For a little while, Jia Li seemed to be having a pretty easy time of not thinking about that jerk. Once she really allowed her mind to be free, she could concentrate on the text of her book. It was really interesting to her, too, and she found herself grabbing a pencil and a notebook from her book bag to make sure things she felt were extra important were jotted onto the college ruled paper.
Her writing was graceful and swirling, much like how she was on the dance floor. She managed to get through a few pages in the text book until her brain began to consciously register shouting in the distance. At first, she had only subconsciously realized anything was happening because she was so absorbed in her studies. However, a glimpse in her peripheral vision caused her to gaze to flicker toward the source which happened to be sprinting right toward her.
As soon as she realized it was Jack, a blush crept over her cheeks in embarrassment. As if she had somehow summoned him from her earlier thoughts, he had arrived. Then she realized he wasn’t looking anywhere near her but at the sky. Green eyes moved up, and she saw a projectile of some kind, and she suddenly realized that he probably hadn’t seen her at all in his effort to chase or catch whatever it was.
Too late, the young dryad thrust her feet into the ground to propel her backwards into the tree. Her legs straightened at the force, so he was able to run over her without hitting her legs, but though her back melted into the bark, the rest of her torso following, her hands weren’t quite there. A gust of wind moved over her, but what must have been his leg or maybe his shoe caught her textbook. A tearing sound was heard, and a sharp pain moved through her left hand, but her small cry of pain was muffled by the trunk of the tree that encased her.
Her thrust had been such that she actually fell backward out the other side of the tree. Her left hand immediately moved to clutch her pained right hand, and she noticed a line of red about an inch long at the base her palm, welling with blood. Everything had happened so quickly that she wasn’t sure if the textbook had caused the injury or if his shoe had somehow cut her. All she knew was that her hand was bleeding, and the entire palm was rosy from the impact itself.
Jia Li gritted her teeth and didn’t cry out again, but she did look around. Her textbook lay pages-down on the grass, a single page had been torn from it. Her notebook was also lying half-hazardly on the grass, but the pages weren’t torn so much as folded and bent at odd angles. She didn’t see her pencil anywhere, but her bag was fine, resting against the side of the tree where she had propped it while she studied. No harm there.
Then, there was the creep who caused her injury and her disarray in the first place, shouting nonsense while prancing around with a squirrel that was desperately trying to escape by any means necessary. It took a moment as the dryad propped herself into a sitting position, but Jia Li realized that the squirrel must have been the projectile she’d seen soaring through the sky.
She was shaking a little, but she stood as he began to look her way and greeted her with none other than the name with which he’d dubbed her when they had first met. Well, at least no one could say he wasn’t consistent. Instead of greeting him, she just shook her head. Her legs felt much steadier, but her hand throbbed dully. It wasn’t really bleeding much, but new blood still welled to the surface of the cut.