The School Project (W.I.P Title)

The Original Story

Emberly was a simple ash blonde, pale girl with red eyes. Emberly used to be bullied by the popular girls in her middle school. Before you ask herself why she didn't just tell the school, know that she did, but the school did nothing about it. Thanks to this bullying she developed social anxiety. Social anxiety is a disorder where you can't socialize very well, you get extremely nervous and awkward. You can't speak properly, like you fumble over your words and stutter. Crowds make you nervous and so do classes where you don't know anyone. Thanks to her anxiety, Emberly now has introvert tendencies as an extrovert, which is a huge struggle. If you don't know what an extrovert is, let's think of socializing and isolating needing a battery. An extrovert is someone whose battery is charged by socializing and drained by isolation. An introvert is someone whose battery is drained by socializing and charged by isolating.

Emberly is now a sophomore in high school and she only has 4 other friends. It's her little circle of people that she's comfortable around. The sad part is that they aren't in any of her classes, so until lunch or after school Ember is alone. Halfway through the first quarter, Emberly's favorite teacher, Mr. Midcalf, and her favorite class, English, had this huge project that was worth 20% of her grade because it was the only big project for the semester. 'This project just had to be with partners, ugh this is so bad.' Emberly thought as he started assigning the partners. "... and last but certainly not least, Emberly and Kai," Mr. Midcalf said the last pairing, and Emberly internally sighed. 'Of course, I get the most popular guy in my grade, Kai Malik.' Emberly thought bitterly as she started to write down ideas for the project. It was a minibiography project, she hated these types of projects most of all. Regardless, she wrote down in her notebook the required questions to be answered and some questions of her own, 'Favorite color, best friend, what parent he's closer to, favorite tv show, favorite movie, favorite book,' Emberly wrote all the questions in a list format while everyone else was already in their partners working and talking, while she stayed in her seat and away from the others trying to stay away from the noise. Everyone knew of her; she was the quiet girl who only spoke when answering a question, and she was always correct. Kai on the other hand was popular and loud and doesn't think things through.

Kai walked up to Emberly and sat next to her, "So you seem busy. I don't get how, aren't we supposed to be working together?" Emberly looked at him and gave him her notebook motioning for him to answer the questions while she got up and grabbed copy paper so that she can draw visuals and a drawing of him for the project. Along with doing a drawing of herself and visuals for her side too. As she got to drawing and Kai finished answering the questions, he tried to start a conversation. "So, Ember, how are we going to work on this? We have 2 weeks to do this entire project."

"Oh, Uhm... we can work on it at one of our houses... or I can give you my number... and we can work on it separately while on the phone or something and just bring the things we work on to class..." Emberly said nervously and quietly, she really didn't want to cause trouble for the popular boy who probably has so many things he'd rather do than some dumb project with her. She nervously put her hand on the back of her neck, chuckling nervously.

Kai took note of how nervous she was. "Yeah ok, well how about we go to my house after school and work on the project there. We can buy the board and set it up then after that we can flip flop between the 2 options? Is that ok with you?" Kai said a little nervous, he's never seen her talk, let alone hang out with anyone in the class, so he thought it was weird that you were ok with hanging out with him outside of class. He then thought that this was only so ok with you because the project was such a big part of your grade.

"Yeah... ok... I guess that works, I'm surprised you're available to work on this," Emberly mumbles as she nervously chuckles. Emberly asks her parents to go to Kai's house and they say she can. "So, Kai do you want to meet up at the main entrance after school to go to your house for the project?" Emberly says still timid but with less hesitation.