The second semester began two days later.

Quinn was more relieved than they cared to show; classes meant a routine, meant a distraction, meant having a pencil to hold onto and a professor's direction to guide them, theories and techniques and things that made sense. Classes meant being around people who were real and solid and who didn't look at Quinn like they were the answer to an unspoken question they had absolutely no desire to hear.

Monday morning, they were one of the first students to arrive to their ten a.m. class, a life drawing seminar that was run by one of Quinn's favorite professors. With her hair, which was dyed a screaming red, and her colorful dresses, Mrs. Conti always reminded Quinn of a bird of paradise, fluttering excitedly around the room as they trudged inside.

"Quinn!" she exclaimed. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she squinted at them from across the room—her canary yellow glasses were pushed to the top of her head as per usual. In a few minutes, she would probably ask if anyone had seen them. "How lovely to see you! How were the holidays?"

"They were fine," Quinn lied, loud enough so that Mrs. Conti could just barely understand them as more people filtered into the room.

"Good, good," Mrs. Conti said, pleased, before she moved on to fuss over the next newcomer.

Quinn hesitated in the center of the room, their eyes darting towards the windowsill. It was the same room where they'd seen the ghost of the blond boy two nights earlier. In broad daylight, his presence was impossible to imagine; Quinn would have been tempted to chalk him up as a sleep-deprived hallucination if it hadn't been for the shock that still sat in their bones, cold and visceral.

Tearing their gaze away, Quinn took a seat on the lefthand side of the room, as far away from the desk where they had fallen asleep as possible. While they fished their sketchbook and pencils from their messenger bag, they briefly glanced at the clock. It was almost ten and Valerie was still nowhere to be seen. Quinn tried to push down their unease and put their bag down on the seat next to them to save it for whenever she decided to arrive.

At the front of the room, Mrs. Conti had already arranged a backdrop for the life drawing. It was the usual set-up: a small pedestal in front of a simple black curtain along with a block the model would be able to prop their arm on. Two heaters were already set up and pointed at where someone would be posing any moment; the art building was especially drafty, to the point that Quinn had taken to keeping their coat on during classes over the last few months.

Valerie burst into the classroom three minutes before ten, looking tousled and breathless as she dropped onto the seat next to Quinn. "Hey," she panted. "Sorry I'm late. We totally slept through our alarm."

Quinn swallowed against the taste of envy in their mouth. Or maybe it was just loneliness. The two tended to blend into one when Valerie spoke like this, in first-person plural and with affection coating every word like spun sugar. Quinn was happy for Valerie. They were. It was just hard sometimes, holding down the jealousy that reared its ugly head whenever they thought about Valerie in the warmth of Rhia's bed—in the warmth of another body—while Quinn lay shivering on their thin dorm mattress and counted the hours until dawn.

Their thoughts were interrupted by a delighted exclamation from Mrs. Conti. "Luis, there you are! Always so on time. Come in, come in!"

Quinn looked up to see what had to be the model for this class sauntering into the room. It was a boy, barely older than them, wearing a black robe and slippers. His hair was a mess of brown curls that he blew out of his eyes as he offered Mrs. Conti a bright grin and said something that Quinn couldn't hear over the general noise in the classroom.

A moment later, Mrs. Conti clapped her hands to command silence. "Welcome, everyone, to our first figure drawing class of the new semester! We will start right off by working with an actual model," She gestured at the boy with a flourish, "To hopefully flex those drawing muscles and get you back in the flow of things after the holidays. Do not be too hard on yourself if things don't turn out as perfect as you would like today—as always, we are striving for passion, not perfection. All right?"

The class muttered their affirmations. While Mrs. Conti walked over to her old-fashioned CD player to put on the classical music she usually played during these sessions—both to make the models feel more comfortable in the otherwise silent classroom and to inspire—the boy easily shrugged off his robe and tossed it over a nearby chair.

Quinn tore their eyes away from him as he stepped onto the little pedestal. It was unusual to have a model this close to them in age—normally, they were older, former alumni or people in their late twenties trying to make some money on the side. Somehow, the fact that he could be a student in their class made Quinn feel awkward.

The boy—Luis—on the other hand, didn't seem bothered in the slightest. Where other models were often skittish, avoiding eye contact and visibly fighting the urge to fidget with so much attention on them, Luis's movements didn't hold a shred of embarrassment, his shoulders loose and his grin never faltering as Mrs. Conti directed him into the position she wanted.

"Perfect, stay just like that," she finally said, satisfied, and turned back to the class. "We'll start with some quick five-minute sketches for warm-up, then we'll move on to longer poses. Your time starts... now!"

Immediately, the chattering ceased and heads were bowed over sketchbooks. Mrs. Conti floated through the room to lock the door so that no one would walk in to see Luis naked. Next to Quinn, Valerie was already working away, a concentrated furrow between her brows as she alternated between glancing at her sketch and studying Luis. Her gaze was analytical, almost clinical in the way she picked his proportions apart.

Quinn looked at their own blank page and hesitantly picked up their pencil.

There was always a sense of intimacy about these types of classes, heightened by the warmth of the heaters and the hazy lighting that fell through the half-drawn curtains. Still, Quinn usually managed to regard the models the same way they would any inanimate object. They weren't sure what it was about this boy that made their fingers feel unsure around their charcoal pencil, their usually firm lines uncertain.

The first five minutes were up before Quinn had even finished sketching the torso. Luis briefly circled his shoulders and got into a new position while Mrs. Conti set the timer on her clunky watch for another interval.

Shaking their head, Quinn tightened their grasp around their pencil. This time, they worked quicker, trying to only focus on the rough outlines without lingering anywhere. For a while, it worked; at the end of the next two intervals, they had at least somewhat satisfying sketches.

Then, Mrs. Conti moved on to longer poses.

"Do you think you can stay like this for the next thirty minutes?" she inquired once Luis had gotten into position.

"Sure," he easily replied. His voice was low, a pleasant rasp that made Quinn feel even warmer. There was a quiet confidence in the way he held himself, his body language open and relaxed. Something about the heaviness of his eyelids as he turned towards one of the heaters, a little sleepy but still startlingly alert, reminded Quinn of a cat sprawling in the sun.

Mrs. Conti gave a satisfied nod and set the timer.

Luis was now standing with his hands clasped behind his head, his chin tilted slightly to expose the vulnerable curve of his neck. Without a time constraint, not lingering became significantly more difficult. To make matters worse, his hooded gaze was now directed at a spot right next to Quinn's head. Their heartbeat stumbled every time they almost made eye contact, but they couldn't tear their gaze away.

The longer they stared, the more Quinn understood what drew them in. Luis was a mosaic of juxtapositions. With his prominent jaw and strong eyebrows, he was all edges and sharp angles, but his warm brown eyes and long lashes brought a softness to his face. He was tall and a little bit lanky, but as holding the same position got more strenuous, the muscles in his arms got more pronounced, rippling under his deep bronze skin. His curls looked like he had just rolled out of someone's bed in a way that Quinn knew could only be achieved by meticulously styling it that way, but the black nail polish on his fingers was chipped. His face was serious, but even when he wasn't smiling there was an amused glint in his eyes, a curl to his lips that looked like he was in on a joke that everyone else could not even guess at.

Blinking rapidly, Quinn rubbed a hand over their face. How sleep-deprived were they that they had so much trouble focusing? They'd never looked at a model like this before. They'd never looked at anyone like this before.

"Why the fuck would you waste your precious lifetime on this?"

Quinn jumped so hard they almost dropped their pencil. Over the last twenty minutes, barely anyone had uttered a word, the room only filled by the scratching of charcoal on paper and the soft whining of violins from Mrs. Conti's CD. If someone did talk, they whispered; this person, however, had spoken at the volume only Mrs. Conti would use to announce the time.

Dread pooled in Quinn's stomach when they lifted their gaze and saw that no one else looked fazed in the slightest. The other students kept working; Mrs. Conti kept floating merrily around the room; Luis kept looking at an undefined spot somewhere behind Quinn.

They dug their fingernails into the palm of their hand, hard enough to hurt. Part of them screamed to keep their eyes down, to ignore the voice and move on. But another part—the naïve one that still wanted to believe that none of this could really be happening—was already willing them to look up.

Quinn turned their head and locked eyes with the girl from the New Year's party.

She was leaning against the windowsill where the blond boy had sat just two days earlier. She looked just like she had at the party: same spiky red hair. Same harsh make-up. Same outfit: heavy combat boots, a short skirt, a Sex Pistols t-shirt under a leather jacket adorned with safety pins and buttons, like she'd clawed her way out of a magazine about 70s punk fashion.

And the same terrifying heat in her eyes, except this time it was directed at Quinn.

Quinn immediately looked away, but it was too late: their violent flinch had given them away.

"Oh," the girl said. In their periphery, Quinn could see a terrible, razor-sharp smile cutting her face in half. "Would you look at that. I didn't believe Vince when he told me about you."

The room tilted slightly as Quinn forced their lungs to breathe in and out, in and out.

Look around and name five things you can see. Their pencil. Their desk. The stone floor. Ripped fishnet tights. A leather collar. Skin so pale it was translucent. The girl the girl the girl.

"He said you didn't want to talk to him," she continued. Her voice was a throaty drawl that sounded like a pack of cigarettes per day. "You gonna run away from me, too?"

Quinn didn't respond. Their jaw ached with how hard they were clenching it to keep in the hysterical laugh trying to claw its way up their throat. Their mouth tasted like copper and salt.

A small noise cut through the fog in Quinn's head. It took them a moment to realize that someone had cleared their throat, and even longer to understand that it had been Luis. When Quinn glanced up, they noticed with a start that he was looking straight at them. He blinked, slowly, before his gaze wandered towards the spot Quinn had just stared at. His brows furrowed when there was nothing to be seen.

"Hey, Blue. Person with the blue hair," the girl demanded. "Look at me when I'm talking to you. I know you can see me!"

Quinn didn't look at her. They couldn't; their eyes were tethered to Luis's, to the steadiness of his gaze as he studied Quinn the way they had studied him just a few moments earlier. Searching, wondering. Seeing in a way that made Quinn's skin itch.

The girl released a frustrated growl. "You can't run from me forever, you know. I know where your fucking room is. You can't hide from me here. I won't stop until—"

"Well done, everybody!" Mrs. Conti's tinkling voice rang out. "I think that's quite enough for today, we don't want to hold poor Luis here for too long. If you want, you can leave your sketches here for me to review—or you can just take them with you and view this session as practice. Thanks, everyone!"

Immediately, sketchbooks were flipped shut and people got to their feet. Quinn didn't move for a few long seconds, still reeling, before a light touch to their shoulder made them jump.

"Hey," Valerie said. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Quinn's attempt at a laugh came out a terrible, garbled sound. "I'm fine. Let's get out of here."

Valerie shrugged on her jacket and slung her tote bag over her shoulder. "'Kay. Coffee break at the Sugar & Spice?"

Under different circumstances, this was the part where Quinn would have teased her about not being able to go two hours without seeing her girlfriend. As it was, they could barely stop their hands from shaking as they slid their belongings back into their messenger bag and scrambled to their feet.

At the door, they risked one last glance over their shoulder. The girl was gone, leaving only Mrs. Conti and Luis. She was showing him one of the sketches someone had handed in, but he was barely paying attention; his eyes were fixed on Quinn, his expression another unspoken question.

Quinn really, really wished people would stop looking at them like that.

They turned and hurried after Valerie, but the ghost of Luis's gaze still lingered on them long after they'd left the campus behind.