She was really trying to calm her blush at the mortifying thought that every girl in this room thought she and Joel should hold hands, kiss, whatever it was that came after numerically being matched up by the hands of fate. And where Hadley was a great believer in fate, or rather, the fact that things that were meant to be would be and anything else was just circumstance that was supposed to add spice and interest to the plot that was life. She wasn’t so sure that she was okay with everyone else thinking that about her. Hadley was often of the mind that her life was a movie. She was obsessed with them, and even went through withdrawal the first weeks of school after a summer of sitting in the family room when she wasn’t supposed to be doing her chores or venturing out with friends, and eating crisps and watching tapes. Though, her favorite outings often involved going to the cinema. But that just fueled the flames of desire to live in her own movie, getting to sit right in the middle of a theater with popcorn and a big screen in front of her only seemed to make her more resolute that was the way of things, she was living a romantic comedy. But she’d just not managed to find out where that first part came in, nor could she say she was particularly interested in searching it out. If it was fate, it would throw itself right into her lap. Probably knocking her over in the process, possibly causing too many difficulties to name and then everything would be tied in a neat little bow at the end.

She couldn’t think of any movies that started with having a friend bruise the shoulder of the lead protagonist and laugh while the boy she was crowing about came to sit next to them. But, neither could Hadley argue with providence she supposed. Though, she did try to just stare at her paper and not at Joel, because she felt like everyone’s eyes were on the back of her head. She was happy enough scribbling lines, every so often she’d actually write a word, that was until a piece of parchment was slid over to her and she edged it over her supposed note taking.

”Flitwick missed a blob of ink on his forehead,”


That made her look up at their professor, and Joel was right, he did have a smudge of ink still on his face. Hadley covered her mouth to hide the smile, with the hand that had formerly been protecting her from having to look at her seat partner. Still she began her written response, though it was less a commentary on their professor and more a bit of advice.

“We shouldn’t pass notes, people are watching.” She wrote in her flourished, looping writing. It seemed that her handwriting wanted to take just as long as Hadley always did to get ready. Then she was looking up at Joel and he smiled and then winked at her, which promptly had her eyes snapping back to the note, her quill still posed above it.

“Do you have something in your eye?”
She wrote just before passing the parchment back to him from behind the shifting of her arms on the desk.