Seen Anyway

Midterm week always felt like the university was breathing differently. Everything moved faster, louder, and heavier, as if the whole University of Alabama campus were running on borrowed time and a lot of caffeine. Crimson banners hung up between some old brick buildings, reminding everyone it was homecoming, as if they had no idea how fragile the people underneath them were.

Remington sat on the edge of her dorm bed, staring at her laptop screen as if it had personally betrayed her. Scholarship declined. Not pending. Not delayed. Declined. She read the email twice. Then once more, just to be sure, it still said the same thing. It did. For a moment, she just sat there, still, as if she didn’t move, the reality wouldn’t fully land. Then her mind did what it always did when panic tried to rise, it started solving.

More tutoring hours. More babysitting families. She picked up her phone to text the Richardsons; maybe they know of families in Tuscaloosa or even Northport who need help. Something. Anything. She typed the message carefully. Deleted it. Rewrote it. At least three times. She didn’t want it to sound like what it really was: I am trying not to fall apart.

She hit send, and her gaze flicked to the time on her phone screen. Twenty minutes, her first midterm of the week. Ten minutes across campus, of course. Because life never really asked whether she was ready, it just kept assigning her things as if she had infinite capacity to carry them. Remington stood quickly, grabbed her bag, and shoved her laptop inside. Movement helped. Movement kept her from thinking too deeply. But her body was already ahead of her mind, and a tear formed anyway.

She blinked hard, shook her head once as she could physically dislodge the feeling, and pulled in a steady breath. Not now. There was no space for falling apart right now. Not with an exam waiting. Not with tuition hanging over her head like a quiet threat. Not with graduation feeling further away instead of closer. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder and forced her legs into motion.

Outside, the sun hit her skin the moment she stepped out of the dorm building. Warm. Familiar. Almost gentle. Like it didn’t know what she was carrying. Remington kept walking. Remington was halfway across campus when she saw her.

Alauna.

Same stride. Same posture that made it look like she always belonged exactly where she was standing. Graduate students moved differently on campus; slower, more certain, like the world had already agreed to make space for them. Remington didn’t slow down. She almost made it past. Almost. “Remington.”

The voice cut clean through her momentum. Remington’s jaw tightened before she even turned her head. Of course. She stopped anyway. Alauna stepped into her path with a soft smile already in place; carefully composed, practiced. The kind of smile people believed in immediately, if they didn’t know what was underneath it. “Hey,” Alauna said, tilting her head ever so slightly. “Good luck on your midterms…. sis.”

The word sis landed like it had multiple meanings depending on who was listening. If anyone else were nearby, it would’ve sounded sweet. Supportive. Normal. But Remington knew better. Alauna’s eyes held hers just a second too long; quiet pressure wrapped in politeness.

Don’t slip. Don’t mess up. Don’t make this family look unstable. Remington forced her face into a neutral expression. “Thanks,” she said simply. Not cold. Not warm. Just enough to survive the interaction. Alauna nodded, as if that was all she needed. Like she hadn’t just inserted herself into Remington’s already fragile breathing space. For a moment, neither of them moved. Campus noise passed around them, students laughing, backpacks shifting, shoes hitting pavement, but between them it was tight, contained. History always made things smaller than they looked from the outside. Different dads. Different versions of love. Different versions of being chosen.

Remington adjusted her bag strap again, already preparing to leave. But Alauna leaned in slightly, voice lowering just enough to become private. “Don’t overthink today,” she said. “Just…. Do what you need to do.” It could’ve been encouragement. If you didn’t know them. Remington nodded once, “Yeah.” A moment passes. Then she stepped around her. No argument. No reaction. No opening. Just movement. Because that’s what she did when things inside her started getting too loud. She walked away before anything could spill out. And Alauna watched her go for a second longer than necessary, expression unreadable now that the performance was over.

Remington kept walking, but something in her had shifted. Her stride shortened without permission, as if her body were quietly conceding space while her brain took off from 0 to 100. Her breathing turned uneven, shallow at first, then quicker, like her lungs were trying to catch up to thoughts she couldn’t slow down. Her fingers tightened around the strap of her backpack until it felt like the only solid thing anchoring her in place. Now everything inside her was moving too fast to name, too loud to organize, like her thoughts had stopped being sentences and turned into noise instead.

Barely registering the upcoming building changes. Glass doors. Echoing hallway. Low hum of voices. It all passed through her like she was behind a pane of thick glass. Her body kept moving anyway. Left. Right. Straight. Autopilot knew the route almost better than she did right now. By the time she reached her classroom, she didn’t really ‘enter’, she just appeared inside it. Back row. Always in the back row. Close enough to escape unnoticed if needed. Far enough to disappear if she stopped trying. She pulled out the chair to take a seat, and just as she was about to lower herself. A body slid into the seat first. “Thanks.” The voice was casual. Unbothered. Like the world wasn’t currently collapsing quietly inside the person three inches away holding the chair open. Remington paused mid-motion, her hand still on the chair. Her brain was lagging behind the moment, like it hadn’t fully loaded the scene yet. Then slowly, she looked up.

A face she recognized immediately, though not personally. One of the football team's star wide receivers. His name didn’t surface in her memory, but his presence did. Campus, if not nationally, famous. Always on something, posters, highlight clips, commentary segments. Even her favorite guilty pleasure sports morning show, which she watched when her roommate wasn’t there, has mentioned him. She’d never cared enough to memorize the details. But she knew him. That was the problem with athletes like him on campus: you don’t have to know them personally for them to still take up space in your awareness. Remington blinked once, slower than usual, like her brain was still catching up. Only then did she notice it. She wasn’t on her side. Not her corner. Not the quiet back-left seat she always drifted into without thinking. She had come in from the wrong angle entirely.

And now she was standing in the section of the room where people like him naturally existed, louder energy, looser posture, the ‘seen’ part of the classroom she usually avoided without realizing she was avoiding it. Her grip on her bag strap tightened, and she let go of the chair. A beat passed. Then she gave a small, controlled smile, polite, almost invisible if you weren’t looking directly at her. “No problem,” she said, low and quick. Not meant to land. Not meant to invite anything. Just enough to end the moment. She walks past him immediately, slipping through the row with practiced efficiency, and makes her way to her actual seat in the back corner like muscle memory is finally back online. The moment she sat down, her body settled, but her mind didn’t.

“This is your thirteenth reason why, Remington.” The thought hit before she could stop it. Not a whisper, more like a verdict. The exam, the room, the seat she’d finally taken… All of it faded for a second under the weight of what her mind immediately decided this meant. She didn’t just almost sit in the wrong place. She had been seen. In front of people, she didn’t belong beside. In front of people who mattered in ways she pretended not to care about. And now it was only a matter of time before it got back to Alauna. And Alauna didn’t keep things quiet. No, that was never her MO when it came to things involving Remington. Which means mom and dad would hear about it. And that never worked in her favor. She felt her chest tighten even more at the thought, like her body was reacting before she even finished the spiral.

She knew she would now have to plan her survival with her remaining Bama Bucks for campus food, next term’s tuition, and graduation fees. She swallowed hard. But the thoughts wouldn’t leave. It stayed looping right on into everything else she was trying to ignore. Remington knew the only way to not make things any worse for herself was to try the techniques she learned in that free meditation class she took at the student center, taking it more out of desperation than to be disciplined. She remembered enough to try to calm herself. Enough to know that she wouldn’t walk into this exam already lost inside her own head. Not today. Not when things were already hanging by a thread. So, she closed her eyes.

Her shoulders stayed tense at first, refusing to obey her intention, but she forced them down anyway. In her mind, she built her favorite hideaway place. The beach. Clear horizon. Soft wind. Sunlight that didn’t ask anything from her. Waves crashed softly at her feet as she stood on the edge of where the sand meets the ocean. Her favorite place where there were no expectations. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled even slower. One. She inhaled slowly and exhaled more slowly, noticing her shoulders relax. Two. She repeated the cycle. Three. Four. Five. Six. With each breath, deeper and slower than the last, like she was pulling herself back into her body piece by piece. Seven. With her final exhale, she let everything go with it. Not just stress. Not just fear. The weight of thoughts she hadn’t agreed to carry today. For a moment, there was nothing chasing her. Just quiet. She opened her eyes. And the professor walks in.

The professor clears his throat and gains everyone’s attention, “The exam will begin as soon as everyone has received the exam, and things have been cleared away from the tops of the tables.” Remington hung her bag on the back of her chair, she placed her pencil at the top of the table in front of her, the student a seat over from her passed her the exam paper. The professor asked whether everyone had their exams, then started the exam. Remington felt the shift inside herself. At first, it didn’t make sense; it wasn’t peace exactly, but for once, everything was still. No racing thoughts. No tingling feelings. No urgency clawing at her chest. Just this strange suspended quiet, like her mind had stepped back far enough to let her function without interference.

She blinked once, deliberately, adjusting her focus to the paper in front of her. But then it came. Not a thought. Not a fear she could name. Just this itch, an inkling, at the edge of her awareness. The feeling of being watched. She didn’t look up immediately. She knew better than that. Instead, she kept her eyes on the first question, forcing her hand to move, forcing her brain to stay engaged. But the sensation stayed anyway, quiet, persistent, just behind her thoughts. Like someone had placed attention on her without permission. And no matter how still she tried to be… She could still feel it.

She took a deep breath in through her nose, steadier this time. Then another. And then something in her clicked, not relief exactly, but recognition. A faint, almost amused smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth as her pen finally touched paper. Of course, you feel like you’re being watched. Her thoughts softened into something more grounded, almost teasing towards herself rather than the panic it had earlier. You’re in an exam, Remington. People are literally sitting beside you, in front of you, EVERYWHERE, not to mention the professor is watching over the entire class as well. With that thought, her shoulders ease a fraction as she lets her more logical side take center stage in her brain, as her anxiety had taken over. She let out a small chuckle and moved on to question one.

Question one sat there, simple on the surface, the kind of prompt to ease students in. But even as she began reading it, irritation flickered in her. Not because the question was hard, but because it was too easy. Her pen hovered for half a second longer than necessary. Around her, the room stayed quiet except for the soft rhythm of writing and the occasional shift of a chair. The professor continued pacing slowly and steadily, eyes moving from student to student, like a quiet reminder that no one was invisible here. Remington refocused on the exam in front of her. Just answer. This was one of her easier exams for the week. She was an Applied Algebra whiz, and that meant this midterm was literally nothing for her to stress over. Before she could have too many more distracting thoughts, she was flying through her questions, and then it happened again, that unwanted feeling of being watched.

She forced herself to breathe. In. Out. You’re fine. It’s just the professor. That’s all. She lifted her eyes just enough to glance toward the front of the room… He wasn’t looking at her. Her chest tightened, too fast. No. No, no, no. She shut her eyes again, trying to force herself back to the beach. But it wasn’t there. Not the way it was before. The waves crashed too loudly. The sky dimmed. The wind picked up, sharp, aggressive, wrong. Even here... she couldn’t find quiet. Her eyes snapped open. Plan B. Grounding. She looked around the room quickly, rows, desks, people, movement. Just find something real. Something normal. Something…… Her breath caught. She froze. Because this time… When her eyes landed, they didn’t slide away. They met someone else’s. And whoever it was. They had already been looking at her. Of course, this is how today is going.