Maxie only thought she was alone. A girl, her bright red, curly hair somehow contained in a thick headband and a hair tie sat silently in the corner. The book's cover was dusty, the title not even close to being legible, but the freshman girl was totally engrossed in it, hardly hearing the girl enter until she heard the whirr of the computer fan. She sucked in a breath and held it, wondering if she'd been discovered, letting it slowly out in a silent sigh of relief.

You may have called Sophie introverted and you would have been right. You would have called her anti-social, and you would have been right. You may have called her shy, and you couldn't have missed the mark by a more vast ammount. It wasn't that she was shy. Fearful, yes. But if you ever got her pissed enough, she was definately not scared to give you a piece of her mind. She could scream and yell and slap with the best of them if you got her mad enough. But it took some doing to get her there, and few had ever taken the time and the patience to get her mad enough to actually slap them. Most of the time it takes months of picking on her to get her mad enough to actually yell at you and slap you. She has a very long fuse, but once you get it burnt, you'll wish you hadn't, as a couple people had well found out. She could hold her own in a fight, didn't back down even when she took a hard one. No, she wasn't shy.

But you couldn't really blame her for being introverted and fearful of people. Not with her history. She was silent, often mistaken for a mute. She was far form it. She was simpy afraid of being stabbed in the back as she had been so many times before.

And so it was, if Maxie got curious enough to look, she would find Sophie, sitting curled up in a cushy library chair, reading a book who's cover could not be read.

She glanced up when she was spoken to, and gazed at the girl a moment, taking in the shirt. Her own attire was very simple. Blue jeans, black and limegreen and teal DC's, and a black T-shirt with a white outline of Tinkerbell on it, reading " what's not to love?" in colorful, rainbow font.

Finally, still gazing up at the girl with flashing green eyes, she shrugged. It apparently had no title. Or, maybe it'd had one...At one point in time, long ago. But now the spine cover was wripped off, the cover that must have once held the title now too smudged and weirded up to be legible.

She didn't have to know what it was called, only that it was about horses. "It's about horses, though" she said finally, and sucked in a breath. She hadn't spoken in..in..years...And here she was...Speaking to a total stranger. She hadn't even spoken to her roomate, who probably deserved to hear her voice more than this girl did. But there she was..she had spoken and it was too late, she couldn't pull the words back into her mouth, now could she.

Her eyes dropped self conciously back to her book. Her voice sounded scratchy, like she hadn't used it in a long time. And she hadn't. No wonder...

The girl shrugged and nodded. Yes, I like them. Her eyes had been drawn back to the book, drawn in by whatever words were held there. She gazed at the girl with unblinking steady green eyes. She shrgged to herself. What could it hurt? "Sophie Robertson," she croaked, turning her head away and clearing her throat, which was complaining at the sudden activity. She glanced at the clock that hung on the wall and heaved a sigh.

Unfortunately, class would start soon. "I'm a freshman," she added as she rose, shoving the book back on the shelf, not exactly where she had found it but close enough. She nodded, starting to move toward the hallway, wishing class weren't about to start, but this was still better than what it could have been...