Inevitable

Tea was unaccountably relieved when she got her period. She knew she couldn't possibly be pregnant, but she found, when she felt the twinge across her belly and felt the wetness in her panties, that she subconsciously had been worried about it. As she scrubbed out her underwear, she thought about that Dear Abby letter about the girl who got pregnant because sperm went through her underwear. She tried to remember if she had felt any moisture seeping through Kaiba's pants, and the precise location of his crotch when he ejaculated—Was it on her hip? Her belly button? Or was it in the exact right place to soak through layers of cloth and swim into her body?

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets again until the thought of it passed. It had never happened, anyway, and here she was, bleeding. She obviously had nothing to worry about.

It was Thursday, dance team day. She had an hour to kill after school before rehearsal started, which she usually spent studying in the library or practicing in the studio. She decided to split the time. It should take only a half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes, to finish the rough draft of her paper about the Celtic goddesses.

She carried her book bag up to the library and settled in on an armchair to glance through the rough draft. As she read it, she realized that she hadn't mentioned if Brigid had any children or not. She didn't know how she missed that.

She went to the mythology section. She knew it well enough, even before she had to do this project. She liked reading about the Celts and the Ancient Greeks and India, but her absolute favorite, of course, was Egypt.

She ran her finger along the spines of the books, counting one, two, three, four, five, six, and pinched a volume free from the row. She laid the book on top of another row. She had time.

She pulled another book from the shelf. The book fell open in her hands, an eager lover, to a full color picture of a sunset over the Nile. The river wound into the distance. The sun blazed maroon, a drowsy phoenix flaring its feathers across the sky.

Tea could stare at the picture for hours. She had checked it out once and had kept it until it was a month overdue. Since then, she was too embarrassed to re-check it. Instead, she looked at it whenever she could, and dreamed. She would sail down the Nile with Yami one day. She wanted it so badly she ached.

She felt something brush by behind her. Her hair was lifted gently, and then fell back onto her shoulders.

Tea tensed and froze, her skin painfully tight with gooseflesh. She whipped around to see the tails of a trench coat just before they disappeared into the labyrinth of shelves. She stood still for a minute, and counted to thirty, then sixty, feeling like the world around her was falling away and leaving her to hover on a razor's edge. Nobody came at her on either side.

She grabbed her book on Celtic mythology and headed toward the check out counter, ducking quickly from shelf to shelf and scanning the open study area before walking out into it. There was nobody there. At least, there was nobody who was dangerous.

She practically darted toward the counter. Miho, the student librarian, was manning the check out. She smiled when she saw Tea.

"In a hurry?" She asked.

"Yeah," Tea said, smiling back, "Gotta get to practice." She had to force herself to not fidget. He was hiding somewhere. She knew it. She felt it. Her nervous system was telling her to run.

"I know how you feel," sighed Miho. "I'm off in two minutes, and I'm just in overdrive, but the clock is so slow."

"It sure is," said Tea, and she meant it. If Miho got out of work in five minutes, then that meant that Mrs. Delisi wouldn't be in the studio for another twenty. And when Miho left, Mrs. Peckham, the regular librarian, would head back into her office, which was practically a vault, and the library would be pretty much deserted…

"Well," said Tea, her voice sounding atrociously, blatantly forced in its cheerfulness, "I'd better go. I'm going to go practice my routine. It needs some work."

"I'm sure it's beautiful, Tea, but I'll see you later."

"Okay. See you."

This is stupid, Tea thought as she walked down the hallway toward the studio. Nobody is following you, she said to herself. Nobody would want to follow you. It's not like you're pretty or anything, so don't flatter yourself. You've got nothing to be afraid of. He's probably not even still in the building. But it doesn't even matter because it wasn't real. You imagined it.

Still, she found herself lingering in front of the floor to ceiling windows in the main hallway. All too soon she had to leave the guardianship of the sunshine, and go down a dark, narrow hallway and down a dark, narrow staircase.

She checked her watch. She had too much time before Mrs. Delisi got to the studio. Then she looked up and saw her salvation. It was the girls' bathroom.

The girls' bathroom would be her oasis. She would just duck in, hide in a stall, and take her time changing into her shorts and t-shirt. She might even find a clean spot on the floor and work on her rough draft. This was the most private girls' bathroom in the school. Yugi, Tristan, and Joey didn't even know about its existence until she told them about it at the beginning of the year, and they were all sophomores.

The bathroom had just two stalls and two sinks. Tea pulled out her shorts and t-shirt, breathing a sigh of relief. She went into one of the stalls and changed. Except for the rustling of her falling skirt, and the whispers of her baggy shorts and loose t-shirt as she pulled them on, the bathroom was a cloister. The stall felt as safe as a bunker. And yet…

And yet, when she opened the stall door and saw Kaiba staring down at her, the situation seemed so inevitable. Of course he would be standing there, of course.

She felt like she had been a fool to even try avoiding it.