Cat

Every other table is talking—except for this one. This table is totally silent. I guess I’m with the misfit group again. Honestly, I don’t mind. It's easier to observe everyone else when you're not talking to your table mates.

Cat sits to my left. She has a black and white bag with a combination of leopard spots and tiger stripes on it. She always keeps that bag on her desk, so she can surreptitiously reach inside it and send text messages or check the time during class. Some teachers don’t fall for that trick, and make everyone keep their bags on the floor, but Econ Teacher is a little scatterbrained most of the time, and doesn’t bother looking towards the back.

So Cat goes through the routine every day. Every ten minutes or so, reaches into her bag, checks the time, then sighs, removes her hand, and uses it to rest her head, gazing up sideways at the projector.

She wears a dark tank top, with a similarly dark jacket, the sleeves rolled back to her elbows. Her hair is dyed dark red, and is swept up in a high loose ponytail, with a few tiny sharp strands hanging straight down against her pale face. She has a pink bandana, which she’s rolled up and tied around her head, stretching across the top of her head and knotting right under the dark-red clump that is her ponytail.

She makes sarcastic remarks, almost always. Muttering in a low, bored voice, always keeping her eyes down. It isn’t until we really get into a class discussion you really notice her eyes. She looks up and maintains eye contact, hardly even blinking. It’s weird. Her eyes are silvery—a strong contrast to her dark red hair. They’re small, but they stand out from her face, startling, penetrating. Like a cat's.

And her eyeliner—It’s dark, and not very thick, but from this close I can see it. She’s been very careful with it, making it curve up slightly just at the edges. It makes her look mysterious. And she is.

She’s a doodler. I mean, I’ve never seen her doodle in class, but once, she pulled a couple of sheets of paper from her binder, and there they were—drawings so intricate and detailed that it surprised me. Done in black ink, and shaped with bold, thick lines. I didn’t get a close look at one, but the other was a ship, being tossed sideways by the sea—You could practically see the motion on the page. With a long, thin banner, sweeping, rippling through the air, bearing the words in tiny lettering: Stay Strong. Be Strong.

I wanted to get a better look, but she flipped them over and put them away almost immediately.