“It’s Andi, right?” Bruce asked, looking up at her as he pushed up his glasses. She simply nodded her head, slowly slipping her backpack off her shoulders and gently setting it down.

“I remember you,” he pointed, leaning back in his chair as she sat down. He looked at the PHYS101 roster on his screen, where it said Illustration next to her name. “My only non-science major.”

Andi nodded slowly, she was the only one who could hear disappointment in his voice. “I’m sorry,” she quietly apologized as she opened her backpack.

“You don’t have to apologize, really.”

She looked back up at him as she set down her physics notebook. He saw the surprise and confusion in her eyes and he just smiled to himself.

“Science and art have more in common than you think,” he began to explain, catching a glimpse of the sketches in between her notes as she flipped through her notebook.

“They’re both ways of how we understand the world, I think one can benefit greatly from the other.”

—————

“Lydia.”

She turned around and gasped, her arms twitched and ached to change shape in order to protect herself from what she saw in front of her.

Matt, who looked just like he was all those years ago, stood in front of her in a cell sealed in glass. “It’s nice to see your face again,” he spoke, his voice calm.

There was even a smile, excruciating pain beneath it, but it was just enough to make her stop and move closer.

-

“Lydia, look at me,” he pleaded, pressing his hands against the glass, subtly sticking to the surface. “Please, don’t walk away.”

She shook her head as she stared at the floor, taking a few steps away as the man she knew all those years ago began to melt away.

As she ran off, his voice went from soft and pleading to guttural and threatening as he screamed one last time.

“Look at me!”