Pulled (2 page)

“
Well, Ms. Adams, why don’t you join the rest of the class? You seem so far away from me back there.” He motions for me to come down closer. “There’s a seat right here, down in front.”

A seat right next to
him.

Of course.

Cursing under my breath, I make my way to the front of the room. It is at
that moment
, the moment I settle my weight into the chair, that I feel it; the full dose of what had only been hinted at earlier.

The tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up on end. A crushing pressure is building inside me making it feel like my insides are about to collapse in on themselves. But this pressure...it's not like a force of gravity pulling me down to Earth. This seems to defy gravity and instead pulls me sideways, toward
him
.

My heartbeat quickens and my hands ball into fists trying to control the light trembling that has begun there. With great concentration I'm able to turn my head just enough to see his hands in the exact same position as mine.
What the hell is going on?

“
We’ve just met Naya,” Professor Williams' voice manages to register in some faraway corner of my mind, “Why don’t we go around the room briefly and introduce ourselves?”

Turning my head back to my hands, the pressure decreases by the smallest of increments. I'm now able to make out the other students' voices as they start rattling off their names, where they are from and such, but I can’t seem to actually register what they are saying. Only one name is allowed in.

“
Etash.”

Etash

Now that she’s sitting right next to me, I'm somehow hyper-aware of
everything
about her. The ram-rod way her back is pressed against her chair, the sound of her heart fluttering wildly in her chest, her midnight
black hair moving gently across her shoulders. But it's her scent that's killing me. It's wafting off her snowy white skin, overwhelming my other senses. And it's more than the obvious stuff too, like the coffee she’s had or the smell of her shampoo, but harder to pick up stuff. I can clearly make out her subtle hint of peppermint toothpaste, lavender smoothed across her pale arms; even the waxiness of lip-balm.

All of those smells combined are easily ignored compared to the one that's taken hostage of her clothing. This lone scent causes my nostrils to flare and clench my teeth together dangerously hard. Men's cologne. Inexplicably, I am suddenly furious with whoever was close enough to place his rank scent on her: on
my
Naya.

Whoa. Wait. 'My Naya?'
I don’t even know this girl!

Desperately needing to get a grip, I bring my focus back to my hands, which are still pulled together so tight that it’s starting to hurt. They won’t come apart no matter how hard I try, so I press them under my arms to try and pry them open against my rib cage. I’ve almost got one of my fingers free when I see her getting to her feet. She's being pulled up to the front of the class by a tall brunette.

As soon as she's on her feet, it washes over me. A sensation so strong that it feels like a hundred hands on me, all pulling me in the same direction: toward her. Confused, I push back against the mounting pressure and manage to keep my butt firmly planted in my chair, for the moment anyway.

Once she’s several feet away from me, however, the sensation lessens, allowing me to relax my body enough to release my fists. They ache from the strain of being held prisoner for so long.

Although physically no longer chained to her, my eyes haven't gotten the memo; they never leave her. I literally can
not
stop myself from watching her every move. She is simply too mesmerizing to stop. Her jet-black hair is like liquid lava as it falls down her back and against her beautiful soft, ivory skin. And her face--her face is so fresh and clean, void of the harsh make-up worn by most of her peers, making her even more stunning to look at. It strikes me that because of her natural look, some might call her plain. Just the errant thought of someone even
thinking
about her as less than perfect, makes me feel utterly and irrationally hostile.

Naya

I can feel his eyes on me as I try desperately to follow the professor's instructions. My head is screaming at me to turn around and march back to my seat—back to him, but I'm refusing to listen.

Forcing my body into the positions Professor Williams gives us, I deliberately avoid eye contact with anyone.
Just focus on the movements, Naya.
Arms over head, right knee up, and twist.
Ow
. Other side. Good.

After leading us through Salute to the Sun, a yoga pose I thankfully already knew, Professor Williams excuses us and asks for a few more volunteers. Etash, mercifully, jumps out of his seat before I can approach him and joins the next group and stands in profile.

Rolling up his sleeves as he moves forward he exposes more of his glorious, glowing skin. Looking at the dark curls on the back of his head, it dawns on me that I haven’t really seen his whole face yet, noting how careful he has been to keep his face hidden. Carefully, I steady my focus on the top of his head. Not wanting to risk looking in his eyes again, I skip past them, remembering their blackness from when he came in. Moving to safer territory, I take in his nose, which is straight and thin. His jaw is slightly chiseled, showing off amazing cheekbones. His lips are a bit smaller than my full lips, but far from thin. And those curls! Dark and lush, hugging every contour of the right side of his face.

I can’t help but notice that Etash is exact opposite of Seth with his surfer-blond hair and pale blue eyes.

That's when it happens. He turns his face with the movements and I see what he has been so carefully hiding from everyone since the moment he walked into the class: a long, painful and angry looking scar runs from the corner of his left eye and down past his jaw line before it disappears under his shirt.

Seeing his beautiful face mutilated, my heart lets out an involuntary cry knowing it must have once caused him extreme pain. I'm overcome with irrational fury toward whoever caused it.

You would think that his scar would make him less attractive. But it doesn’t. In fact, it does just the opposite. He is positively stunning.

Unfortunately, my peers don't seem to agree with my assessment. Listening to their hushed whispers as they stare at him makes me want to turn around and pummel them all.

Whoa! Naya, chill out!
You don't even know this guy
!

Needing to play it safe, I keep myself as far away from Etash as possible. Which thankfully, Professor Williams makes easy by keeping us on our feet for the remainder of class, so I just counter every move Etash makes while he seems to do the same.

When class finally ends, I’m surprised to find that my heart skip a beat watching him disappear off the floor with a herd of other students. I deliberately stay put, chatting nervously with the tall brunette who pulled me onto the floor earlier. I think she said her name was Kari, but I'm not even sure who
I
am at this point. Although I want to give this girl my undivided attention, I can’t help but stare at Etash as he storms out of the room, my entire body mourning at his departure.

Etash

My next two classes, directing and lighting, pass in a daze, which is extremely frustrating. Normally these would be classes that I would be excited about, but all I can think about is that
stupid
girl. It's not like me to think about girls like this, period. Thinking about her, or any other girl in any way other than a platonic relationship, will only lead to my heart getting trampled on.

But I can't help myself! Her face is there, burned into my retinas, every time I close my eyes. My stomach is twisting itself into knots just thinking about her. By the time I meet with Elizabeth Campbell, the director I’m working with for the fall show, I am a wreck.

“
Yikes. What train just hit you?” she asks, pulling her purple glasses off, resting them on her head.

I flop down into the chair in front of her desk, tossing my bag hard onto the other one.

“
I don’t want to talk about it,” I hiss at her with more venom than she is owed. She looks at me wide-eyed, then purses her thin lips into a hard line.

“
Fine. I didn’t want to hear it anyway,” she replies quickly retrieving her glasses again. I can tell she has been stung.

I’m a prick.

“
I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”

She smiles at me, letting me off the hook. She's cool like that.

“
Well, you're about to have a lot more on your mind” She slides over a flier with the audition notice. The words ‘come prepared to move’ are highlighted in yellow.

“
You sure you still want to do this show without words?” I ask, shaking my head at her and her crazy ideas. “It's not too late, you know.”

She glares at me and grabs the flier out of my hands.

“
Yes, I'm sure. With our combined dance skills, this show is going to blow people’s minds.” She sits back in her over sized office chair that practically swallows her small frame and smiles. “That’s why I hand-picked you to be my Assistant Director, you know? You really are an amazing dancer.”

“
And here I thought it was because of my boyish good looks,” I snort.

She leans across her desk, all traces of amusement disappearing from her face.

“
Why aren’t you a dance major?” she asks. “Not that you aren't going to be a wonderful director, you are. But dancing is where your heart is. Even an old lady like me can see that.”

Such a stupid question. I turn the left side of my face to her and point.
“
This
is why I’m not a dancer,” I hiss.

She starts blathering something about how I'm always hiding behind my scar. Blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all before from too many people. I'm not about to take it from her too.

Frustrated, I lie and say I'm late for my shift at the bookstore. I leave before I have to see the pity seep into her eyes.

Back at my apartment I pull a veggie burrito out of the freezer, toss it in the microwave, grab a water from the fridge and flop down on the couch, trying my best not to think. I take my time eating, concentrating very deliberately on each bite, ignoring the fact that Naya's face keeps popping into my head every time I close my eyes.

I take my time washing my one cup from this morning, spending a good five minutes filling the sink and squirting on the liquid until it forms a foamy hill. After it's been thoroughly dried and put away, I look around my empty apartment and feel absolutely alone.

Needing a distraction, I take out my script and start pouring over the pages of notes Elizabeth and I have worked on during the summer.

She got her insane idea for the show last year when she flew to Chicago
to visit her sister. At a little no-name theatre there she saw a production of Anton Chekhov’s
The Seagull
done without words, just music and movement--and she was sold. All thoughts of doing the fall show straight were abandoned from that point on. She called me the second she got back into town and asked me to be her assistant director.

Elizabeth
is one of a handful of people who know that I can dance. For obvious reasons, I dance only in private. For most of my freshman year I had managed to go unnoticed; until last spring. It was semester break and the campus was deserted, so it should have been a safe time to dance, but Elizabeth
had had the same idea, bursting into the same studio I was in. She apologized for intruding, but asked if we might share the space. I was about to politely decline when she put on some Celtic music I'd never heard before. The tracks were so haunting and full of sorrow and loss that I couldn't stop myself. For some reason I was comfortable with Elizabeth. She never once diverted her eyes when looking at me. It was surprisingly refreshing.