art geek ⌽ hemmings

⌱ 0.1

Hallie

"That's fucked." Violet and Michael were laughing about something secretive between the two of them, nothing unusual. Hallie was sat between Violet and Farren and copying down the odd paragraph Mr Bassett had written on the whiteboard. She was happy she didn't have to sit through two periods of science and let Ashton, or anyone really, bother her. Finally, she was content.

"Oi Hals, do you reckon Calum looks good today?" Farren whispered to Hallie.

"Ren, you always think he looks good." Hallie said and glanced at the front row, where Calum Hood sat, obnoxiously sucking up to Mr Bassett, as usual. He'd do anything to up his grade in science. He was tan, semi-popular, a soccer jock. The synopsis of Farren's dream, in a nutshell.

"Touché." Farren grinned and chewed on her pen, nodding in agreement.

Science didn't finish soon enough, in Hallie's opinion. The bell rang after fourth period (which to her felt like forever). She thoughtlessly pushed her science textbook into her locker and retrieved an apple from her bag, headed for Violet's nearby locker.

Except she didn't exactly make it to Violet's locker, Ashton had miraculously managed to stop her, shocker. Violet gave Hallie a not-so-encouraging thumbs up as if going to The Agora with him weren't enough (was she even going with him?), she took a bite from her apple.

"Hey, Hallie." Ashton smiled, holding two math books and a french dictionary to his chest. Please don't say something stupid, she thought.

"Hey." She wiped the apple juice remains from her mouth.

"So would it be cool with you if one of my friends kinda tagged along at the galery tonight? It's not confirmed yet but I just wanted to check with you, I don't know ..." Hallie wanted to take another bite from her apple, eat the entire core, avoid all conversation possible, but instead she forced an over-enthusiastic smile. Fuck.

"That'd be okay, I mean, it's not like it's an actual thing, right?" Hallie mentally punched herself in the face, she definitely had a knack for making a fool of herself, even if she was talking to Ashton.

"Yeah, right. Well - I'll see you later." Ashton smiled to himself and walked the opposite way, which only left Hallie more annoyed than she initially was. The putative reason she went to art galleries was to be alone, to get away from home, school, people simultaneously. Sometimes it was if dead impressionists and ceramicists were her only friends. Hallie sighed.

"Way to go, Hal." Violet cooed, taking a bite from her chocolate bar.

"I don't have the mental capacity to talk about Ashton." Hallie plead and bit another fragment of her apple. "He's just so ... nevermind."

"That's totally not talking about Ashton." Violet laughed. They walked past the performing arts block and to the cafeteria, where Farren was sat at a table by herself. It was practically the only socially acceptable place she could freely gaze at David Hasselhoff (Calum Hood) from afar, even though they were mutual friends. To Farren he was David Hasselhoff, The Danny Zuko of Westerburg High, minus the unnecessary singing and leather jacket.

"Hey." Farren greeted, a mouthful of apple cake in her mouth.

"Where's your Han Solo?" Violet scanned the cafeteria and sat down beside Farren, littering her chocolate bar wrapper.

"He's got soccer practice." Farren said and sipped from her pop-top.

"I swear you know his agenda more than your own." Violet laughed, Farren too. Hallie played with the core of her apple and thought, how could idiot Ashton Irwin like me? She was the furthest from attractive any sixteen year old could ever be (granting the fact that she had the body of a twelve year old boy). She was more interested in artistic expressionism than anything academic or what was socially considered as cool. She had no literal smarts, no assets -according to herself- that found herself remotely appealing to anyone (even Ashton Irwin) willing to comprehend herself, understand where she was in the scholar food-chain. An art geek.

"See you in English." Violet prodded her septum piercing back in place and left Hallie to collect her things only to be alone in Geography.

"See you." She mumbled to herself and dreaded for the ever-so-intriguing period ahead, sarcasm to be surely noted.

Hallie sat at the back, as usual. She wanted to be as invisible as possible, which wasn't difficult to achieve in geography. Miss Dawson and her coke-bottle spectacles sat at the front of the classroom as students sat down and waited for her to mark the roll, or totally forget about the lesson all together. Either way, Hallie didn't care. No one really expected to do work, after all, Miss Dawson was at least 70 with going sight and a memory that lasted about 4.5 minutes at maximum. Geography was draining.

"Sorry, middle row's full." A tall blonde boy said to Hallie as he glowered at her, towering above her gaze. He sat down next to her, not even awaiting a response from her. I've seen you before, I swear I have, she thought. He had always sat in the row in front of Hallie, she hadn't ever heard him speak, either. No one really did that 'Hi I'm Hallie and here's three eventful facts about me' in senior year. Though Hallie had recalled he often wore black skinny jeans and a hoodie, almost always a band tee underneath. Hallie liked that about this insanely tall boy. 

"No worries, sit away." She mumbled and flicked to a random page in her book, sketching an array small flowers as Miss Dawson remained focused on cleaning her glasses.

"You ... like Twenty One Pilots?" The tall blonde boy (Hallie's official nickname for this guy) piped up as he glanced at her Twenty One Pilots tee shirt, then back to her sketches. As if she could say anything in reply that wouldn't make her feel like an idiot in front of this complete god. She felt her hands sweat and the blood in her cheeks rise. Jesus. 

"Yeah." She laughed to herself and stopped drawing, feeling the tall blonde boy's gaze on her scribbled exercise book. He chewed the inside of his cheek, something Hallie always did, too. Fucking hell.

"Do you ... want something?" Hallie attempted to cover her page with her elbow but the tall blonde boy just chuckled (was it acceptable to describe adorable man-laughs as chuckles? Was it even a chuckle?) and shook his lazily gelled head of hair in the process.

"You're good at drawing." The tall blonde boy said. That was all he had said to her  for the remainder of the lesson. Hallie wanted more of a conversation, she just couldn't think of anything witty or charismatic to say, or anything at all. She gathered her practically useless geography books and headed to English.

Luke

Luke spent a good majority of biology trying to think of the girl in geography's name -or the Twenty One Pilots girl as he informally called her- while Miss Cooke read an extract from the textbook (like he was gonna listen anyway). He had to have seen her around, for sure, at least he thought so.

He wished he could talk to the Twenty One Pilots girl again. She seemed different to any other girl he had unintentionally sat next to in geography, any class, actually. He liked the way she didn't bother asking for Luke's name. Instead she silently awaited for him to introduce himself. He would've, but to him the Twenty One Pilots girl was rather exceptional. To Luke, she was something. Something good, bad, he didn't care. As long as she was something to him, perhaps.

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this is incredibly short i apologize but it's fr cute so i hope that persuades you to not crucify me.
please don't crucify me.
be sure to vote, comment, whatever tickles your peach.
you'd think i have some weird peach fetish but i don't ok they're just cute.
like this chapter.
ok i'll see myself out.
also the next chapter will be a heck of a lot longer.
nd please do accompany your comments with some feedback and constructive criticism because that is appreciated more than anything. i'm always aiming for improvement creatively and literary-wise.