remember when I knew

CHEN AZALEA

IT WAS A warm sunny day. The birds were singing, even though no one asked them to, the wind was blowing, but not enough to make the day fresher, and, for some reason, people were happy.

Stupid people.

Chen Azalea sighed in the hallway and looked around her. Idiots. That was all she could see. She didn't expect to find smarter teens when she moved. Humans were humans everywhere, here and there.

This morning, she got a few texts from some girls from her old class wishing her 'a happy first day at school', and telling her that 'they were missing her already'. She'd spoken twice to those girls. Maximum.

Azalea had tried to come five minutes early, hoping to miss people, but apparently everyone was thinking that, and putting her bag in her locker took a lot of patience and glaring.

Most of the students were forming groups already, knowing each other from the last years, she supposed. Azalea always wondered why people were so interested in socialising. It was just wasting energy into something that could break so easily. Was it really worth it?

Her yes followed some remarkably noisy boys in front of her. It seemed to be with them.They were three. Twins, dark skinned with short frizzy black hair, and someone else. He had brown hair. It wasn't exactly light brown nor dark blond, somewhere in between with some reddish reflects. His eyes were also a very light brown. He wore a plain white T-Shirt and jeans.

She looked at them as the brothers laughed and the third one just stared at them. Then, a blond covered in flour joined them.

Flour? Weird. It seemed like the flour had been dropped on him from the upward. Apparently, he was used to it since one of the twins handed him a towel so he could take care of it. Even when she thought she finally understood human beings, someone proved her wrong. Like, flour? Really?

One of the twin seemed to be really energetic and was making enormous, ridiculous gestures while talking. Probably someone a little overactive with a need (consciously or not) to be noticed. A passionate guy probably. The other was more discrete but had a spark of cleverness dancing in his eyes, like he was amused and waited for the right time to pop in. Flour-boy mostly listened, groaned and huffed. He had that posture and those wandering eyes, looking for someone, maybe? How could she know.

And the last one. She didn't know what to think about him. He was so... different. There was something off in the way he was talking, the way he was standing. He looked confident, but something showed he wasn't. At first look, she wanted to give him a similar description to the one the first boy had but something made her think she could be wrong.

She watched him as he closed his eyes and took deep breaths. He seemed stressed and his hands gripped his bag. It looked like he was concealing a... claustrophobic reaction, maybe?

Frowning, Azalea wondered what it could be. She needed to know. She was a really observant girl, and the one thing she hated more than life was not knowing.

He opened his eyes and they locked right in hers. She felt his gaze and held it: she definitely wasn't going to look away first. If she could win against her cat, she would crush him right now. He looked away, and his eyes wandered on the floor at her feet.

Ha. She won the staring contest.

Azalea straightened as the four guys left, and walked to her class, trying to avoid all contect, but it was a lost cause since half of the world seemed to be greeting here. "Let's deal with school, " she whispered to herself. "Again."

When she got in her class, most of the seats were taken. She went to a table in the back and stopped in front it. There was already a girl there. Brunette, blue eyes, and deeply concentrated in her book.

"May I sit here?" Azalea asked, pointing at the other seat. She would have just sat without saying anything, it's not like the girl owned the chair, but it was the first day, she could wait a week before being the 'bitch'.

The girl looked up and offered a friendly smile. It reached her cheek as she nodded excitingly, but her yes stayed empty, looking more cold than ever because of the blue. "Sure. I'm Frigg."

"Azalea." She sat and put her books on the desk with a sigh of relief. Asking for so heavy books shouldn't be allowed.

"You weren't here last year, were you?" Frigg questioned, cautiously putting her ruler between the pages of the book, closing it and resting it on the wooden table.

Azalea followed her movements, her eyes falling on the cover. She couldn't read the title from there, but it was some kind of green... frog? Monster? She wrinkled her nose, confused.

"No."

Frigg didn't seem discouraged by the sharp tone, she just grinned back. "Did you move from somewhere?"

"From England. And I lived in Taiwan before that."

Azalea actually lived four years in Tainan City, and then twelve years in Manchester. People noticed her British accent a few times since she moved in. The worst one was the server at Starbucks, who asked her to say 'water' twenty times.

Safe to say he would never dare to even look at her again.

Frigg sighed in delight. "Taiwan... I never even left the country. Except when I go visit my grandparents in Sweden... Were you born there?"

"Yeah."

"So you're bilingual?" She questioned. "That's so cool," she commented when Azalea nodded. "I only speak English. I spoke a little Swedish before, until I just gave up. It's not like Swedish is hard, anyway, you know. It's like primitive German. Do you go back to Taiwan often?"

"No."

The teacher finally arrived and thankfully stopped the small talk. Azalea thought that sitting next to someone reading meant she wouldn't have to talk. Apparently, she was wrong.

Dear world, if even the bookworms were getting outspoken, who would there be left?

She stopped listening to the teacher, discreetly shoving an airpod in her ear, drowning the noise under 'The Show Must Go On'.

As soon as the day was over, Azalea hurried home. It was a warm sunny day. And a cold stormy night was getting ready.

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A/N: Tell me what you think of Azalea!

Question: What do you read when you need to feel better?

I read "A Heart In A Body In The World".