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There are dark eyes that don't move off me when mine find them. One beat. Then two. It’s definitely long enough to be a choice. He wants me to know I see him watching me.

Neither of us moves.

Then the guy beside him says something at his shoulder, and the moment disappears. He turns away, and the feeling is gone, it feels like a door is closing.

"Miles," Juno says.

I nod, not sure what else to say to that, but I’ve made a mental note that Miles is the one who wears glasses.

I take a sip of my coffee and get back to the conversation, which I’m happy has changed from the Crawford family. Even though I wouldn’t mind him looking at me again, I’m sure he would make my college life fun.

Three

Miles

Professor Harding has been talking for forty minutes about something I stopped caring about at minute three. I know this because I've been watching the clock on my laptop with the same detached interest I’ve given this class.

I already know more than the professor, because he’s not teaching me anything new. Cain drilled us with more knowledge about the world and the things that matter than anyone can teach us in class. Computers is what I know, computer science and programming is something I learnt to do a very long time ago, but I have to come to college and there wasn’t any other subject I really wanted to do.

The lecture hall is one of the old ones. High ceilings, wooden seats that were designed by someone who had clearly never sat on one, and two hundred students are pretending to pay attention.

I'm not pretending. I’m not listening, and not trying, but then you have some students in here who are tapping on their laptop every word the professor is saying and have a recorder just in case they miss something. They’re the ones I like messing with, hacking into their computers to fuck things up; that’s my entertainment while in a boring class.

My laptop is open. It’s been open since we sat down; I need to make sure the professor knows I’m paying attention.

Beside me, Mason has three windows running: his notes, a sports score he keeps checking, and a group chat that hasn't stopped moving since nine a.m. He types something into it one-handed, the other hand propping up his chin. And there’s my entertainment for the day. I quickly tap on the keys of my laptop and hack into Mason’s. He's way too lazy to get good protection on his laptop, and I start typing the message for him.

I genuinely cannot stop thinking about my feelings and how valid they are.

I watch him send it before he realizes, and I start laughing, which makes him look at the screen.

He snaps his head toward me. "Miles!”

I'm already back on my own screen, so he can’t see anything.

"Miles. What did you…?" He grabs his laptop, reads it back, makes a sound which I’m sure is his way of calling me an asshole. The group chat erupts. I can see it from here, the replies are stacking up faster than he can process them. "I'm going to actually…"

"Pay attention," I say. "Harding's going to ask you something."

"You don't know that," Mason snaps, which I knew he would. The man loses his temper way too quickly.

Professor Harding looks up from his notes and points his pen directly at Mason. Mason closes his eyes for exactly one second.

I look back at my screen. The sports scores tab is gone; I moved it while he was distracted and replaced it with a page on the migratory patterns of the Arctic Tern, which I feel is considerably more educational. His notes document I've renamed My Diary, Private, Do Not Read. It'll sit like that in his files for weeks before he notices.

He really needs to pay attention to what's happening around him. The only thing he cares about is hurting someone, and not the small details around him.

I tab over to the university portal. I'm not sure when I decided to do this. Somewhere between Grounds this morning and now, the decision made itself the way most of mine do, without thinking, which normally gets me in trouble.

The girl with a camera, the girl I saw on my phone the other day when I was looking into the students for Mason.

For two seconds, she held my eyes before I looked away. Most people don't do that. Most people find somewhere else to be when I look at them directly. They get a sudden interest in the middle distance, their coffee, or their phone. It's a pattern I stopped noticing years ago because patterns stop being interesting once they're reliable.

She didn't look away. That fascinates me more than anything.

I navigate into the backend of the university portal; their system is embarrassing and easy to hack if you know what you’re doing.

I look her up.