Time: Tuesday evening
Scenario: A girl gets out of her seat, leaving all her belongings behind scattered across the desk. A couple of hours pass, and she doesn’t return. Another girl spots the seat from afar. Thinking the seat is free, she walks over, but once she gets close enough, she realizes it isn’t. She promptly lets out a long sigh.
Imagined Backstory: Martha is livid. She didn’t trek from her apartment to the library and down two flights of stairs only to find zero empty seats in her favorite studying spot: B-level. She doesn’t deserve this, she tells herself. She’s a good, hard-working person who needs to do well on her physics exam.
In fact, this is Martha’s third failed attempt in two hours to find an open seat in this part of B-level. A handful of people have temporarily deserted their desks, leaving their personal belongings behind, and at this point, Martha feels as if they are mocking her. She knows that most of these people aren’t in the bathroom. No, most of them aren’t even in the library, but they’ve left their belongings behind just to save their seat. She knows the trick well and she despises it.
She’s been paying especially close attention to one particular seat, the third one in a line of desks facing the stairwell. In two hours, no item on the discolored wooden desk has moved, not even by an inch. A notebook still remains, placed partially on top of an iPad, while the black backpack leans against the right leg of the table.
She imagines reaching for the iPad and shoving it into her own backpack. She imagines throwing the notebook into the owner’s backpack and hiding that backpack between random stacks of books. It would teach them a lesson, but Martha had long ended her days in that business.
Once seen as the Robin Hood of the library, she had stolen from the thoughtless and given to the deserving rule followers on campus. However, the hobby had quickly turned into an addiction that consumed her life.
She began by skipping a couple of meals and classes before she ended up missing them altogether. After a close run-in with security from which she narrowly escaped unscathed, she had decided to retire from the business. She promised herself she would never steal again.
Her fingers twitch, moving unconsciously towards the iPad, so she curls her hand into a fist and draws it back into her body. She knows that she shouldn’t even think about it, but she can’t help it. After all, people who leave their belongings carelessly in public places are just asking for them to get stolen.
She tells herself she would be doing the school and her fellow classmates a service, only taking steps to preserve justice. Before she knows it, she’s unfurling her fingers and reaching out again, her eyes locked onto the desk in front of her. Then she’s taking, one, two, three steps forward. Her heart picks up, thudding against her chest.
The zipping sound of a jacket claws through the air. Martha halts inches away from the desk. She clamps her arm to her side and twists her head towards the source of the noise only to find narrowed brown eyes looking at her. The owner of the eyes is a short, brown-haired girl. The girl swings her backpack across her shoulders, eyes finally breaking away from Martha’s, but Martha still watches her closely. Martha watches the girl push her seat into the desk, stride down the row and open the door, disappearing into the stairwell.
When Martha looks down again, the view of the girl’s seat, now completely free for the taking, greets her. It’s completely and utterly gorgeous, she thinks to herself. She lowers herself into the chair, gently resting her back against the worn out cushions she has come to love.
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