‘Algebra,’ you sigh and roll your eyes as you walk to class on the first day of school. There is nothing you hate more than math and you dread having to take it as your first class of the day. You pick a seat along the back row, hoping to go unnoticed, as you watch the rest of your classmates file into the classroom. Not seeing anyone you recognize, you slump into your seat further and try to blend in with the wall behind you. Your teacher (an unusually chipper, young, probably recently graduated, brunette) begins by introducing himself before taking roll call. The girl next to you leans over and whispers “he’s cute!”
“Not my type,” you respond, and the girl replies with “whatever” and gives you a weird look before turning to the person on her left.
“(Y/N?)” The young math teacher calls and you jerk your head up.
“Here,” you say in a tired and uninterested voice, and continued drawing a unicorn on the back of your notebook.
“Kasperi Kapanen?” Your teacher calls again. “Did I say that right?”
“It’s close enough,” the boy on your left replies. You wonder if he’s the new kid you’ve been hearing about, and glance up at him. Unwillingly, your heart flutters when you accidentally catch his eye and he smiles. “Hi,” he says quietly, and you smile back.
Halfway though class, a small, folded piece of paper lands on your desk, drawing you out of your daydreaming.
You carefully unfold it, and at the top, in obviously boyish handwriting, ‘nice unicorn’ was written. You blush and look over at Kasperi, assuming he wrote it, and find him looking back at you with a smirk.
‘thanks’ you scribble quickly and hand the note back to him, hiding your drawing of a unicorn under your textbook.
A few minutes later, you found the note back on your desk. ‘seriously, I like it. It looks real.’
You snicker as you come up with a witty response: ‘really? A real unicorn? Where the hell are you from?’ and you toss the note back to him.
You hear him stifle a laugh as he reads it, earning him a glance from the teacher. When he didn’t respond right away, or in the next few minutes, you thought maybe you’d offended him, or he hadn’t gotten your sarcasm. But the note appeared on the corner of your desk, and when you opened it you found a phone number scrawled under the last note: ‘Finland, and sadly there are no unicorns there : (
The bell rings as you finish reading it and you shove the note in your backpack.
“So, what class are you headed to next?” He asks as he deliberately puts his things away slowly.
“Um, biology, I think,” you reply, checking your schedule.
“Do you know where room 244 is?” He asks. “That’s where my next class is, and I honestly have no idea where anything is in this school.”
“Yes! That’s right next to the biology classroom, I’ll walk you there,” you reply with a smile as you sling your backpack on and lead him down the hallway toward room 244, giving him a brief tour of the school en route. Before you leave him, you take the drawing of the unicorn out of your bag and quickly write your number on the back before handing it to him.
“Text me if you get lost,” you say, slightly blushing, as you hand it to him.
“Thanks, I will,” he smiles before slipping into the classroom, and you wander off to biology, not caring that you’re a few minutes late.
Perhaps math class won’t be so bad this year after all.
-Lila
