A Face in a Crowd

When she looks through the list of students that she can expect to find in her next class along with her she keeps an eye out for any that she recognizes as friends. She spots a few names that stand out as people she knows more than in passing, and moves on, not putting any more thought into it. When she ends up attending that class, half a day later, many new teachers, syllabi and classmates later, the names that she had pulled out of that list aren’t at the front of her mind.
She slips into a seat from which she can see the teacher well but isn’t too close to the front of the room. As she sits down, and other students start filing in she keeps an eye out for anyone that she might need to pass a message or greeting to. Finding no one, she turns her attention to pulling out her laptop and preparing a document for note taking. When she looks back up, she sees one of the people who she recognized from the list seated next to her.
It’s not that big a surprise to see someone choosing to sit next to her in the rapidly filling classroom, or that someone who knows her would choose that seat. What is surprising is that she didn’t recognize the person at first. When she first looked up she took in the shape of their face, their hair, their bearing and frame and for a split second came up blank, not recognizing them as anyone beyond a stranger in the crowd. She usually thinks she’s quite good with faces, especially those of her friends, but there was a moment there that stuck with her when someone that she thought she knew and had talked to over text just a day before became another nameless face.

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