actually, my stomach bumped into her extremely thick textbook. She looked up from it and quickly slammed it shut, front cover facing down.
"Sorry," I muttered, and she did the same. Then we went our separate ways, but I couldn't help looking back at her. She glanced back slightly as well. There was a feeling I had gotten when we had passed each other. It was the same weird, shivery feeling that I get a lot from people who dress in bright colors. I must have this thing with vivid clothing. The problem was, she was dressed in an ordinary black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Very strange. Before, I had been believed that somehow my eyes had some weird thing towards high-intensity colors, but I couldn't see anything brightly-colored about her. Maybe it was the large orange cat that was trotting by her feet.
I met her again at lunchtime that day. I was sitting at a table in a crowded outdoor fast-food place, apparently alone, doing my summer homework at the same time as my left hand held a cheeseburger to my mouth. Then I looked up and she was there again.
"Hello," she said. "Mind if I share this table? All the others are full."
I looked around. She was right. There wasn't a seat left at any table except mine.
"I don't mind," I said. "Just doing my summer homework. You too?" I asked curiously, seeing the same gargantuan textbook lying open next to her. This time she didn't shut it, and from the corner of my eye I could see her copying a table onto a sheet of paper.
"Yes," she replied, scribbling.
"My name's Beatrice," I added, without thinking.
She looked up and smiled. "I'm Hermione. Like the Shakespeare character."
The pages in her textbook were covered with boxes of some sort. But when I looked directly at them, trying to get a better idea of what was there, the pages were blank. So was her homework. I stopped chewing.
I looked away, and I could see the boxes and tables again. It's awfully hard, trying to look at something without looking at it. I gave up after a while. Something funny was going on, but I didn't know what it was, and I probably wouldn't.
She mumbled a bit to herself. I strained my ears, trying to listen. Then she shut her book. I stared. The cover had no words on it. It was just a musty book covered in blue cloth. The spine had no words on it either.
Then she shoved it into a bag and pulled out another one. This time it was covered in pastel pink and blue fabric. I've never seen a schoolbook in those colors.
"I thought you were doing your homework," she said, looking at me suspiciously.
"I was," I told her, "but then I noticed that you were writing in invisible ink for *your* homework."
"Invisible ink?" she repeated, grinning. Then she brought her quill over to my page and made a tiny, blue line at the corner. Tiny it may have been, but invisible, definitely not.
I gaped.
"But --" I started, and then I took my ordinary pencil and made a mark in the corner of her blank homework paper. Nothing showed up.
"You won't tell anyone about this, will you?" she asked.
I paused. "No. But it's pretty weird." It was, but somehow it didn't seem as weird as it should have to most people. Maybe things like this had happened before, and I had seen them. But I didn't remember them for sure.
Day after day, that summer, we'd both go to that same fast-food restaurant at the same time for lunch. Hermione didn't talk much to me, except to say hello. I think she felt she'd said enough on that first day.
Then, on the last day of August, she actually started a conversation.
"Well, I hope I see you next summer, Beatrice."
"What do you mean, next summer?" I asked. I had expected her to stay here. She had shown me where her house was, so I thought she lived here.
"I go to boarding school," she explained.
"Oh."
"You know, you might be going to boarding school too, in a few years. What year are you in, at school?"
"Well, I'll be starting my last year of primary school."
The corners of her mouth lifted. "Still time. Anyway, if things go right, after next summer you'll be going to my school too. I'm almost sure of it."
I blinked.
"See you next summer, and, I guess, bye for now."
"Bye," I said, confused by her statement. Her school? What school? But I didn't ask, because she hurriedly walked past me towards her house.
Just like the beginning of summer, we went our separate ways. But this time, when I turned around to look at her again, she had disappeared.