There’s this painting in the lounge area of the Academy Center. There’s a girl touching a pencil to her lips. A book open as she perpetually watches. Perhaps she’s thinking and staring off into the distance. She is immortalized on the wall. Who is she? An academic pondering the world? Or perhaps a shy girl staring at her crush? Maybe an artist surveying her subject? I wonder if she’s captivated. Maybe caught off guard? Her presence is far from comforting. No, rather it’s unnerving. Although not in a way that suggests an uncomfortable look or feeling coming from her, I can’t quite explain it but the more I look, the more I desire to know what she’s looking at . She prods her lip in an almost contemplative way. Yet, though she’s always there, I’ll never understand “The Girl Who’s Always Watching.” It’s not as though she’s watching us, mind you. We’re hardly interesting, us humans. She’s watching someone, something, an “it.” I’ll never know. It’s perplexing. I wonder “what is she reading?”, “what is she thinking?”, “what could she possibly be so fixated upon that it became her memory?” There’s a plaque beside her. It reads “”Exeter Girl with Braids.” Then a list of homes carved in it. Which one is she? Or are they all her? So many questions that will never be answered by “The Girl Who’s Always Watching.”