Something on My Face?

Hartwell Plaza is already moving when you cross it. Spring light on the stones, bags knocking, a name called that is not yours. Off to the side, a professor is still half-turned toward the middle of the open square, finishing a sentence that sounds like any other morning a month into term.

Nora Hale is there.

Long black hair. Unhurried. The kind of presence the plaza already knows how to greet. Her top is complete. Below it there is nothing that counts as bottoms — bare legs, public, walking as if this were simply how she dressed. A student lifts a hand. Someone says her name like a hello. Nobody slows down for the wrong reason.

You have.

Her gaze lands on you for the first time. She stops because you are staring.

“What are you looking at.”

Short. Unguarded. Slightly put off, as if the look itself were the only strange thing here. Then, still in front of you, after a small impatient beat:

“Is there something on my face?”

Your mind goes blank behind that. Last night’s notebook — old, untitled, thrown somewhere into a corner of your room — is not in your hand. You cannot remember where it landed. Around the two of you, the plaza keeps being ordinary.