As quickly as I saw him, he was gone. It was like a flash, a sudden urge to itch a cut once the skin began to heal itself. I had that urge, desperately. I couldn't place it, couldn't tell you his name or his history. I couldn't tell you his shoe size, his height and weight, or his hometown. He was a ghost that electrocuted my insides, reminding me that he wasn't as much of a stranger as my brain was trying to convince me of.
I know it's impossible to escape your past and I know that it's irresponsible and stupid quite frankly to believe you ever could. I know the likelihood of your past hauntings coming back in dreams and hallucinations, oh my roommates can attest to that. My boyfriend will explain the amounts of nightmares and terrors that find me during the darkest hours of the day, the amount of scratch marks I've put into wooden bed frames, the cuts I wake up with or the nights he doesn't sleep because he's too busy holding my hands to my side and trying to wake me up.
Or, the times he's followed me sleepwalking through the Gallagher Grounds looking, searching, even digging for something that doesn't exist to the naked eye. He and my roommates have both said that I've tried digging up things in the ground that weren't there, that I was either looking for something or trying to bury something else. That maybe I thought I could dig my way to the truth, but each time I came back dirty and carried back inside by my boyfriend.
Something about that face ignited my need to run, the creepy feeling I learned to ignore climbing up and down my spine, the whispers in my ears I tried so hard to tune out the past year or so.
"S'cuse me," I muttered, my head feeling heavy all of a sudden as the cheap vodka began to swim with my thoughts. "I'll be right back, bathrooms just down the hall." I informed Zach over the pounding music and beats, before doing what I do best and disappearing into the crowd of freshmen around us.
I made my way out of the dorm room and down the long winding corridor, memorizing the dated carpeting and chipped wall paint that lined the hall. Each door had a little shape on it with the name of each roommate, and since this was the boy's dorm, each shape was either a football or a soccer ball, or guitars and music notes. Real creative.
It wasn't that Georgetown was ugly, not by far, or not well kept. It was just...well, it was a dorm hall. The smell in the air was heavy of booze and fruity cocktail mixers, alongwith the typical stench of any male locker room. The halls were muggy, probably from the sweaty residents but also the slightly leaking roof. The mixture was nauseating to say the least, but Madame Dabney taught us young to not let that deter ourselves from any of the situation at hand. So, I did my best to power through the stench hanging in the air.
A year ago, Georgetown was my way out. It was a school I was going to attend anonymously, no classmates following me, just me and my boyfriend trying to excel our educational paths. A day ago, Georgetown felt safe to me. I had Solomon here, I had my best friends and best protectors, I had my boyfriend. I had myself, feeling like I could start over and try to enjoy the college experience after my high school experience was robbed from me so quickly and without a second thought. Ten minutes ago, it felt like another daunting reminder that your past will only stay hidden for so long.
I pressed against a doorframe as I met the end of the hallway, allowing a group of girls my age and dressed way better than me, to pass in giggles and drunken footsteps. Before I removed myself, I could catch the sound of faint arguing. Quietly, I moved closer approaching the noise until I was at the men's bathroom door. I leaned my ear against the wooden door after making sure no one else was coming.
"Pourquoi ne pouvons-nous pas le faire maintenant?" Why can't we do it now?
"Faire quoi maintenant?" Do what now?
"ne jouez pas stupide avec moi. vous savez de quoi je parle." Don't play stupid with me, you know what I am talking about.
A pause of silence.
"Preveč je varovana, preveč ljudi je z njo." She's too guarded, too many people with her.
My brain wasn't surprised for a second when French turned to Slovenian. Any good spy knows to keep any possible enemies on their toes, which includes listening ears...much like mine.
"Vedeti moramo, kaj se je zgodilo v Parizu." We need to know what happened in Paris.
"Sploh ne ve." She doesn't even know.
"Spomnila se bo, ko jo bomo pripeljali tja." She'll remember once we bring her there.
"Ne, ne bom tvegal vsega za to misijo. Upoštevamo pravila, delamo po navodilih. Ko bo čas, bomo zgrabili. Za zdaj nisva ležala. Morda se boste počutili dobro tvegati svoje življenje, ampak jaz moram skrbeti za svojo družino." No, I won't risk everything for this mission. We follow the rules, we do as instructed. When the time comes, we will make the grab. For now, we lay low. You may feel fine risking your life, but I have a family to worry about.
That was all I needed to hear before I ducked behind another corridor, and knelt in waiting. I counted four minutes and twelve seconds exactly before the couple left the males restroom and headed to the fire exit door across the way. It was the couple Bex and I saw, the couple I didn't recognize. But the man in the party, him I did recognize.
I let go of the breath I didn't realize I was holding, and counted to forty two before I began making my way back to where the loud music was booming from the dorm room. When I re-entered, the party was in major swing. Almost everyone was on the makeshift dance floor Zach and I instigated, and I spotted my group of friends pretty quickly. They were in the center of the crowd, hands high and bodies shaking, singing along to the words none of us knew before. They looked happy, laughing and giggling and playing around. They looked free, they looked like a seventeen year old should. So, I did as any other seventeen year old girl would. I shook out my hair, straightened my outfit and worked my way back to them, and I ignored the seventeen year old well trained spy in me telling me to get the fuck out of this dorm hall.
For one more night, I'd be normal.