Inhale

4.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." - Oscar Wilde.

The lounge, unfortunately, was far busier than I had imagined. It made sense - most of the students were also members of our history class, though there were a few I knew were not. Abraham lounged in an armchair that appeared petite compared to his long legs. He was facing, no, looking, in our direction, dark eyes flitting between our group. Searching...for Ellie.

"God," she muttered under her breath. Her hair fell into her face, covering her eyes. She didn't move it. There was no desire to see who was in her peripherals. "He makes my skin crawl."

"Who?" Selene asked. Mrs Griffin had given her a starting pack before I got there. The small timetable was opened up, freed from Selene's precise folding, in her palms.  She picked her head up slowly, as though just waking from deep sleep. Her eyes caught mine and followed my gaze. "Oh. Abraham."

"You know Abe?" I turned back to Selene, a step behind us.

Ellie groaned. "Oh, Jay, please don't call him that. It's awful." She was still staring at her camera, pretending to fiddle with it.

"Only from what my brother tells me. Which is plenty. Remus struggles to reign it in." Selene intercepted. "He came for dinner once. You know, what with his mother being plastered in the news." She waved a hand as if this information was inconsequential. Ellie twitched imperceptibly beneath her golden veil.

As though aware of our topic of conversation, Abraham folded back in on himself, guarded by the sides of his chair. Opposite him, Kaspar Kahan gave him an irritated but satisfied look, before snatching a paper from a smaller, more delicate looking boy. Toby Price. The pair eyed each other for a fleeting moment, so brief I might've missed it if I blinked. Then, Kaspar's face shuttered closed once more, staring at something in the paper.

"Well...at least they're reading my paper." Ellie said, suddenly. I wasn't convinced by her  optimism. A fine decision on my part as it was wiped clean off her face by an approaching figure.

Abraham wasn't bad-looking, but had a peculiar disposition which caused him to fiddle and loiter. This, in combination with his height, made it difficult to speak to him without feeling preyed upon. Despite his parents' consistent efforts to buckle him down into even the shadow of an acceptable student, no such success was found. He appeared in Newspapers and broadcasts beside his father, a surgeon, and his mother, a lawyer, where he was interviewed on the same three topics every time. His wealth (extensive), his future ('promising'), and then a series of questions regarding his personal life that are really too inappropriate to ask a sixteen-year-old.

He didn't mind. In fact, Abraham took to broadcasting his interviews to anyone who would listen. To those who didn't listen, too. The attention clearly fed whatever gaping hole had been left in his social awareness. It didn't matter to him that the woman sitting across from him was almost in her thirties, or that her foot kept brushing his ankle, or that she called him 'handsome'. It was enough to be on everybody's screens. Perhaps he even liked it. 

Somewhere within this, he had noticed Ellie. Or rather, he had gained the confidence to notice her publicly. It was almost imperceptible, at first. He would turn up to his practice on time if Ellie was there to watch Josiah. He would answer a question she had asked the teacher before someone else could. Then he began turning up outside her classrooms, 'looking for someone'. It became all too simple to spot him.

"I don't mind," Ellie had said. "He's not doing any harm...it's just odd."

"Well, I mind." Josiah had taken Abraham's interest in his then girlfriend as a personal assault on his character. "Someone should tell the prat that he's not actually famous. His parents have money and some flashy job titles. That's it."