Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Assertive

Mervyn POV  

I was looking at a flower I'd found, which could, I supposed, be a bookmark, but the blue colour was too stunning for something as mundane as that. It almost perfectly matched a certain eye colour that I had seen on...  

Good grief, why was I drawing them? And in my trigonometry book, of all places. And what's more, it wasn't even a good picture. It didn't do them justice. It was just a pencil sketch, and I could never find that shade of blue ink, and mixing paint for it would be impossible. Or maybe it was the absence of the rest of the face. She had chestnut brown hair that fell gracefully (somehow) into her face, and sparkling eyes (although that hardly counted as the rest of the face, now did it?) and a sweet, rounded face. She had a perfectly innocent smile, bit her lip when she was...  

Perfect. Now I'd drawn that, too. Once again, in my trig book. My teacher was going to be so pleased. That was another reason I had liked it back in my old school, because the teachers all knew that I really couldn't help myself and hardly even looked at the drawings all over my notes anymore. That and the fact that I already had a group of friends, and I didn't have to go and make new ones.  

I would have to copy the drawings over into my drawing book, even though they were neither of them very good. And maybe I would call Sinead, because she had told me to call every night, but we both knew that I would never remember. Sinead was one of my friends, who was very energetic and friendly and... assertive. Yeah, assertive, that's a good way to say it. Maybe a little like this Hazel character that Meggie was friends with. And she kind of embarrassed me a little sometimes, signing me up for stuff I didn't want to do and sometimes... kind of... I don't know, she was just embarrassing. And I was wasting time. My homework wasn't going to do itself.  

But despite all of it, I was happy about the move, kind of. It meant seeing Meggie again, and my parents were happier. The hours of work (we moved because of their jobs) were shorter, if very strange, and the pay was more. And plus, this was the place where everything happened. Where they grew up and met each other and all that. And also where Mel was conceived, but I tried not to think about that. It was kind of gross.  

And another reason was, of course, the new people I had met. Meggie had picked some very amusing friends. But I had to stay off that topic if I planned on getting any work done.