Pied Piper ☓ myg

4

It's been 13 days.

I know she said she'd let me know if there were any openings, just... how can there still be none??? It makes sense but at the same time it doesn't make sense. The one time I want to leave a class, I can't.

I have tried to talk to Harley about it, but her and Riley said the same thing: there is nothing left to do except wait it out.

I mean, they're right, it just sucks. I have a semester plus three weeks left of this semester and then I'm done with high school, but it feels so far away now.

I do turn eighteen tomorrow, that's one thing. I am a little sad about Yoongi, I'm never going to know what he planned. Or who he is. But, I'll deal. I'm just going to be spending it with Riley and my mom.

"Listen up, everyone!" Yoongi calls out.

I sigh and bring my attention to him. We make eye contact for a split second before he moves to the board.

All I have to do is get through today, I tell myself. Like I do everyday.

This is hard.

"Alright class," He starts, turning back around to make sure everyone's listening, "I know we have ten minutes before we go, but I need to talk to you all about an upcoming project."

He turns, writes something on the board, turns back around, and moves so we can see it. "You are to write a poem with your partner of my choosing. You will get to pick your topic with your partners and you will write about the same thing. This will be to see different perspectives on one topic."

My heart sank at 'partner of my choosing'. I got the ickiest feeling in my chest, but I decided to brush it off. It won't be that bad. It's just a partnered project. I can handle whoever I get.

It always took a little long to get to my name in alphabetical order since my last name is 'Smith'. Riley is a little bit before me with hers being 'Paige'. We usually end up partners when teachers just go down the list, except on the rare occasion there's someone with a last name starting with 'R'.

I paid attention to the first couple duos called out and, thankfully, it was alphabetical order. Fuck yes. I know for sure nobody separated us on the list, so this would be easy easy.

Except everything got bad again when he skipped over me and paired Riley with someone else.

I waited nervously for my name, only for it to never come. "You guys can head over to your partners for the last few minutes of class if you want." Yoo— Mr. Min directed. I sighed and mentally cringed when I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked over to him.

As I approached, he looked up at me expectantly. "You need something, Miss Smith?"

I nodded. "You didn't give me a partner."

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and he looked over the list again, scanning it over a good three times before leaning back in his chair. "I guess you're right, I'm sorry. I did it late last night after grading so I must've accidentally skipped over you."

"Well, I mean, I don't mind doing it by myself—"

"No need. I'll be your partner." He says bluntly. With no hesitation, either. Weird.

"A—Are you sure?"

He nods and looks back up at me again. "Yeah, I'm sure. It would defeat the whole purpose of the assignment, anyways, if you were to do it by yourself," He turns back to his desk, continuing with whatever he was doing on his computer. "It's no trouble."