The next morning, Alice looked in the mirror and told herself, "I am going to tell him to stop today."
In the first few lessons, she learned about periodicity in Chemistry, Radians in Maths, and then had a free. But whenever she took a pause, she would find her mind wandering back to the conversation she needed to have today and what she would say. She settled on starting by asking whether he liked her and then go from there. If he said yes, she would make it clear that she did not like him back and hope he would stop making her uncomfortable. If he said no, she would clearly state what about his behaviour was making her uncomfortable and firmly ask him to stop. Yes, that sounded like a good plan to her.
The next lesson was biology. She prepared herself like a soldier preparing themselves for war. It was do or die now.
Alice sat on her seat and, as usual, Rishabh sat on the seat next to her. Today, however, they were getting their tests back. It was out of 30, and Alice had got a solid 23. When she flicked through her paper, the main mistakes she had made were just missing details when reading the questions and punching the wrong buttons on her calculator. Mistakes, she thought, no human could avoid. So, she didn't need to pay as much attention to the corrections the teacher was going through on the board. But when her eyes mistakenly wandered at Rishabh's test, she found a 28 scribbled next to "excellent," Alice's mouth fell wide open.
"How did you do that?" she asked.
Rishabh shrugged and simply replied, "Practice? I don't know. Revision, practice and attention, I guess."
"I wish I had half the attention you have!" exclaimed Alice.
"You already have much more than that." replied Rishabh, the same admiring look coverering his face as she had seen yesterday at lunchtime. Something about that look gave her butterflies in the stomach.
"Well, I'm going to have to be much better than I am right now if I want to get into medicine."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I want to do medicine too. What a coincidence!" but after a long pause, he added, "not that much of a coincidence, though, considering nearly a quarter of our year wants to do medicine or a similar course."
"That's true." answered Alice absently while at the back of her mind she imagined her and Rishabh arm-in-arm at a university campus studying medicine together.
"Why did you decide to do medicine?" she asked.
"Always wanted to help people. Wouldn't get bored on a job that involves life and death every day but still requires enough academic knowledge for the last 10 years of school to not have been a waste." replied Rishabh.
"That's almost the same reason as me!" squealed Alice. However, she apologised for being loud instantly after it, giving her sudden excitement as an excuse.
This was the first natural conversation Alice had had with Rishabh, and it felt like she could see a new side of him. Not the annoying, always trying to get her to talk, always invading her space Rishabh, but this new, genius yet humble, has same vision of life as her Rishabh.
Just as these thoughts were crossing her mind, however, Rishabh started to place his elbows in her space again, and the familiar annoyance and discomfort returned. She suddenly remembered her pledge of asking him to stop today.
"Can you keep to your side of the table, please?" she asked politely, with a tinge of annoyance still audible in her tone.
The colour drained from Rishabh's face as he suddenly realised where his elbows were. "Sorry," he said nervously, "won't happen again."
And it didn't. For the entirety of the lesson, Alice noticed how Rishabh tried his best to give her as much space as he possibly could. He was so conscious of his movements at all times. It made Alice feel bad, but she was also overjoyed that it had worked and admired the way he respected and athered to her request.
The teacher had stopped going through corrections and started teaching the next part of the curriculum, the immune system. Both Alice and Rishabh turned their attention to Mrs Patrick's voice.