Saturday was the first day of kitchen duties, with a few randomly selected students from all years asked to wash the dishes left from the ball the previous night. Skipping was not treated lightly, unless there was a serious reason to, in which case one would be reallocated to another day. That day Svea was on duty. Despite the clamor of the kitchen, her mind kept running back to last night. She was mindlessly washing the dishes, paying little attention to what she was doing, so she almost knocked over with her elbow a glass left dangerously close to the edge. Before she could even wake up from her daydreaming, someone bent over and caught it.
“Wow, you have fast reflexes!”
The guy got up and winked at her. It was Tyler. The last person she wanted to see, but she couldn’t let him know that. He introduced himself and she mentioned they had met before, which might have been a mistake, but luckily he thought she was referring to that first dinner.
“What did you think of the ball last night?”
No matter what, she couldn’t look panicked.
“It was fine, yeah. How was your night?”
“Surprisingly, I don’t remember anything. The past few days are all a blur, the only thing I do know is that I woke up in the middle of the forest. My roommate was the one who found me.”
“How did that happen?” There was genuine curiosity laced in her voice when she asked, though perhaps not for the right reason.
“The odd part is, I really don’t know. But don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
She’d rather he didn’t.
“So what are you doing here then? You should be resting.”
“My brother suggested I act as if everything was normal so that we don’t panic the masses. Plus, I’m sure there is a totally logic explanation for all of this. We just haven’t figured it out yet, but Kyle assures me that we will. No matter what.”
She went back to washing the dishes with a half-hearted “Of course”, but she noticed he was still lingering. After a minute of fidgeting, he finally spoke.
“Hey, so…would you like to hang out at the library later this afternoon? With all my temporary amnesia I could use some catching up and I figured you could help me.”
She didn’t want to risk bringing back his memories, although she was relatively sure they were gone for good, but also, she felt like she couldn’t say no. He truly seemed a nice guy and maybe Friday night they just started things on the wrong foot.
“Ok.”
***
Not many people were in the library later that day, which Svea supposed granted Tyler the freedom to put his arm on the back of her chair and whisper close to her ear without much fear of attracting curious stares. Normally she would have enjoyed the innocent flirting, but she was feeling anxious. She still tried to reciprocate by laughing at his jokes and leaning towards him when doing so.
They weren’t really focused on studying, so Svea spotted Jabari almost immediately among the bookshelves. He was clearly trying to beckon her without being obvious. Luckily, Tyler was too busy staring at her, otherwise he would have comically failed. She excused herself saying she remembered about a book she wanted to read and went further into the library, Jabari on her tail, where she figured they would be harder to spot.
“I did some research and I think I found a possible explanation for what happened yesterday. It might seem ridiculous, but…”
He was holding a book about mythological and folklore creatures and opened it to show her a certain page.
“Everything checks,” he went on after giving her enough time to read, “except…”
“Am I interrupting something?”
They both jumped apart when they heard Tyler. She should have guessed that he’d come to check on her at the worst time possible.
“No, we just both wanted the same book.” The book in question, as ridiculous as it sounded, may have held the answers to everything.
“Yeah, that’s it. Here, you can take it.” He tried to hand Svea the book but she shook her head slightly. It would be pretty difficult to explain why exactly she wanted a book on the supernatural when her and Tyler were previously discussing History.
“Oh, then I’ll take it and…”
“And you can come by later and drop it off?”
Their discussion was far from done anyway. He left with a flustered wave to both her and Tyler. She allowed herself ten seconds to compose herself before turning around and facing Tyler. She was already planning on how to excuse herself as soon as possible because she didn’t know how she would be able to keep acting nonchalant and not get distracted by the fact that she may possibly be a skogsrå.
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