She sits still, facing the clock.

She actually does go to class. Organic chemistry waits for no one, not even newly-manifested espers with fascinating backlashes.

The clock ticks. Cara's eyes watch it.

The dorm room settles into stillness around Cara's motionless form. Dust motes drift through the morning light streaming from the window, their lazy spiral dance the only movement in the space. The radiator beneath the sill clicks intermittently, expanding and contracting with barely audible metallic pings that punctuate the silence at irregular intervals.

Vera's bed is unmade, comforter twisted into valleys and peaks that cast small shadows across the mattress. A chemistry textbook lies open on her desk, pages slightly bent where she'd been leaning over it earlier, the white paper yellowed at the edges under the harsh fluorescent desk lamp she'd forgotten to turn off. The lamp hums with a frequency just below conscious hearing, a whisper from atc crawling into her ears.

On the windowsill, a dying spider plant droops brown-tipped leaves toward the floor. Its soil has pulled away from the edges of the pot, creating a narrow moat of empty space around the compacted earth. Water stains on the wood beneath suggest this neglect is habitual.

The institutional carpet shows traffic patterns worn into its beige fibers. There are threadbare paths between bed and door, bed and desk, door and bathroom. Small debris has accumulated in the less-traveled corners: a hair tie, a pen cap, several dust bunnies that shift slightly each time the heating system cycles on.

The clock's second hand moves with mechanical precision. The minute hand lurches forward in barely perceptible increments. The hour hand might as well be stationary.

"...and so we see that the nucleophile attacks the electrophilic carbon, displacing the leaving group in a concerted mechanism..."

Someone's stomach growls audibly. A phone buzzes on silent mode, its vibration carrying through the wooden desk surface. Outside, a maintenance vehicle beeps as it backs up, the sound filtering through sealed windows designed to keep the world at bay.

The clock on the wall ticks steadily toward the end of the period.

Cara would be getting sore from sitting in one place without moving this long. Her hair is drying out, but she should really change. There are clumped strands of pink fiber clinging to the damp creases and folds of her legs and belly, under her arms and in her elbows. Her eyes and nose are irritated - there's some kind of chemical offgassing from the mattress. The sun is very bright.

"The stereochemistry here is particularly important to understand. Note how the configuration inverts completely..." A student in the third row clicks their pen repeatedly, fascinated by the catch of the latching mechanism.

Click, click, pause, click, click, pause

-until someone behind them clears their throat pointedly. The clicking stops. Papers rustle as notebooks close and laptops hibernate. The heating system cycles on with a mechanical wheeze.

Everyone is intolerable. Thank god that's over.

Her butt is patterned with the stippled twill of the carpet, and her arm has an awkward red weal from pressing up against the sharp corner of the pine desk.

The keycard lock beeps twice and the door opens.

She careens in, catching the edge of the doorframe with her hand to do a little swing to redirect her momentum, and tosses a loose binder onto the desk where it clatters against the lamp.

"I'm home! Did you miss me?"

Cara hasn't moved from where Vera left her. She's looking at the clock, and doesn't turn to look at the door, when it opens. 

She stares at Vera when addressed, but she doesn't seem to have an answer to the question. 

"Of course you didn't!"

She giggles and crosses to Cara in two quick steps.

"Stand up."

She doesn't wait for compliance, before hooking a finger under Cara's chin, tilting her face up. The contact sends that familiar pleasant buzz through her nerves. "Do you want to hear about Nucleophilic Substitution?" The capital letters are audible. The transom creaks and the door closes.

She tries to stand up, but then puts weight on a leg that's fallen asleep, and topples towards Vera. 

She steps back, letting her fall. "If the nucleophile or the molecule undergoing attack have too many substituents or substituents which are too bulky, you can't have a reaction, which makes sense in retrospect."

She tries to catch herself, but doesn't do a very good job.

She stays on the ground once she hits it.

"Do you know anything about steric hindrance?" She toys with the girl's face with her boot.

"No." 

"What does the name mean to you?"

"... nothing?" 

"Well, it's when molecules can't get close enough to react because they're too bulky." She presses the toe of her boot against Cara's cheek, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to squish the skin. "Kind of like how you can't get your shit together enough to stand up properly."

She shifts her weight, considering. "You know what? I changed my mind. Lick it." She taps the leather against Cara's lips. "The boot."

She licks the boot methodically, with long strokes of her tongue.

She's kinda wondering whether she could keep the girl in this state for an extended period, as long as she just didn't touch her. She probably has enough dental dams.

The girl certainly doesn't seem to be likely to object. Lick lick lick.

Just a little kick in the teeth :) As a treat for her.

Well, she wasn't told to stop licking, so she doesn't.