Mind If I Hide Here

The library was one of those places where surprises usually arrived in the form of books. At least, that had always been Stelle's experience.
You'd open a volume looking for a reference for an assignment and end up discovering a forgotten story about some eccentric wizard who had tried to raise hippogriffs in an apartment. The surprises belonged to the shelves, the yellowed pages, and the secrets hidden in the margins. They didn't usually appear in the form of people. That's why, when a stranger burst into her peaceful afternoon of reading as if he were fleeing a war, it took Stelle several seconds to react.
She was sitting by a window, an open book on her lap, a small stack of texts she would probably read later. The golden afternoon light filtered through the glass, painting warm patches on the pages. Everything was calm.

"Don't be scared." The sentence had the exact opposite effect. Stelle looked up. The boy had just plopped down beside her with the nonchalance of someone mistaking the library for a train station. She blinked a couple of times. Who was he? Did she know him? Was she supposed to know him? As he continued talking, questions began to pile up in her head with the speed of a stampede.

Why was he constantly looking over his shoulder? Who was he hiding from? And why had he chosen to hide right next to her?
Halfway through his explanation, Stelle realized she'd stopped listening, not out of rudeness—well, maybe a little. But mostly because she was too busy trying to understand what kind of situation had just landed on her bench. It was like when a pigeon accidentally flew in through an open window and no one knew exactly how it got there. Except that pigeons were usually better groomed. Finally, something managed to cut through the jumble of thoughts. An outstretched hand, a name—that helped at least a little more. Stelle studied the hand for a moment before taking it carefully.

"Stelle. It's a pleasure... Mickey." He gave her a small, polite smile. No sooner had she finished saying his name than he was already looking back toward the entrance arch. As if he expected a monstrous creature or a teacher to appear at any moment. Depending on the circumstances, both options could be equally terrifying. Then came the explanation, or at least a version of it. An older student, a stumble that led to an accident, and a flight to avoid potential anger. The more he spoke, the more confused Stelle felt. Not because the story was complicated—on the contrary, it was surprisingly simple. And precisely for that reason, it was incomprehensible to her, making her frown slightly.

"And why didn't you explain it to him?" The question came out completely sincerely. For a few seconds, there seemed to be a vast philosophical difference between them. Because for Stelle, the solution was obvious. If someone thought you had done something wrong accidentally, you simply explained it. End of story. Her grandfather always said that people were much more reasonable than they seemed, while her grandmother held the exact opposite opinion. Stelle still hadn't decided which of the two was right. Although she was beginning to suspect it depended a lot on the person.

"I mean, if it really was an accident, wouldn't it be simpler to just say that?" She closed the book on her lap and leaned her head slightly toward the door. She didn't see any angry students. The tranquility of the garden remained undisturbed, and for some reason, that made the whole situation seem even more absurd. She looked at Mikey again. Now that she had time to observe him more closely, he seemed less like a runaway and more like a boy who had made a series of questionable decisions at breakneck speed. A situation Stelle understood perfectly. She had known enough people to know that some had a knack for making small problems worse, like a talent. And she suspected Mikey belonged to that group; the thought made her smile.

"Although I suppose running away is more exciting." She tucked the bookmark between the pages of her book. The afternoon's reading seemed officially interrupted, and she wasn't too bothered. After all, interesting stories rarely began with someone quietly reading. They usually started exactly like this: with a stranger appearing out of nowhere. Her grandfather insisted that adventures made people interesting. As she watched Mikey dramatically sink into the bench like a criminal being chased by half of Hogwarts, Stelle began to think that maybe he was right.

Stelle watched as Mikey delved deeper into his backpack with the concentration of an explorer who had just discovered an unknown continent. For a few seconds, he vanished completely from the conversation, absorbed by this search that seemed to hold vital importance. She didn't intervene. She had learned that some people had to pursue an idea until they grasped it before returning to the real world. While he rummaged through parchment, quills, and crumpled papers, Stelle laid the book on her lap and observed it with quiet curiosity. It wasn't the first time she had seen a backpack in such a state. At Hogwarts, there was a rather peculiar relationship between students and order. It seemed that the more brilliant someone was in a subject, the more likely they were to carry around half the library in forgotten items and folded assignments.

When he finally found the sandwich, the expression of victory that lit up his face was so genuine that it reminded her of the adventurers in storybooks when they found hidden treasure. She found it curious how people revealed more of themselves in small moments than in grand speeches. She had known students capable of talking for hours about their virtues without saying anything truly important. In contrast, a few minutes watching someone desperately search for a lost lunch were enough to discover a surprising amount. For example, that Mikey probably lived by improvisation and somehow, he always managed to survive it.

The afternoon seemed to have calmed around her. The courtyard was still full of students, but the bustle had acquired that distant quality that sounds have when you stop paying attention to them. The wind gently moved the pages of his closed book, and the shadows of the clouds crossed the gardens like silent ships. Then he spoke. Stelle heard his comment about the questions and barely raised an eyebrow. The observation was fair, perhaps too fair. Because the truth was that a reasonable person would have asked who he was, why he was running, or what exactly he was hiding from before agreeing to become an impromptu accomplice in an unknown situation. She, on the other hand, had simply made room for him on the bench.

“I guess I should defend myself by saying I was curious,” he finally replied, with a small smile. “But that would probably make things worse.” He looked down at the book resting on his knees.

“My mom says I have a bad habit of trusting people too quickly, but that it’s a great way to learn interesting stories. And my grandma always says it’s a dangerous trait.” The statement was accompanied by a soft laugh. And, as was often the case, Stelle suspected they were both right. She looked up at him again.

“Besides, you seemed more scared than dangerous.” That was perhaps what had finally convinced her. She hadn’t seen malice in his hasty arrival, nor the calculating air of someone trying to deceive her. She had seen a boy who had reacted before thinking and who now seemed to be discovering the consequences of that decision. It was a strangely familiar situation. When Mikey offered her part of the sandwich, surprise came first, then tenderness. She hadn’t expected that kind of gesture. She found it curious that some people struggled to share secrets, yet were willing to offer half their lunch without a second thought. She glanced at the sandwich for a moment, then gently shook her head.

"No, thank you. I think you've earned it after such an expedition." A playful smile spread across her lips, and her eyes flicked down to the open backpack.

"Although I'm worried that if you put it away again, you won't find it until Christmas." The image was so absurd that she ended up laughing. And as the laughter slowly faded, Stelle found herself reflecting on how strange some encounters were. That morning, she had planned a simple afternoon: a book, a quiet bench, and perhaps a couple of chapters before dinner. And now she was sitting next to a stranger who had arrived fleeing an imaginary threat, sharing a surprisingly pleasant conversation. Truthfully, she didn't mind at all. In fact, she suspected that this story would be far more entertaining to recall than the chapter she had been reading.

"So… what do you plan to do now?"

Stelle watched Mikey gaze at the courtyard with the same distracted attention one might have watching the rain from a window: as if he were waiting for the landscape to decide, at any moment, to answer a question he hadn't yet been able to formulate. There was something strangely endearing about him. He seemed like one of those people who drifted through life following the wind rather than a map, convinced that any destination would eventually lead them exactly where they were meant to be. Perhaps that's why she could easily imagine him hiding behind a bench to escape trouble and, minutes later, ending up chatting calmly with a stranger as if it had all been part of a plan laid out from the start. The laughter they shared drifted between them as lightly as a leaf carried by the breeze. Stelle had always liked people who could laugh at themselves. She had discovered long ago that pride was too heavy an armor to wear every day and that, on the other hand, a sense of humor made even the most embarrassing situations much lighter.

“I think that’s a talent, too,” she remarked with a warm smile, resting an elbow on the back of the bench as she watched him out of the corner of her eye. “Not everyone can admit so quickly that the other person is probably right. Most prefer to argue for ten minutes even if they know they’re wrong.” Her voice retained that calm tone that seemed to envelop conversations in a kind of domestic tranquility, as if talking to her were as natural as sitting in the shade of a tree on a warm afternoon. When Mikey confessed that he didn’t really have any plans, Stelle didn’t seem surprised. On the contrary, her blue eyes lit up with a spark of complicity. She glanced down at the stone path, where a clump of dry leaves drifted slowly in the breeze. Then she followed Mikey’s gaze to the book lying beside him. Her fingers absentmindedly stroked the cover before she carefully lifted it, as if holding something familiar. A soft laugh escaped her lips.

“Oh… that, I forgot.” She showed him the cover for a moment before placing the book back on her knee.

"Book of Spells, by Miranda Azor. I'm behind on enchantments and thought I could… try to figure something out on my own." She flicked a finger between the pages so as not to lose her place. Her smile took on a nostalgic hue, though it lasted only an instant before transforming back into that luminous expression that seemed so characteristic of her.

"Although, to be honest…" she looked up at him, "I don't think you've ruined my afternoon. Now I have a tutorial on what I can do if I accidentally hook up with someone." She paused briefly, unable to suppress a laugh.

"That's a lot harder to forget than a chapter." The wind stirred a few strands of blonde hair around her face again. For a few seconds, she watched the students coming and going, the distant murmur of conversations mingling with birdsong and the sound of pages rustling in the breeze. She looked at him again with genuine curiosity, and her lips curved into an amused smile.

"You…? What were you doing before you ran away from that angry fourth-year student?"