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"Hey, hot stuff, what's the weather like up there?" I giggled at the boy's comment. Peggy had began to fancy Josh McLennan and he walked her and Anna to class, leaving me in the dust that Richie had just pulled me out of.
"Hot and stuff," I said, history class. Richie was talking about the English assignment, it was our semester grade and Richie was stressing about it.
"Richie, this assignment isn't something to worry about. This is the type of project you feel instead of do." He looked at me as if I was crazy and I would've too, my words made zero sense to anyone else but me.
"That makes no fucking sense, you have to do the project or you'll fail, that's how these things work." I placed my hand on his shoulder as we got outside the door of my history class.
"It's like you're talking to me, you just gotta pay attention," He scrunched his nose up in confusion, "wanna hang out after school?" I asked, my plan was to hang out with him and have him write down 5 new things about me t the end of the day. That's the start of our project, besides we have 15 weeks to do this.
"Are you kidding me," his outburst made me jump, "of course, when, where?"
I didn't think this far, "how about you walk me home and we can go from there?" He nodded vigorously with his toothy smile. His hair curled up around the ends and it seemed to be getting curlier and longer by the months. I remembered seeing him the last week of summer, him and his band of geeks.
"Class is about to start, bye loser." I dismissed him and walked into class. I saw one of his Losers now, Stanley of course since he was the only one that I had the class with. He looked at me and watched me sit down in the row in front of him but 2 seats to his right. I looked back to see him looking at me but he looked down quickly, we did this back and forth thing for awhile until I made the final move in our game.
I got up and made my way to him, placing my books down on the desk next to him. He kept his head down and scribbled on his paper neatly. Richie had told me something about Stan having obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Richie actually told me a lot about himself. I have a list.
He wouldn't talk to me nor look my way. He actually never gave me a second thought, but I gave him all of mine in that moment. I purposefully stacked a few smaller books under my bigger ones and held my pencil incorrectly, it felt uncomfortable. He tapped his pencil on his paper and glanced at the things I had done to bother him. After a bit he'd finally snap and came into my space to fix my books.
"Don't hold your pencil like that, it's weird," He scolded me while fixing my fingering on my writing utensil, "doesn't that feel better?" He asked as he sat back down and looked at me in the face. I smiled and nodded at him as my sign of gratitude.
"Thank you, Stanley." I said and went back to writing the date on my paper before the teacher had come in. He kept glancing my way but I acted as if I hadn't noticed to save the boy from any embarrassment.
