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Chapter Text

Cairo hated wednesdays. And not only because as a child she was compared to the world-famous girl with two braids. It wasn't even that it was one of the busiest days of the week at the university, but that, as an assistant to a literature professor, she always had to do his work on wednesdays. The damn professor had a disgusting habit of getting drunk on weekends. So, in addition to the usual weekend days, he had one day a week when he had no classes with students on his schedule - tuesday. As a result, the old madman, suffering from a hangover, always threw more homework at his protégé on wednesdays. And considering that Cairo was an excellent student and in her final year, her schedule was much freer than that of other students. In the end, she never had any problems with timing, and the habit of doing many things in advance made her life at the university much easier. She could have even graduated a couple of years earlier, having passed all the necessary exams as an external student, but there was an important "but": she liked the atmosphere of the university and did not want to return prematurely to her hopeless little town on the outskirts of a neighboring state. In addition, she did not see herself carrying on the family business in the field of law, like her parents, so she delayed the decision to leave the walls of the educational institution as long as she could. She even found some extra classes and a part-time job, including as a professor's assistant.

But every wednesday she regretted her decision. Almost.

"Sophomores today?" Professor Bennington's hoarse voice once again scratched her ears with an unpleasant sound, and Cairo forced herself not to flinch, pulling a meaningless smile onto her face. What a pathetic man, vegetating at the bottom of his own life's ditch, without aspirations or a core. She had seen many like him, and over time she had even grown tired of breaking them, like useless old tin soldier figures that reeked of the old revolution. The dissertation, thanks to which this old alcoholic still occupied his place in the professor's chair, had impressed her at first, and she even thought that all his feigned ignorance and indifference was a sign of great intelligence, cleverly disguised as a disregard for social norms... But once again she was unpleasantly mistaken.

"Yes, Professor," she said almost kindly, taking a pile of prepared printouts from his desk. Today she had been assigned several classes as an assistant again. It was basically nothing complicated, but she didn't like working with students, even though all she had to do was give them an assignment, hand out the printouts, let them study on their own for an hour and a half, then collect the previous ones and bring them back to the professor's office. The difficulty was that she had to sit in the same room with the students for the entire hour and a half, enduring them and a mountain of idiotic questions.

She slowly adjusted her backpack on her shoulder, which contained her laptop as well as a few books of literature for free analysis, which she planned to do in the library after she was done with the students. Fortunately, her position as junior librarian allowed her to use absolutely everything that was there. Including the utility room, where the Wi-Fi worked relatively well and which almost completely hid her from the eyes of the noisy students, while allowing her to keep an eye on the common room. Frankly, there was no need to help the professor in this case, and it was her mistake to have agreed to such an offer without getting to know him first. But... he was on the committee that would accept her thesis next semester.

"Christmas is coming soon... be gentle with them," the professor grinned wryly, scratching at the unkempt stubble on his neck and glancing sideways at the drawer of his desk with inflamed eyes. Cairo knew he was waiting for her to leave so he could finally get his supposedly secret bottle of alcohol out. Sweet wrinkled her nose without noticing. Someday she would slip poison or laxative into that flask for him.

"I can't promise that," she smiled softly and turned on the spot. A light gray sweater was thrown over her shoulders, covered by a striped shirt with rolled-up sleeves, a dark classic skirt, light knee socks, and neat shoes made her look like a typical Oxford student that the capital's magazines loved to draw as an image. Cairo liked to conform to visual stereotypes. Many people were so short-sighted that her appearance was enough to quickly form an associative series in their minds, forcing them to deceive themselves completely independently. Cairo did not interfere with their delusions. After all, it was convenient. It also allowed her to be virtually faceless and blend into the crowd of students without any extra effort.

Mr. Bennington himself had only been saved by the fact that, unlike other professors who had been repeatedly caught looking dirty in her direction, he didn't give a damn about her as a woman. Oddly enough, the old alcoholic was a model family man and loved his wife and children madly. It was a profitable symbiosis. He didn't touch Cairo and she didn't touch him. And thanks to the professor's patronage, the other teachers preferred to keep their dirty thoughts to themselves, for fear of Professor Bennington's exaggerated sense of guardianship, who often tried to project the image of his eldest daughter onto the student. Which Cairo openly took advantage of... But that's not the point.

She nodded to the professor and headed for the lecture hall, wiping the pleasant smile from her face and frowning slightly as she went. The necessary information about which classroom to go to and who was supposed to be there today quickly popped into her head. She paused at the window in the hallway, realizing that the schedule had recently been moved due to another professor's illness, so something might have changed. Fishing her cell phone out of the side pocket of her backpack, the girl quickly checked the schedule and discovered the unpleasant fact that there had indeed been a postponement. And it turned out that the second year class had been moved to the period after the upcoming one, and in their place was a completely different group. Also second year, but with a completely different major, although their literature program was the same. Cairo's dark eyebrows furrowed, and a second later she couldn't hold back a crooked grin.

Oh, she knew this group and these students. The problem was, they didn't know her yet. As it happened, this group had been taught by a different teacher last year, and they had only recently arrived at Mr. Bennington's, and their class was always the last one on wednesdays. By then, the professor had usually recovered and was on his way to class, so Sweet had never crossed paths with them before.

But Cairo knew this group. Or rather, she remembered some of them very well. Those same bad girls from the soccer team who were always making noise in the library, leaving empty coffee and soda cups under the tables when they left... And most importantly, some of them were on her personal blacklist simply because they had the audacity to write some nonsense and draw little doodles on tables and in the margins of books. This was the kind of thing Sweet hated the most. The smile on her lips grew harder and more crooked. Great. Why not finally meet in person? For a moment, her already dark eyes flashed with a very bad gleam. At the same time, she would finally find out who exactly was the main pest in this noisy herd of empty-headed soccer players.

CC was not the type of person to dwell on trivialities like the trash on her desk or a crumpled and accidentally forgotten printout on the bench. There were always hundreds of chaotic thoughts in her head, so she often did not care about the circumstances of the outside world. No, she was not in the clouds and could easily concentrate on certain tasks. The problem was that there were always several of these tasks at once. Her active mind simply could not function normally when it became too bored. Therefore, since childhood, she had a habit of having a headphone in her ear, listening to music or a book, doing something at the same time, and even quietly participating in a conversation with her classmates. The only moments when she was free of all distractions were soccer games, which her mother signed her up for when she was younger because she realized something had to be done about her daughter's hyperactivity. CC appreciated this, even though she threw a tantrum at her parents when she was taken to the gym as a child.

But... She quickly fell in love with soccer. She set her sights not only on the youth team, but on the major leagues in the future, even though her mother was not entirely supportive. However, this issue was resolved when her parents finally realized that their daughter's hobby did not interfere with her studies at all. She was a rare exception to the rules and stereotypes that athletes were not very smart. To be honest, she liked to study. But she tried not to advertise it, as she did with most of her little hobbies.

For example, all the things she had tried during her studies. Many considered her superficial, but again, it was all in her mind. As soon as she realized that this or that activity did not cause her any difficulties, she got bored and tried something new. Some habits and hobbies stayed with her even after she gave them up, but most simply became a checkmark on her "can I do this?" list once she succeeded. So an endless number of hobbies, departments, clubs, and creative activities faded into the past. However, many little habits remained that were simply subconscious. For example, when she was thinking, she would inevitably draw something in the margins of notebooks or books. She was extremely ashamed of the latter, but it had already become a habit, and even carrying a sketchbook with her did not always help.

"Hey, did you hear that the professor often has a assistant on first training sessions morning wednesdays?" Judith's voice next to her distracted her from her thoughts about the upcoming holidays and the gift list she had been thinking about for days. CC blinked and turned to her grinning neighbor, forgetting that she was drawing a small Christmas tree in the margins of the literature homework printout she was supposed to turn in for grading today.

"Assistant? What about the lesson?"

"Oh! What lesson? Then I can just not bother and do nothing for an hour and a half," May yawned, sitting on the other side of the girls. She always had a hell of a time waking up in the morning. "Listen, I think I'm going to take a nap. Will you cover for me?"

"Deal! You get me a soda and a candy bar," another girl named Grace winked at her from the seat in front of her. They were all on the soccer team and always tried to stick together during practice, taking roughly the same seats and sit together. Of course, this sometimes got them into trouble, but it had also saved them many times. CC loved these noisy girls because the mutual support among the team members was on a whole different level compared to her classmates. Plus, most of them shared Walker's own aspirations for a future in sports. It made them almost like sisters, leaving a pleasant aftertaste of unity somewhere deep inside.

"I hear the assistant is a senior girl," Judith tapped her chin thoughtfully. Her short, curly hair stuck out in all directions today, making her look like a weird version of a poodle and hiding her mischievous green eyes.

"Oh, girl! Jesus Christ, thank you for not being some skinny, glasses guy!" Grace, sitting in front of them, clasped her hands dramatically in prayer. The young African-American woman with a long ponytail of braids smiled contentedly.

"Ugh, Grace," May wrinkled her nose. "I bet she's straight. Senior literature major, and assistant to the crippled Bennington. Probably a little gray, scared nerd."

"I bet she wears big thick glasses!" Judith snapped her fingers, catching on. "And she looks like Bluestocking."

"Pfft... Oh, what are you saying..." CC grinned, squinting her blue eyes with laughter, trying to get the quickly forming image of a gray, nondescript little hunchbacked girl in stretched clothes and huge glasses out of her head.

"Good morning, students," the door opened, and the one who had shattered the fleeting, comical image of the professor's assistant in CC's head walked in with a confident stride. She stared wide-eyed at the short girl who confidently walked over to the teacher's desk and, in the silence that followed, noisily placed a stack of printouts on it.

"Shit," Judith said in shock, her eyes widening as she stared at the newcomer as she turned in their direction, a smile that didn't bode well appearing on her lips. "It's her... the library witch!"

"My name is Cairo Sweet, I am Professor Bennington's assistant, and I am also teaching today's class. I hate to admit it, but you will need to cooperate with me today. Why?" She narrowed her eyes, and her dark eyes quickly found the faces of the girls from the soccer team in the crowd of surprised students, who seemed to have turned slightly pale as they recognized her as the junior librarian who had already made the entire company feel like real pigs more than once with her scathing remarks when she reprimanded them for the mess in the library. Shame, anger, disappointment in themselves - these were the very emotions that had caused the brave part of the football team to leave the library with their tails between their legs more than once. Judith wanted to get back at her, Grace was almost apathetic, May was openly afraid of her, and CC...

Walker swallowed slowly and hard, clutching her bag involuntarily, her fingers frantically searching for the sketchbook that no one knew was inside. She felt a chill and a cold shiver run down her spine.

Cairo, damn her mother, Sweet...

Oh yes, CC knew exactly who it was. And so, despite the fact that this short brunette had almost frightened her and made her feel ashamed of herself from the very beginning, she stubbornly returned to the library with the others every time it was necessary, hiding behind any reasons other than the real ones. Simply because she was still scared to death to go there alone. Even though her own legs often dragged her to the library against her will.

"Because it's in your best interest to make sure this list doesn't include additional tasks for all of you for the upcoming holidays. Which means we'd better cooperate, don't you think?" Sweet gently lifted the professor's workbook and unobtrusively showed it to the silent students, who eyed her like a strange animal. She smiled softly, but the smile sent chills down Walker's arms and made her throat feel dry. She could clearly see the assistant's dark eyes meeting hers. And she didn't see a shadow of sympathy in them, but something that made the air in her lungs seem to run out all at once.

A collective, tense exhale and groan went through the lecture hall from those who thought that lecturing with an assistant would be easy.

"Walker..." May, who was actually almost a head taller than CC, whispered softly, almost curling into a ball. "We're in ass..."

CC twitched her lip awkwardly, not knowing how to react to those words. She had no idea how to act in a situation like this. And let's face it, she was in an absolute panic, barely holding herself together and feeling like her spine was frozen, completely frozen.

And the thing was, for a long time, since the beginning of this year, CC had been absolutely sure, to the point of trembling in her knees, that the damn "Library Witch," as she called her, was the devil in sheep's clothing. Otherwise, she could not even explain the fact that girl had literally captured all of her attention from the moment they first met, to the point where Walker could not get a word out in her presence, or even move properly, completely absorbed by the gaze of dark brown eyes that seemed to take her apart piece by piece each time. As if dissecting, taking her apart into organs and components. Searching for something in her that was at least worthy of interest. And no soft smile could save her from that feeling.

And... No one believed her when she talked about it. No one who knew Cairo personally, with whom she had managed to cross paths during these six months of painstaking information gathering, which categorically occupied her thoughts, literally said a bad or questionable word about her. Everyone thought that Cairo was a smart and harmless girl who behaved quite well. And only CC seemed to see that Сairo Sweet was rather something dangerous and at the same time terribly attention-getting...

"She's like a fucking spider," Judith, sitting next to her, winced, wrinkling her nose. "You don't know whether to kill it or run away."

CC blinked. Spider... Right. That fit. Walker slowly tilted her head slightly and looked away. That was a damn good comparison. And it fit this girl so perfectly.

Was it fear?

Сairo narrowed her eyes and smiled as she accepted the printouts of the previous lesson's homework from the students at the end of the lecture. She enjoyed the way some of the students' eyes clearly reflected caution, uncertainty, and doubt in her direction. It was much more interesting than the greedy gazes of some of the specimens that devoured her figure and focused on her lips. Those like they were uninteresting, for there were many of them. She chuckled softly to herself, and her smile did not falter even when the girl who had handed her the printout with trembling fingers hurried out of the hall. Сairo cast an indifferent glance after her.

Another one. She glanced at the timesheet and mentally noted down the names. All of them. All that remained was to find out who exactly was the pest in this bunch of girls.

"What's so funny, Miss Assistant?" the student almost spat through clenched teeth, almost throwing her assignment sheet on the table in front of Cairo. Sweet's dark eyebrow rose slightly, and her smile became slightly strained. She looked at the tall, curly-haired girl who clearly did not like her. Cairo smiled sweetly and shrugged slightly.

"I find it amusing, Miss Nelson, that you consider a trivial display of your own ignorance to be the height of your ego, and you boast of such a pathetic defensive reaction." Her voice was calm and almost sweet, on the edge of audibility. Judith winced in disgust and turned away, shoving her hands into the pockets of her sport coat. Again, she had no answer. It was like that every time. The upstart's words baffled her, as did her behavior, which made the student feel downright stupid and dim-witted. And that made her even angrier. Fortunately, she was well aware that if she continued to try to say anything, it would only make the situation worse. And she didn't want to argue with what turned out to be a professor's assistant, let alone a "library witch" who could very well affect her grades for this class. Frowning, she left the auditorium with a sharp step, feeling a very sharp gaze fixed on her back and shuddering as a result.

Letting out a barely audible breath through her nose, she returned her gaze to the newly approaching student, smiled automatically, and accepted the printout from his hands. She found herself thinking that maybe she should consider a career as a teacher in the future, if it would allow her to continue to get on the nerves of everyone she didn't like with an impunity smile. However, she immediately dismissed the idea, considering it too much of a burden for her own future plans.

Three sheets of paper landed on the table in front of her, and she tilted her head to the side in confusion, looking up at the tall afroamerican woman who shyly looked away.

"Do you have multiple personalities? How else can you explain handing in three students' papers at once?" Still, she gently moved the sheets of paper toward her with her fingertips, blinking imperceptibly and glancing toward the door, where a blurry shadow of someone who had cowardly chosen to run away flashed by. Her smile widened slightly and her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Fear not, Ms. Abrams. Your sacrifice was deemed worthy. You may go."

"Th-Thank you," the football player almost stuttered, and quickly retreated to the door.

Сairo's eyes fell on the printouts, and she smiled with satisfaction as she noticed familiar scribbles on one of the submitted sheets, and the mark of a coffee cup on the other. Sweet exhaled slowly, memorizing the names and glancing mischievously at the small Christmas tree drawn in the margins.

"Oh, and tell Miss Walker and Miss Benjamin their trick didn't work. I'll pass on a request to the professor for extra time for them after school," she said in a tone that seemed to mean nothing, no longer looking at the student's back. Grace nodded slowly and quickly left the classroom, feeling shame creep up her spine.

"Does she have eyes in the back of her head?" May muttered quietly, sitting on the floor around the corner in the hallway, eavesdropping on what was going on in the classroom as Grace walked unsteadily out the door. She gave the two silent girls an irritated, disapproving look and frowned.

"Bitches, you set me up!"

"You lost rock-paper-scissors!" May protested, waving her hands indignantly. Behind her, Walker was strangely quiet, nervously biting her lip and fiddling with her bag, as if she had fallen out of reality and was staring into space. Judith waved her hand in front of her face.

"Earth to Walker," she said sarcastically, narrowing her eyes. "If you suggest we go to that damn library again after today, I swear I'll break your finger in a rolling and make it look like an accident. I have no desire to see that bitch again."

"Hey! That's a red card!" CC came to her senses with a jerk, as if emerging from underwater. Her friend's caustic remark seemed to have dumped a bucket of cold water on her head, forcing her to immediately snap back and try to defend herself.

"Screw your cards, Walker. I've had enough," Judith snapped, straightening up and shoving her hands into her pockets. Her expression was grim. "Do what you want, but I'm not setting foot in that damn library again."

"Oddly enough, I agree," Grace sighed, rubbing the back of her head uncomfortably. "If we continue to shine in front of the assistant despite all our failures, sooner or later it will end in conflict. And no one needs that."

"I agree!" May blurted out, obviously having calmed down. "She scares me to death! Damn, I feel sorry for her boyfriend, if she even has one."

"I bet she doesn't," Judith chuckled, her smile slightly sarcastic. "With that personality, the only thing she'd want is some stupid sugar daddy. They like little bitches, you know."

CC frowned. For some reason, Judith's words made her feel extremely uncomfortable. It wasn't even the insults, but the fact that it offended her for some reason. The very thought of someone supposedly close to Cairo irritated her. Walker shook her head thoughtfully. It didn't work at all to imagine someone old, rich and weak next to Sweet. Or someone strong and confident. The picture didn't fit. As if the puzzle was from another set. So wrong, illogical, uncomfortable. She didn't know why she felt this way. But nobody gave her time to think.

"Let's get something to eat," May whined. "The stress has made me hungry."

The girls began to chatter and headed off in a crowd to the local cafeteria. CC followed, joking and even responding. And in her mind, like a movie being rewound over and over again, the frames of today's lesson were still imprinted. To be honest, it made her uncomfortable, simply because she could not get that look of dark brown eyes out of her mind.

"Miss Walker? It's strange to see you here again," the Art Club teacher adjusted her glasses awkwardly. She was always like that. Fragile, a little shy, it seemed like she was about to break. CC smiled awkwardly and pulled her sketchbook over to her, turning the pages quickly out of habit. Her fingers were already covered in small pieces of charcoal.

"Oh, Mrs. Raymond, sorry, I suddenly needed a place to... You know, think, draw," she smiled nervously. Walker had not visited the club for a long time, leaving it in the past, like other hobbies. But today, with an hour left before training, she simply did not know what to do with herself because of the confused and persistent thoughts. So she decided to get away from her friends and be in silence for once, and the art-studio was ideal for that. The studio was the ideal place for her to do this, especially since there was almost no one around at that time, and the other students who came to do art preferred not to bother each other, concentrating on their own business. It used to bother her a little, but now she wanted silence and to draw.

"Oh, I'm so glad you haven't given up drawing," the teacher smiled sweetly, clutching a folder of papers to her chest. "Do you need anything?"

"Oh, no, thank you. I'm fine with charcoal," Walker scratched her cheek with her fingers, confusedly staining it with a black mark without realizing it. The teacher just nodded and went to her desk, politely trying not to interfere, and CC opened the sketchbook page she had unconsciously covered earlier. There was a spider drawn on it. She bit her lip thoughtfully. Something about this whole situation was bothering her. Walker chuckled to herself, smiling slightly crookedly. She was actually very interested in this - like a little unsolved mystery, like a thriller.

Who was Cairo? What motivated her? Why was she so drawn to her? Why her?

CC sighed deeply, brushed away excess charcoal with her eraser, and flipped through a few more pages in reverse order. One of them was a profile of the strange girl, drawn from memory. Walker couldn't draw in the library, but she sometimes sketched from memory later. It gave her mind a break from the endless buzz of thoughts.

She ran her fingertip slowly over the drawing, tracing the features of her cheekbone, and frowned thoughtfully. What could not be denied was that Cairo was damned beautiful, which was not immediately obvious. Behind all the clothes of a model student and teenager, which in fact she had not been for a long time, behind the apparent carelessness of her hair and the lack of makeup, it seemed almost imperceptible how correct her face was, the lines of her jaw and cheekbones, the corners of her eyes. This astonishing clarity seemed to be blurred and only visible from a certain angle and perspective. It was as if the sharp features were lost in the curls at the sides of her face, as well as her neck. Tousled bangs covered her eyes, and an almost constant smile softened the overall impression, like some kind of secret plan.

CC closed her eyes and imagined what would happen if she pulled this hair into a bun, exposing her neck, added some clear lines to emphasize her eyes, changed her clothes to reveal her collarbones and shoulders... Then the image in her mind changed abruptly, and she picked up a pencil. This view, which she had never seen before, became her leitmotif, and she feverishly began to move the tip of the pencil across the paper, trying not to miss a single moment. After almost twenty minutes, she finally exhaled properly, realizing that she had been breathing very shallowly most of the time, trying not to scare away the image in her head with the sound of her own sigh.

And the result made her mouth drop open in surprise.

A completely different girl was looking at her from the sheet of paper, her gaze was contemptuous and cold, her lips were relaxed, there was no trace of a smile on her face, her hair was gathered and pulled up, revealing her cheekbones, jawline and thin neck. Her whole pose seemed to be imbued with a sophistication akin to aristocratic arrogance, which stubbornly attracted the gaze so that one wanted to look at her forever. It was Cairo and at the same time it was not her at all. But CC was sure that she had conveyed all the features correctly. So how did it happen that the drawing looked like a completely different person? So much so that she would never have recognized her if they had met in real life, if Sweet had looked like Walker had drawn her.

"Wow, who is this beauty?" Judith said, surprised and with a sneer in her voice, leaning over her shoulder. CC almost jumped out of her seat in surprise, caught off guard, panicked, and covered the drawing with her hand, wincing in annoyance as she realized she had smudged the pencil lines with her fingers.

"You scared me!" she stammered, blushing for some reason.

"I've been calling you for a few minutes now," her friend defended herself, still looking sideways at the closed sheet of paper with a wicked smile on her lips. "Hey, Walker, you never told me you liked women."

"I don't like them! It's just... it's just... it's an actress! Here!" CC chattered actively, hastily stuffing her sketchbook and drawing supplies into her bag. Her heart pounded treacherously against her chest, ready to break her ribs and jump out. Her coal-covered fingers trembled slightly. She herself understood that she was talking nonsense, but her panicked brain gave it away, not caring about logic at all.

"An actress, you say?" Judith rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "The face looks familiar, but I can't remember."

"And this is..." CC tried desperately to come up with an excuse for her lie. "She's a new actress, still unknown. The trailer for the show just came out. It's a British low budget. And she was just in the background. I just remembered her face," Walker assumed her typical frivolous blonde demeanor and casually waved her hand with a smile. Thank God it was Judith.

"Really? Well, oh well," the girl sighed and waved her hand. "Sorry, you know I can't remember the faces of little-known actors."

"You have half your room covered with posters of a half-naked singer-girl," CC chuckled, teasing her friend and feeling her heart calm.

"Hey, it's Sabrina! Sabrina, fucking, Carpenter!" Judith raised her finger enthusiastically, almost in a didactic gesture. "She's perfect! And she's not an actor!" They had just left the Arts Club auditorium together.

"Oh, yes, of course. They're both media personalities," CC waved her hand dismissively, grinning and narrowing her eyes. "Just don't start arguing with Grace about it again. I'm tired of you arguing about short blondes."

"Taylor Swift is not short!" Grace said out of nowhere, looking at Judith and giving her a wry smile. "You don't understand, Walker, this is an eternal battle!"

"Hey, that's enough!" May rolled her eyes in irritation and waved her hand in front of the two contenders' noses. "You can argue about your favorite type of woman later. We're going to be late for practice," she crossed her arms over her chest in displeasure, looking sternly at everyone and drawing only sarcastic smiles.

"Okay, Mom!" CC teased, smiling brightly, happy that Judith hadn't noticed and excited by her own discovery. She was even more interested in Cairo's image now, and she still didn't know how to get out of it.

As they left the campus building and headed for the stadium grounds, none of them noticed the short girl smoking with a couple of familiar professors around the corner in a designated smoking area because of the noisy conversation.

"I envy the young," chuckled the burly English professor, old enough to be Cairo's mother. They had been almost friends from the beginning, even after Sweet had finished her studies with her. "Sometimes I wish I had spent all my college years reading instead of playing sports."

"Come on, it's so boring. No creativity or self-expression," the social studies teacher teased her in a slightly affected voice, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses on his thin face. He was about forty years old and looked a bit like an aged Freddie Mercury. The two of them were actually married, but not many people knew it. After all, the marriage was fictitious and only for their parents, arranged many years ago to hide their own preferences, but they were fine with it. And with time they simply got used to each other, became excellent partners and friends.

Сairo followed the girls with her eyes as they passed, squinting and blowing a stream of smoke through her lips. Her eyes caught a black spot on the cheekbone of the blonde whose name she had learned today. It seemed to be charcoal. Sweet smiled thoughtfully. A soccer player with excellent grades in almost all subjects and an affinity for drawing in her spare time... It was strange. Fine expression lines gathered at the corners of her eyes, and dimples appeared on her cheeks from her strange smile. She grinned almost carnivorously, but hid it, turning back to the professors.

"There are certain advantages to being an athlete," she narrowed her eyes contentedly, as if she were having a casual conversation with them. The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise, and a second later she grinned.

"Oh, you get it. Athletic girls are sexy!" She pointed two index fingers at Cairo and winked, as if she were an accomplice. Sweet herself froze for a moment, raised her eyebrows slightly, and grinned in disbelief. To be honest, she hadn't thought of it that way before, treating these girls as nothing more than pests on her territory. But those words stopped her thoughts, as if she had discovered something unexpected.

"Quiet! They're just teenagers," her husband hissed at her, warning her.

"I'm not talking about me. Look at this 'little nuisance', she's clearly interested!" the professor nodded at Cairo, and her husband immediately opened his mouth in surprise, then smiled in understanding.

"Baby, we're always here if you need our advice," he grinned sarcastically, becoming like his wife at that moment. People like that are usually called: two of a kind; despite their different preferences.

"I'd rather do it on my own," Sweet chuckled and put out her cigarette. "But I'll keep it in mind."

Her thoughts had already begun to take a certain direction, so she barely heard the teachers' voices as she pondered something new with interest. Even ordinary words could sometimes open up the world from another side, making everything appear in a different light. It wasn't that Sweet had strictly defined inclinations, it was just that she hadn't been too interested in the prospect of relationships within the walls of the university before. Studying and literature had been her main priorities all these years. But now she was really thinking.

After saying goodbye to the teachers, she turned around and followed the departing backs of the soccer team members with her eyes.

Maybe it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at these pests. And maybe soon. Сairo knew how to wait and analyze people carefully. Now all she needed was more information.

"What a nightmare," she exhaled through her nose, noticing a few days later that she had noticed some scribbles and a few crooked lines on one of the back tables in the library. She picked up a cloth and started to erase them, but her hand stopped over the writing and her eyes narrowed.

"The Spider as an Artist
Has never been employed—"

The words were crooked, written so small in the corner that she had to lean down to see them better. Next to the lines was a spider, just as small. Her eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. She had been absent from the library for two days due to shift conflicts, so it seemed that the noisy group of soccer players would be back, although Cairo was sure they would avoid her from now on. But the last thing she expected to see were lines from an Emily Dickinson poem drawn on the corner of the table.

Sweet ran her fingertips thoughtfully over the written lines. She was getting more and more interested in this damn girl. Over the past few days, she had done her research on CC Walker. And with each new fact, her interest grew. She herself could not remember the last time she had been so interested in someone, not counting her high school teacher. Although it was a disgusting delusion that eventually made her unconsciously avoid all potential relationships. She was not afraid, ashamed, or disgusted. She was just not interested. Bored. So banal and shallow.

But... she didn't think she'd be interested in a girl. Especially not one from a soccer team. It would be worth starting with the fact that Сairo didn't understand sports at all. And everything connected with it always seemed to her to be some kind of nonsense. What could be interesting about kicking a miserable ball around a huge field between two teams of eleven people? But she knew very well how millions of people went crazy at championships and games, rooting for their team. Something in that madness seemed strange now.

She took a pen from her shirt pocket and signed in neat handwriting under the crooked lines without erasing them.

"Emily Dickinson would have been upset to see such crooked handwriting."

She chuckled to herself. Well, it was time to start setting traps and hooks. Without realizing it, she had already decided to find out more about this strange blonde.

"Miss Sweet? I was told in the staff room that I could find you here," a slightly hesitant voice called out to her. She immediately turned around, raising her eyebrows slightly and noticing the student fidgeting in the doorway. Her brain immediately produced a bookmark in her head about those she had classes with instead of the professor. "Sorry, I couldn't make it to Mr. Bennington's class today. Could you please give my homework to the professor? It's not in the office."

"Hmm," she looked at the girl thoughtfully, and a certain thought crept into her head. "You're from the group that was here on wednesday morning, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes," the student said, slightly confused, hiding her eyes. Apparently, she hadn't even known about Sweet's existence until now. Cairo smiled a little more openly.

"Okay, I'll tell him" Cairo agreed easily. "But in exchange for a favor. You know CC Walker, right?"

The girl looked up at her in disbelief and frowned slightly. She hesitated only because she couldn't understand why the professor's assistant needed the captain of the football team. In her humble opinion, the two belonged to completely different social worlds, judging by the junior librarian's appearance.

"Yes, we study in the same group," she said slowly, still not understanding the connection.

"Great. Then could you give her the book she left in the library? It wasn't my shift yesterday, so I found it this morning. I think it would be an easy favor," Sweet smiled calmly and invitingly, making the student drop her caution.

"Oh, good! It's not difficult for me," the girl immediately smiled in relief and handed the form to the professor's assistant. She was glad that she was not forced to do anything unpleasant like handing out forms or delivering a message to the entire group. Simply returning the forgotten book was a simple matter, especially since another class was about to begin where she could easily pass on the necessary information.

"Thank you," Сairo smiled softly, noticing how all caution had vanished from the student's face. "Wait here for a while, I'll get the book."

She went into the librarian's back room and out the back door into the dry book storage. She quickly found the collection she needed and found the page she needed by looking at the table of contents. "Spider" by Emily Dickinson. Well, she would test the blonde's intelligence with this. Сairo took a pencil from the table and gently signed one of her unofficial email addresses under the poem so that it could be easily erased without damaging the paper. By this time she already knew that a few months ago a blonde from the soccer team had asked a few guys she knew about her. So stupid and childish. Сairo grinned and handed the book of the collection to the student, who quickly fluttered out of the library, smiling happily.

CC didn't get the hint and didn't even look at the book. Not even thinking that it was a message, and busy preparing for the Christmas holidays, she didn't care about the poetry collection at all. She just accepted it with surprise, not remembering if she had even taken it, and chalked it all up to the fact that she often forgot something somewhere. Therefore, all of her things were labeled. In fact, according to her program, she had recently been studying Dickinson, so Walker simply thought that she had taken this book but forgotten to return it. But this was far from the first time this had happened. So she happily forgot about it, looked around for her friends, and tossed the book in her bag as she left the class for a break.

"Hey, Walker!" Judith called from across the hall, waving her hand vigorously. "Get here quick!"

"Coming!" CC smiled happily and hurried to meet her friends. When she finally reached them, the first thing she saw was a small object thrown almost in her face, which she immediately caught almost mechanically, blinking her blue eyes in surprise. "Hey, what's that?"

"Go ahead, open it," Grace snidely, narrowing her eyes sarcastically as she watched the busy blonde quickly untie the small bag and a second later look up at them with an admiring gaze, holding a personalized friendship bracelet in her hand that was clearly handmade. Grace and Judith raised their hands contentedly and showed her the exact same ones, but with their last names. "This is a Christmas gift from May."

The hallway filled with happy girlish squeals and enthusiastic exclamations, causing passing students to turn in their direction.

"Oh my God! This is so cool!" CC gushed, quickly pulling on the bracelet with letters on each of the white square beads that spelled out her last name.

"Hey, now we all have the same ones," Grace chuckled contentedly. "Too bad May's parents already took her home. She gave them to me when they left last night. You know her, she always forgets and remembers at the last moment."

"How wonderful!" Walker, truly happy, continued. "But it's better not to wear it to practice."

"Of course," Judith nodded. "And today is the last practice before Christmas. Then a few more study days and the weekend. Any plans for that time?"

"Oh, well..." CC replied with intrigue in her voice, narrowing her eyes sarcastically. "Personally, I don't have any."

"What?" Grace blinked in surprise, but then understanding flashed into her eyes. Her lips curled into an incredulous smile. "You sneak! You did it?!"

"Yep!" CC raised her hands solemnly, extremely pleased with herself. "Finally, I don't have to fly home for Christmas Eve! My parents left me alone and allowed me to spend the holidays here!"

"Yooh-hoo! Our girl has been declared an adult!" Judith grinned happily. "Captain, you are now officially enrolled in the ranks of free people, congratulations!"

"Oh, come on, I'm already twenty! Normal people would have received their legal freedom two years ago," Walker wrinkled his nose, grimaced in displeasure, and crossed her arms over his chest. "It's not my fault that my mother stubbornly doesn't want me to grow up."

"We have to celebrate," Grace rubbed her hands in anticipation. "I'm going home for the holidays too, but we still have almost five days ahead of us, including the weekend. Maybe the club?"

"Oh, no," Judith stuck out her tongue, displeased and almost disgusted. "I'm not going to any of your lousy heterosexual clubs. There's absolutely nothing for me to do there."

"But you can often find your favorite type of short blonde in them," Walker chuckled, patting her friend on the shoulder. "But anyway, I guess that's why we're friends - to support each other, right?"

"Wow," Grace raised an eyebrow. "You mean a gay bar, for our little Jude?"

"Why not?" CC shrugged lightly, hoping it would distract the others. "Like you're afraid of something," she looked sarcastically at Grace, who just waved her hand in annoyance.

"I wouldn't be intimidated by that," she chuckled, wiping her nose and sounding uncertain for some reason. "But will there only be three of us? It would be better for such an event if May were with us."

"Oh, no," Judith chuckled. "May shouldn't be around alcohol. I still feel bad about that time we took her to the party."

"That was when she climbed up on the bar and tried to dance, but she couldn't make it and fell off ceremoniously?" laughed CC, remembering the aforementioned party she hadn't really wanted to go to at first, but eventually did. All in all, she didn't regret her decision. It was really fun.

"Don't remind me," Grace breathed. "It was a failure."

"Okay, so we're going to a gay bar? Seriously?" Judith returned to the topic of conversation, shifting her shuffling from foot to foot. "You're not going to regret this and leave me there alone, are you?"

"Of course not," CC smiled, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. As it turned out, she hadn't noticed that the bag had unzipped while she was running, so its contents were now visible, even though she hadn't paid attention to it.

But Judith noticed and immediately grinned carnivorously.

"And anyway... Maybe we'll find someone for you, too," she winked at CC, who stared at her confusedly, blinking his eyes. "Oh, come on, you draw amazing women who are so far removed from reality that you can't get through to them. Don't lie to me, blondie, I can smell a gay a mile away."

"What?" Walker paused, stunned, unsure of how to react. Her cheeks flushed slightly and her fingers tightened on her purse. What the hell was this impertinent girl talking about?

"What kind of women is she drawing? Let me see!" Grace demanded, holding out her hand, clearly overly interested. "Come on, Captain, we've already seen most of you drawings."

"It's a new actress, but for some reason her face looks familiar to me," Judith shrugged, glancing sideways at CC's open bag.

"I've got a good eye for modern actors," Grace smiled. "What's her name?"

"I don't know," Walker's lip twitched nervously, and she felt her fingertips go cold with fear. She really didn't want to make excuses or give her friends any reason to doubt her. "I-I mean, I don't remember. I just remember her face."

"Oh, I'll definitely recognize it, show me," Grace pleaded, clasping her hands in an almost religious gesture. "Come on, Walker, we're friends, and I know you're a great artist. Now I'm interested!"

Judith's hand reached for CC's bag, and she instinctively sharply pulled it aside, not noticing that it was unzipped. Ironically, a nearby window was open to the street from the hallway, and almost all of Walker's things flew out in a arc, some scattered on the floor below the window.

The girls froze in shock as they watched several books fall, notebooks, pens, pencils, and other junk fly around.

"Oh my God..." Grace choked in panic.

"Get down there quickly!" Walker ordered, realizing she had to save her things and bending down to collect what hadn't flown out the window. "I'll kill you if anything's missing!" She glared at the girls and they both turned and ran at full speed for the nearest stairs. CC picked up the rest with shaking hands and looked out the open window of the third floor of the university. Her heart skipped a beat. Down below, just below the window, a professor was meticulously examining the fallen things, a cigarette in his hand. He leaned over and picked up her sketchbook, then looked up. His eyebrows furrowed.

"Miss Walker?"

"Mr. Bennington! Please forgive me! It was an accident! I'll be right down," she hurriedly waved at the third-floor literature professor, who just nodded and frowned suspiciously. When she had disappeared through the window, he sighed heavily.

"Cairo, can you help me?" He turned to the side that wasn't visible from the window, where the smoking area was, and his assistant came out, raising her eyebrows in surprise and looking around doubtfully at the complete mess of discarded things. When she approached the professor, he handed her a sketchbook and looked around. "Let's get this together before the wind blows it away."

"Let me, Professor, your back doesn't allow for such sudden exercises," Sweet smiled and squeezed the all too familiar sketchbook with her fingers. She knew that no matter how hard they tried, no one would get here in less than a few minutes. The corridors from the third floor led to a completely different exit, so the students hurrying here would have to make a small circle. The professor just grinned wryly and extinguished his cigarette on the sole of his own boot, showing an agility that was unexpected for him.

"I'm not that old, girl," he said, crouching down and carefully brushing the books he'd collected from the ground.

Сairo quietly opened sketchbook and quickly flipped through the pages. As her eyes fell on the last drawing, she felt her breath quicken and her eyes widen in disbelief. Without thinking about what she was doing, she quickly tore out the smudged sheet of paper with the portrait and shoved it into her bag before anyone noticed and quickly joined the professor, pretending that nothing had happened.

Cairo's heart was pounding in her chest and her brain was feverishly analyzing what she had done and the possible consequences of her actions in the future. To be honest, she herself had not expected to rip a page out of someone else's sketchbook. To act so barbarically and unprincipled, as if... something about it scared her. She did not even have time to examine the drawing properly, only to realize that it was herself. Several things and past events came together in her mind with great speed. And she was also confused. For the first time in a long time, Cairo Sweet was truly confused by what had happened, and therefore it was problematic to collect her thoughts right now. She needed some time. Preferably away from everyone, and this situation could very well drag on.

Together they finished quickly, just in time for CC's friends to arrive. Cairo quickly looked at their tense and slightly confused faces. She had already realized that these idiots had most likely done something completely random, and since Walker wasn't with them, she had probably sent them ahead. Her thoughts were interrupted by Professor Bennington.

"Girls, I need to ask you a question about this incident," the professor frowned, holding a stack of notebooks and books in his hands. "From the outside, these circumstances look very much like bullying, and I would like to think it is a mistake."

Judith and Grace looked at each other in confusion. In the space of a few seconds, their faces went from disbelief to suspicion to indignation to anger.

"We?!"

"Bullying?!" they said almost in unison, righteously indignant.

"Professor, you are mistaken," Сairo said calmly, and both girls only now noticed her presence, almost half hidden by the professor's back. She smiled softly at them, stepping forward a little and noticing how their eyes widened in surprise. "These students get along wonderfully, I'm sure this was nothing more than a ridiculous coincidence."

Both soccer players nodded vigorously, still in disbelief that they had just been protected by the very same "library witch" who, by all accounts, hated or despised them all. They looked at each other warily, then at the professor, whose face cleared and he sighed in relief.

"Well, if my protégé says so, I'm inclined to believe it. In that case, I dare not detain you," he handed a pile of papers and books into Grace's hands, and she smiled gratefully.

"Thank you, Professor," she said, then looked at Cairo and added awkwardly, "And you, Miss Assistant. It's our fault that CC's things went out the window. No one expected that."

"Nothing," Mr. Bennington smiled, blinking weakly. "When I was young..."

"Sorry to interrupt, Professor, but it's time to go, break's over, and you have an exam prep meeting in seven minutes," Sweet pulled him up politely and carefully, realizing that they both needed to get out of here as soon as possible. She already felt uncomfortable staying here because of what had happened. And seeing Walker now would be the height of discomfort, considering her own chaos in her mind.

"Oh, right, thanks, Cairo," he nodded awkwardly. "Have a nice day, girls, and please keep an eye on your things."

They both walked slowly to the inner entrance of the university building, used by a few professors, to go out to this designated smoking area. Students weren't supposed to be here. But Sweet had her own privileges.

"Thank you, sir," the girls said in unison after them, and, looking at each other, quickly decided to head back. On the way, they met Walker running towards them with an extremely worried face.

"Is everything okay?" she asked impatiently as Grace handed her a stack of books and notebooks. CC's fingers immediately grabbed the sketchbook and she examined it carefully to make sure it wasn't dirty. But everything looked fine. She breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll have to thank Professor Bennington for helping me," she said with a slightly nervous smile.

Grace and Judith looked at each other in confusion, barely believing what had happened.

"Not just him," Judith smiled, confused. "You won't believe it..."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" CC cursed loudly, not knowing how to control the panic and sheer horror rising in her throat. She had just discovered that a page had been torn out of her sketchbook. And the one she never wanted to show anyone. Her latest drawing of Cairo in another guise. If it fell into the hands of the "Library Witch" herself, it could be considered the height of failure. She didn't even know how to justify it. What if Sweet thought this was harassment? Then she would definitely have to endure a very unpleasant conversation... At the very least. And at worst, the professor's assistant could ruin her performance in his class. Walker definitely didn't want that to happen.

"CC? What happened?" Grace's concerned voice snapped her out of her panic like a cold shower. Walker bit her lip and frowned. Well, she couldn't hide from her friends after everything that had happened, even though she had gone a little further to check her things for any losses. She sighed in irritation.

"Don't worry about it. It's just... something's missing. It's not critical," she tried to lie, but her hands clenched involuntarily into fists. Walker had always been relatively harmless, cheerful and approachable. Soul of the company. The problem was that when she lost her temper, the less pleasant side of her personality came out. That's why she was trying so hard to control herself now. She didn't want to reveal her condition to her friend and a member of her team.

"Oh, really? It's nothing serious, right?" Grace chuckled and narrowed her eyes. "Is that why you're swearing halfway down the hall?"

"Whose fault is that?" Walker snapped, unusually tense, causing Grace to raise her eyebrows in surprise. She raised her palms in a placating surrender.

"Whoa, whoa, Captain... Come on, take it easy. It wasn't intentional and Jude and I have already apologized several times." Grace frowned as well. She didn't like being yelled at, and even though they were friends, she wasn't going to let this happen to her. Still, she felt guilty about what had happened. "Look, I can help. Can we look together? Don't take it out on me."

Walker took a slow, controlled breath, put her hands on her flanks and closed her eyes, trying to calm the blood that was pounding in her temples. Grace was right, she had no need to lash out at her friends. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, counting to ten in her head.

"Okay, you're right," CC rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. "It's just... it's just that I seem to have gotten myself into a rather unpleasant situation."

"What do you mean?" Grace dropped her hands, realizing that her friend had come to her senses, and raised her eyebrows in interest.

"A page was torn out of my sketchbook," CC said under her breath, giving in and waving her hands almost desperately. "And I don't want that drawing to fall into the hands of whoever I drew it on."

"Drawing?" Grace frowned in disbelief, realizing that this conversation was taking on very strange undertones. "Wasn't there an actress?"

"No," Walker exhaled, blowing a strand of blonde hair out of her eyes. She hadn't thought she'd be telling her friends this. But now it was time to explain. And she was glad it was Grace. "Let's just keep this between us, okay? Judith would just eat me up if she found out."

"I'm a grave, Walker," Grace clenched her fist and ran her thumb across her throat, drawing a nervous laugh from her team captain. "Who was it? I've not seen your art."

"It's..." CC took a deep breath, gathering her strength before confessing. "It's Сairo..."

Grace blinked dumbly. Her face went through several expressions in a matter of minutes: from surprised to sullen to stunned to disbelieving. She waved her hands.

"Wait, wait! I think I just heard something extremely ridiculous and I'm having auditory hallucinations," she stared in amazement at Walker, who was frowning and biting her lip nervously. "The same Cairo Sweet? Library witch, assistant to Professor Bennington, and personal nuisance to all of us?"

Walker sighed in exasperation, waved her hand almost wearily, and nodded.

"Yes," she admitted bitterly and defeatedly. "The same Cairo Sweet..." she breathed out the girl's name, feeling the tension and irritation seem to leave her along with the air and the words from her lungs.

Grace, who had been staring at her as if she had seen a ghost, almost crossed herself and let out a loud, stunned breath.

"Okay, Captain," she sighed, shaking her head in disbelief and still keeping her wide eyes on Walker. "I think we should really talk about this. Don't you think?"

CC just threw up her hands in defeat, realizing how lucky she was that it was Grace who had found out her little secret. If it had been May, the whole team would have known about Walker's secret crush within a few days. Judith would have accused her of some kind of betrayal, or worse, pestered her with teasing about her orientation, which CC herself had recently begun to subconsciously doubt. None of this changed the fact that Grace, who had grabbed her by the shoulders, was dragging them both away to find a secluded corner for a private conversation. Walker sighed in frustration, feeling like she was being led to the scaffold. In a way, that was a plus. This whole situation had been building up for a long time, and she simply had no one to talk to, and she herself did not understand everything yet.

"Well... You have to look for the positive in everything," Walker thought grumpily, looking sideways at the obviously inspired Grace. She thought that maybe now she would be able to talk to someone and understand what it all meant to her. Frankly, the chances were slim, but at least Grace wouldn't laugh at her...

"Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!" Grace almost howled out loud, wiping away the tears that had formed in her eyes from laughing. She could barely breathe as she looked at her team captain's face, reddened to the tips of his ears.

"Stop laughing!" CC snapped through her teeth, almost in anger, and cast a withering glance at the closed door of the empty classroom they had managed to get through. They could be discovered and kicked out at any moment, and damn it, Grace was doubling over laughing and not even trying to be more quiet.

She literally didn't know what to do with herself. When her short story was told and many of the sketches from her sketchbook were shown, the damn girlfriend couldn't hold back her laughter. She laughed so hard she couldn't breathe, and sometimes she started choking and making grunting noises. Walker herself was stupidly embarrassed and uncomfortable, balancing on the edge of embarrassment and resentment at her friend's behavior.

"Oh... my... God... Fuck..." Grace gasped through laughter and tears. "I have never... In this life... Seen a bigger gay loser than you! Aha-ha-hah!!!"

"Stop it, idiot!" CC almost growled, red as a tomato. Her pride was hurt, her embarrassment was turning to irritation, and she seriously wanted to hit her laughing friend over the head with something heavy, or gag her with a sock. Walker blinked slowly as her friend's words belatedly reached her inflamed brain.

"What?" she tilted her head forward, looking at her friend from under her eyebrows. "Gay? Me?"

"No, damn it, I am!" Grace snorted through her sarcastic laughter and finally calmed down. "Seriously, Captain, don't you know you're head over heels in love?"

"W-what?" CC asked just as stupidly, panicky thoughts growing in her head at an unbelievable speed, making such a noise that it completely blocked out reality.

Grace just shook her head with a grin as she watched her friend float, clearly lost in her own thoughts and realization. She chuckled to herself as she caught her breath.

"Oh yeah," she sighed hoarsely. "We'll have a merry Christmas."

Judith was mad as hell. On a planned weekend, her two so-called "friends" who had promised to go to a bar with her suddenly had a bunch of reasons why they couldn't join her.

Grace talked about going to church as a family, even though Judith knew her family hadn't done that in a long time. CC's dog suddenly got sick, but for some reason she named it after her youngest brother. Judith was frankly irritated by the fact that she immediately noticed how these two were lying inappropriately, so she realized that they both had some kind of secret plans together that suddenly surfaced at such an inconvenient time. Of course, she understood that if CC and Grace were lying badly and panickedly, they had their reasons. But that did not take away her anger and feeling of abandonment. Although she had not planned to go alone at first, by the evening her irritation had reached its peak, and in spite of everything and everyone, she still got ready and went to the bar.

It wasn't the best decision she'd ever made.

At least it was worth it that she got drunk very quickly, which had not happened to her for a long time. Usually she knew exactly when to stop, but because of her anger she lost count of how much she drank. And it would be fine if it just stopped there. But no. Already quite tipsy, she noticed unexpectedly familiar faces. Two teachers from the university. She even rubbed her eyes in surprise, thinking she was imagining things, but they also unexpectedly recognized her and greeted her happily. In complete shock, she drank in their company and only later, during the conversation, did she notice that there was another person with them. And then she almost choked on the alcohol when she realized that the short girl sitting next to her at the bar was all too familiar.

"Y-you?" she stammered a little, staring at Cairo Sweet, who was sipping a cocktail phlegmatically from her glass and looking back at her with a squint and a laugh. Judith's face couldn't decide what emotion to show. Either disbelief or irritation or surprise. After the teachers she'd met by chance, it seemed she couldn't get a bigger shock today... But there he was, sitting right next to her, smiling at her slightly sarcastically.

"Judging by your face, you obviously didn't expect to see me here," Cairo grinned wryly, having ended up here by accident.

After the discussion about the girls the other day, the damn teachers she knew had enthusiastically dragged her to the bar to confirm their suspicions. She didn't know why they were so interested in this possibility, but at some point she realized that she simply had nothing to say in response. And after discovering the drawing, her reaction was strange to herself, the one she didn't know, no matter how paradoxical it might sound. Although Sweet generally understood what was going on, it was a matter of admitting it to herself. She found it hard to believe that she, with all her restraint, control, and bias, could so easily fall for such a thing.

"Well, every poet must have his artist," she thought with disappointment when she finally accepted it. It wasn't that these feelings were obvious and burning. Rather, they were fascinating. They made her think about a strange blonde all the time. Eventually, these thoughts became too much, and it was then that two acquaintances persuaded her to go with them to a bar.

Judith smiled wryly. The anger in her chest had subsided, but it didn't change her bad mood.

"Well, this is unexpected," she chuckled, raising her glass slightly and nodding slightly in his direction. "Can we consider this an official introduction, Miss Assistant?"

Сairo snorted with laughter at the wacky curly-haired girl and accepted the game by banging her glass against hers. She was funny. Like a big puppy.

"Сairo Sweet," she grinned and held out a thin hand for a handshake. Her small palm was squeezed by a larger one in response.

"Judith Nelson," the athlete smiled, still slightly shocked. "As you can see, I'm alone today."

"Oh, your wonderful group isn't here today?" Sweet asked calmly, taking a sip from her glass with her free hand and letting go of the other. Honestly, her heart almost jumped in fear, because she thought the whole gaggle of football players were here today. Thank the gods that wasn't the case. That calmed her down a lot and she let out a small, relieved sigh.

"Oh," Judith waved her hand irritably. "They left me, can you imagine? They have some secret business of their own."

"Who are they?" Sweet asked, feigning surprise and disinterest. A great idea suddenly struck her... She could learn a lot about Walker from her drunken friend. Cairo looked at the athlete's well-defined muscles an arms and wondered if CC had the same. Judith, however, had a slightly different opinion.

"Walker and Abrams," she brushed it off. "Our fourth wheel has already gone to her parents for the holidays, so it's just the three of us."

"Huh. Really?"

"Yeah," Judith narrowed her eyes in interest, looking into the dark brown eyes. Strangely enough, she found herself thinking that the same upstart who had irritated her at close range turned out to be quite pretty. Not the best idea in the brown hair's girl drunken brain. "Hey, are you here alone? I mean, as a couple," she blurted out without even having time to think. The presence of a professor assistant in such a place, among "her own", somehow immediately elevated her in the athlete's eyes, forcing her to look at her in a different light.

Сairo shrugged phlegmatically, pretending to think.

"Maybe yes," she grinned a little wider, her smile becoming almost mischievous. "Or maybe not," she liked the way the emotions changed on the soccer player's lively face. She wasn't attracted to this woman, but she was interested in the conversation. Especially since Judith was quite easy to control. "But I'm sorry, you're not my type," she said with snideness in her voice.

"Oh, really?" Judith chuckled, both relieved and annoyed, and sat closer. To be honest, the fact that she was immediately rejected was actually satisfying. From this angle, the "library witch" was beginning to look like a pleasant interlocutor. Besides, there were no other acquaintances here anyway, especially in comparison to her peers. So she allowed herself to relax. "Then maybe you could at least join me for a drink? I won't insist on anything more."

"With pleasure," Sweet smiled contentedly. The evening promised to be interesting, and she had even managed to forget her regret about being dragged here. They clinked glasses again and the conversation flowed as usual. The cheerful and relaxed style of communication was mutual, and they quickly got to talking, and Judith was continually surprised by the ease with which they communicated. After a while, as if remembering something, the soccer player snapped her fingers in the air.

"Hey, I'm not that bad-looking, by the way," she chuckled playfully, not meaning anything serious. "And if I'm not your type, then who is?"

Сairo touched her chin with her finger, tapping it thoughtfully, and smiled mysteriously, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"I don't know... Maybe blonde?"

Wednesday morning was a gloomy one. At least for CC. The last day of school before Christmas was wednesday, damn it! And her schedule had been moved up again. That meant only one thing - Professor Bennington had the first class. And as a result, there was a huge chance that his assistant would come back to teach the class. And she really didn't want to see Cairo after all those days of racking her brain. It wasn't that she was afraid, no... It was just that with the emotions she had finally discovered, she wasn't sure she wouldn't do something stupid in front of Sweet. And it was terribly embarrassing, because now she was absolutely sure that it was that damn "library witch" who had torn out the page with her drawing. So CC had no idea what to do.

"Maybe..." she began hesitantly, glancing sideways at the thoughtful Grace and the extremely pleased Judith, who was texting someone, barely paying attention to them. "Maybe we should skip?" she squeezed out, feeling her fingertips grow cold. Grace stared at her in surprise and Judith grinned in disbelief. CC Walker skipping class? That was out of this world!

"Um..." Grace began, understanding what was going on, but not knowing how to react.

"No way!" Judith suddenly replied sharply, shocking both friends at the same time. She smiled oddly and shrugged. "C'mon, normally I would support you, Captain. But today I would not miss this lesson for anything," she grinned almost maliciously at the stunned faces of her friends and showed them the entire printout of homework, covered from edge to edge. "Today is my day, bitches. And I am going to get an "A" in damn literature before Christmas!"

"Oh, my..." Grace exhaled in amazement, staring at the printout with wide eyes.

"It can't be!" CC confirmed, putting her hand theatrically to her chest. "Who are you and where have you taken our friend?"

"Jealousy in silence," a visibly pleased Judith snorted and shoved the printout back into her bag and walked happily towards the audience. "Hey, are you with me or what?"

Grace and CC looked at each other in confusion, but followed.

"What happened this weekend anyway?" Grace frowned thoughtfully. "She literally didn't say a word to us after we didn't go to the bar with her."

"I thought she was going to interrogate us or sulk about it, too," CC stared suspiciously at Judith's back. "But she's been walking around happy as a devil for days."

"Suspicious!" they said in unison, placing their index fingers on their chins in the same way. The girls looked at each other again and laughed at this almost cardboard gesture. Walker's heart felt a little lighter and her nerves a little less tense, so they hurried to their seats and chatted happily. CC had already managed to think that perhaps Cairo would not be there today after all, and that Mr. Bennington would take his place. She almost consoled herself with that thought.

Until the auditorium door swung open.

"Good morning, students," Cairo Sweet entered the classroom with a typical welcoming voice and a typical barely perceptible smile. "I hope I don't have to introduce myself again today," she grinned, casting a suspicious glance in their direction.

All three football players froze in their seats in shock, as did most of the students around them.

Сairo, damn her mother, Sweet, was wearing a short black dress that revealed her shoulders and collarbones, and her high boots added a few inches to her height, making her exposed legs look longer. Her dark hair was pulled back to reveal her chiseled, clear cheekbones, jawline, and slender neck. Her lips seemed to stand out today in an unusual shade of scarlet, as did her eyes, lined with black pencil and a little shadow. Almost everyone in the room held their breath for a moment, plunging the audience into a ringing silence in which you could hear the sound of a pin dropping on the floor. "Who the hell is that woman?" - pulsed a single question in the heads of the students. All except the three football players, whose reactions were now diametrically opposed.

Grace swallowed hard and said softly, not thinking about what she was saying:

"I think I'm gay, too," she said, staring wide-eyed at the completely transformed girl, who was literally as different from the "library witch" as heaven and earth.

CC didn't hear anything. Cairo's appearance was exactly as she had drawn it. There was no longer any doubt - it was she who had her drawing. It was she who had torn the page out of sketchbook. And it was she who was now looking straight into the blue eyes of the girl who had suddenly gone pale. Her heart, after doing a dizzying somersault, fell somewhere into the abyss, leaving a complete ringing silence in her head. Walker barely breathed, realizing that in real life this beauty was even more attractive and dangerous. So much so that it took her breath away. From her, from this cursed by all the gods, from Сairo Sweet, it simply took your breath away, and CC herself could do nothing about it.

Judith, who was sitting next to him, visibly darkened. Several facts quickly formed in her mind, and she glanced sideways at Walker sitting next to her, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Maybe blondes?"- Cairo's voice floated into her head as they chatted at the bar. No, Judith really wasn't expecting anything, but she was a little hurt by those words, even though she tried not to pay attention to it. Sweet turned out to be a very pleasant conversationalist, and oddly enough, by the end of the evening, all the hostility towards her that had previously lived in the athlete's chest had vanished without a trace. She liked Cairo, who turned out to be a very pleasant person. She even helped her with her literature homework without asking for anything in return. And she gave her her phone number, so that in the last few days Judith often corresponded with her when she was not busy with business and part-time work. With each passing day, she found herself wanting to devote more and more of her time and attention to professor assistant, and the resentment toward her friends was still there. But... Now, suddenly, many things became clear to her. The phrase Sweet had thrown out at the bar, the drawing in Walker's sketchbook. Now her brain put together the "seemingly familiar actress" and Sweet's altered image.

Judith let out a slow, tense breath as assistant's gaze finally left their corner of the classroom.

"Hey, Captain," she said heavily and a little hoarsely, catching the attention of the confused girl next to her. Judith smiled crookedly and a little wickedly as she looked into the stunned blue eyes. "We need to have a serious talk."