Broken Strings

Chapter 1

Shaking off the odd sense of vulnerability that the teenager's gaze had left him with, though, Kendall turned 90 degrees in his seat, and was about to say something to James about the kid when he was interrupted by Mrs. Jones, who had just stepped directly in-between their seats. Fighting off the urge to scowl at the elderly woman, Kendall cleared his throat, nodded a bit stiffly to her, and forced the corners of his lips upward into a halfhearted smile. The gesture was responded to with nothing more than a slightly annoyed sneer, however, as Mrs. Jones tapped the lid of her "Century Credit Bureau" pen twice upon the edge of Kendall's desk.

"Mr. Knight," she began rather firmly, using her left index finger to nudge her ancient, wire-framed glasses upward upon the bridge of her nose, "you'll be paired with Logan Mitchell. Handle him carefully, I beg of you – he's had more than his fair share of disadvantages over the course of his school life."

Kendall raised a brow quizzically as his usually stone-cold Language Arts teacher moved onto the next student: James, to his left. Mrs. Jones seemed to have spoken her last two sentences with an uncanny amount of concern for his apparent project partner, and this baffled the fair-skinned teenager; regarding the fact that the woman never seemed to be truly kind to anyone. He sighed quietly once again as he shifted to face forward in his seat.

Of course, he had never met this boy – Logan – and so he was having a reasonably difficult time imagining what sorts of "disadvantages" he may or may not have come upon in life… all that he really knew was that whatever they were, they had to have been pretty serious if even Mrs. Jones was taking some odd form of pity on him. As Kendall proceeded to ponder the possibilities, however, there was an eager tap to his left shoulder, leading him to swivel in his seat once again to face the brunette at his left side.

"Yeah, Jay?" he muttered a bit distantly, blinking his eyes out of their slight haze momentarily as he attempted to halt his thought process just long enough to hear what his friend had to say.

"Hey Kendall, I heard that you got paired with that Mitchell kid." James mused with a small smirk on his face before softening his voice significantly as he spoke his next words. "I heard he's a real weirdo, man… has some kind of freakish disease or something crazy like that."

Thick brows knitting at the center of his forehead, Kendall shook his head skeptically. "What the hell, James? That's not the greatest thing to say about some kid you've never met, huh?" he accused his ever-shallow friend, resting his chin in one hand after a short moment or two. "Besides, what does it matter if he has a disability?"

At the correction of his accusation, James shrugged his shoulders and laughed softly, raising his hands before him submissively. "I don't know, dude. All I'm saying is that if he happens to give that disability to you, you better stay away from me. I don't want anything messing with the old fashioned James Diamond charm," the taller boy simpered, gesturing toward himself in that ever-so-egotistical way – according to everyone but himself, of course – before grinning and turning in his seat to talk to a pretty, dark-haired girl at his side.

Scoffing, Kendall shook his head, turning so that he, again, sat straightforward in his seat. "Idiot… Most of the rumors you hear in school are complete garbage." the thoughtful boy muttered to himself, trailing one slender hand through his hair.

Kendall had just been about to allow himself to fall back into thought, when suddenly there was a loud crash at the left side of the room. It seemed to have been created by several pens and pencils, among other things, tumbling down from someone's desk. The commotion immediately drew Kendall's attention, and upon turning his head, he came to realize that the same boy who had been eyeing him earlier on had now dropped a black, plastic pencil case to the floor accidentally, leaving various items scattered about beneath his desk and in the aisle. Kendall sighed, racking every last square inch of his mind in the effort of locating the memory that would tell him exactly when and where he had seen this boy outside of school.