3. Miles
Three
Miles
Professor Harding has been talking for forty minutes about something I stopped caring about at minute three. I know this because I've been watching the clock on my laptop with the same detached interest I’ve given this class.
I already know more than the professor, because he’s not teaching me anything new.
Cain drilled us with more knowledge about the world and the things that matter than anyone can teach us in class.
Computers is what I know, computer science and programming is something I learnt to do a very long time ago, but I have to come to college and there wasn’t any other subject I really wanted to do.
The lecture hall is one of the old ones. High ceilings, wooden seats that were designed by someone who had clearly never sat on one, and two hundred students are pretending to pay attention.
I'm not pretending. I’m not listening, and not trying, but then you have some students in here who are tapping on their laptop every word the professor is saying and have a recorder just in case they miss something.
They’re the ones I like messing with, hacking into their computers to fuck things up; that’s my entertainment while in a boring class.
My laptop is open. It’s been open since we sat down; I need to make sure the professor knows I’m paying attention.
Beside me, Mason has three windows running: his notes, a sports score he keeps checking, and a group chat that hasn't stopped moving since nine a.m. He types something into it one-handed, the other hand propping up his chin. And there’s my entertainment for the day.
I quickly tap on the keys of my laptop and hack into Mason’s.
He's way too lazy to get good protection on his laptop, and I start typing the message for him.
I genuinely cannot stop thinking about my feelings and how valid they are.
I watch him send it before he realizes, and I start laughing, which makes him look at the screen.
He snaps his head toward me. "Miles!”
I'm already back on my own screen, so he can’t see anything.
"Miles. What did you…?" He grabs his laptop, reads it back, makes a sound which I’m sure is his way of calling me an asshole. The group chat erupts. I can see it from here, the replies are stacking up faster than he can process them. "I'm going to actually…"
"Pay attention," I say. "Harding's going to ask you something."
"You don't know that," Mason snaps, which I knew he would. The man loses his temper way too quickly.
Professor Harding looks up from his notes and points his pen directly at Mason. Mason closes his eyes for exactly one second.
I look back at my screen. The sports scores tab is gone; I moved it while he was distracted and replaced it with a page on the migratory patterns of the Arctic Tern, which I feel is considerably more educational.
His notes document I've renamed My Diary, Private, Do Not Read.
It'll sit like that in his files for weeks before he notices.
He really needs to pay attention to what's happening around him. The only thing he cares about is hurting someone, and not the small details around him.
I tab over to the university portal. I'm not sure when I decided to do this. Somewhere between Grounds this morning and now, the decision made itself the way most of mine do, without thinking, which normally gets me in trouble.
The girl with a camera, the girl I saw on my phone the other day when I was looking into the students for Mason.
For two seconds, she held my eyes before I looked away.
Most people don't do that. Most people find somewhere else to be when I look at them directly.
They get a sudden interest in the middle distance, their coffee, or their phone.
It's a pattern I stopped noticing years ago because patterns stop being interesting once they're reliable.
She didn't look away. That fascinates me more than anything.
I navigate into the backend of the university portal; their system is embarrassing and easy to hack if you know what you’re doing.
I look her up.
Sadie Elliot. 19. Scholarship - Gymnastics, Full Ride. East Hall, Room 14.
I tab further. Her timetable pulls up: Monday, Wednesday and Friday she has a nine a.m. lecture in the humanities block; Tuesdays and Thursdays she's in the gym by seven forty-five.
Her afternoons are split between a photography elective on Tuesdays and a conditioning session that runs until six.
Her route from East Hall to the humanities block cuts through the science building if she's running on time, around it if she's not.
I know this campus better than the people who designed it.
Mason leans over. "What are you actually doing?"
I close the tab.
"Notes," I say.
He looks at my screen, which is now showing the Arctic Tern page because I'd forgotten I'd left it open.
"Miles."
"Fascinating animal," I tell him. "Longest migration of any species on earth."
He stares at me for a long moment with the expression he's had since we were eight, the one that means I know you're doing something, and I've learned not to ask what. Then he turns back to Harding, who has moved on to something that requires a diagram.
“Well, have fun, I know you will.” I turn to face him, and I see the smile on his lips. “Try not to scare her.”
Harding wraps up with five minutes to spare. Chairs scrape. The hall fills with the released energy of two hundred people who can finally move.
Mason stands, stretches, and looks at me with narrowed eyes. "You have that face."
"I have one face, and it’s the same as yours.”
"You have the face where something's happening in your head that you're not going to tell me about." Mason looks over at my laptop, but I close it and pick up my bag.
"Miles."
"Lunch?" I ask.
He watches me, then lets it go. He knows if I want to talk, I’ll talk to him.
"Yeah," he says. "Lunch."
I follow him out into the corridor, and the campus is already busy on a Wednesday morning.
East Hall is a six minute walk from the humanities block. I know because I've already worked it out.
***
The courtyard gets loud around noon. The noise hits me all at once, trays clattering, people talking, and someone’s music bleeding from a speaker two tables over, which is pissing me off.
It’s so fucking annoying. It’s not even good music.
I’ve learned to tune the background noise down to just static in my mind. I prefer being in my own world, anyway.
“…and I’m telling you,” Mason says, stealing a fry off my plate without looking at me. “If Professor Holt curves this exam, I’m buying the man a fruit basket.”
“You’ve never bought anyone a fruit basket in your life,” I tell him. I don’t even think he knows where to buy one from.
“I’ll start, and I’m sure Autumn will help me.
” Mason looks over at Declan, who’s barely listening.
He’s got his chin tilted toward Trixie, who’s showing him something on her phone, their heads almost touching.
Lileah is monologuing, a party, a professor, and a problem with her roommate.
I already know that’s one of the conversations I’m not getting involved in, nor do I care.
When it comes to Lileah, the only thing I care about is if any boy touches her, it will be the last woman they ever touch.
I eat and half-listen. I run three lines of passive code in the back of my head, checking whether the network packet I flagged this morning has resolved itself or if I need to go back in tonight.
Cain has been keeping us out of the family business, so now I’m playing around with my own codes and working on a way to hack even the secure networks without being traced.
The first test failed, and the police were at the house of the IP address I was using within the hour. So, back to the drawing board.
“Miles.” Mason snaps getting annoyed that he’s being ignored and is about one second away from punching someone.
“Holt’s not curving it,” I say, without looking up. “He said it during office hours on Thursday.”
“You went to office hours?”
“I hacked the TA’s notes.” I laugh at Mason who thought I would go to fucking office hours.
Lileah throws a napkin at me. It misses me which makes me laugh. “I’m going with my roommate. Want me to make notes for you?” she asks Mason.
“I’ll take Miles’ hacked notes,” he replies.
“Don’t forget we’re walking you,” I tell her before she walks away.
“I know,” she snaps as she leaves.
I watch Lileah walk away, and that’s when I notice her, Sadie, walking across the courtyard with two of the girls I saw her with before.
She’s carrying a takeaway cup in one hand and a camera strap looped over her other shoulder.
She’s laughing at something, and the way she looks has something inside me going crazy.
Mason says something making Declan laugh, and it pulls me away from Sadie.
“You would think…“ I stand up as Mason’s mid-sentence. “Where are you…” Mason starts.
I don’t answer him and slowly walk toward her.
I’m not following her. I want to be precise about that, at least with myself, so I tell myself a few times: following implies she’s leading, and at this point she doesn’t know she’s doing anything.
I’m just adjusting my position, and updating my information.
I keep telling myself, they are not the same thing.
I move past the faculty tables, past the cluster of first-years in identical jackets, and the girls who stand in front of me when they see me walking toward them.
She’s on the low wall at the far end. She has her camera up, aimed across the courtyard at something I can’t quite see from where I am. Her teammates have wandered further off onto the grass area, and they start doing a few gymnastic moves.
I come to a stop at a stone pillar seven or eight meters to her left, far enough away that she can’t see me. I take out my phone, pull up some random thing to give my eyes somewhere else to look so she doesn’t spot me staring at her.
She shoots, checks the screen, and then makes a small, dissatisfied sound and adjusts.