She was walking downstairs into the subway station that had a smell you couldn’t imagine. It was a mixture of trash mixed with every other terrible odor you could imagine, music blasting through her headphones. When out of nowhere someone came up behind her and scared her as she took her last step on the first pair of stairs. This station in particular had a lot of stairs, 91 steps to be exact. She always took this train everyday to and from school. It was him. He walked down behind her and apologized for scaring her. She was pretty sure he wanted to catch up to her since before she entered the station she looked back to look for him because a part inside of her wanted to see him, but he wasn’t when she looked and it was a long way from their school to the station. So in her mind she thought that he must have ran to get to her.

“Hi,” he said with the biggest and most sweetest smile she has ever seen, and walked down the rest of the stairs into the station with her. They would sometimes see each other waiting for the train since they both had to take it everyday. This was the second day they were taking it together. Even though they saw each other from afar they were both too shy to speak to each other. Until she got the courage to message him on Instagram. He was tall, looked kind, caring, and not a single bad thought of him. He was the type of guy who would never judge you for doing something funny or getting a question wrong at school. They began to talk, but never at school. The only times they talked were on the train or online. So to her, being at the train station with him was special yet scary at the same time. She was actually too scared to say much since she already knew that she would turn very red, she would look down or away when he would speak to her. When they walked together into the station she went in first and he followed her until she got to the spot. That was the spot. That was the perfect spot. Next to a pole, perfect for when the train pulls into the station because the doors would open right in front of her. He stayed with her to wait for the train, they talked and laughed together about the most random things that would happen at school and share the funny things that someone in their class would do, until the train came. They both got on and sat in one of those seats where only two people can fit and away from the rest of the people. He had asked her what stop she was getting off at but because on that special train she only rode it for two stops she had to sacrifice her faster route to getting home to take the longer route so she told him a different stop since he sort of already knew her stop. When she told him her stop he looked up at the stops the train was taking and also decided to skip his stop and take the long way home too. Inside of her felt happy and special that he wanted to stay on the train with her but a part of her also felt confused because at school the only interaction they would have would be stares and awkward hi’s. When
they would cross paths. It was like he was a totally different person outside of school. This scared her.

Days passed and she began to realize that he wouldn’t wait for her or time his walk to the train as hers. The conversations began to be less and less. She had already known what was coming and the signs were all there so she tried to prepare for it but she didn’t think that any amount of preparation would have prepared her for how he began to act towards her. The halls at school began to feel terrifying since whenever he would see her he would turn his whole head away and walk in the weirdest way possible to walk past her just so that he wouldn’t look at her or take a whole different route if he saw her from afar. Yet the staring never stopped. Wherever she was, he was there looking right at her.