The Unknown Road

6 - Tessa

"SO DO YOU HAVE a partner yet?"

I hear Archie's voice from behind me after he's grabbed his A3 sketch pad from his slot.

"Nope." I shake my head.

Other than Archie, no one has jumped out at me as a partner, and I could see that pretty much everyone had been taken. I didn't mind working on my own if I had to though, and I'm sure Mrs Doctor would allow it.

"Have you decided your theme?" He asks.

"Nope." I shake my head again and give him an over-exaggerated grin. 

He snorts, "Me neither."

I sit and start sketching an idea from my head when I hear him sigh.

"So looks like it's me and you, then?"

I look up at him and he has the cheesiest grin on his face. I try not to react too much, but inside I'm squealing at him finally asking.

"Really?" I say with sarcasm, looking around in mock desperation and he grins wider.

But when our eyes meet, I roll mine, a grin spreading over my face as he drags his chair over to my side of the desk, and plonks himself down on it with a contented sigh.

"So you're my partner?" I sit back in my chair and cross my arms, feigning disappointment despite my clear elation.

"'fraid so," he grins and knocks me with his elbow.

I laugh and smack him gently on the shoulder as I take Mrs Doctor's book out of my bag and write both of our names on it. He does the same to his book, and we both laugh as we start to talk at the same time.

He extends his hand chivalrously, letting me go first.

"So a theme?" He nods, clearly about to say the same thing.

I had several ideas - most of them board or tabletop game themes - and Archie quite liked them. We talk it over for about twenty minutes, before ending up shortlisting it to either Monopoly or a game of Solitaire. But when we start to lay out all the different squares in our books, it became apparent Solitaire would work better. Monopoly had too many cards, if you included chance and community chest cards, not to mention it would also be quite hard to make it all three-dimensional, or personal to us.

"We could use our different themes for the pictures on the cards? And then maybe just have like a kind of jazzy background or something?" I ask.

He starts roughly sketching out how the cards would be laid out in his book, so I lean over his shoulder to look, leaning slightly on his arm so I could see. He moves his arm so I can see and get a zing of electricity run through me when my fingers rest on the heel of his hand. He doesn't seem to notice.

"So we have the Ace piles here," he draws four squares with an arrow coming down from each, "and then we can have the piles at various stages?" I nod, and he continues. "Then we can have an arm or a hand over here somewhere, holding a couple of cards up or something?"

He looks up over his shoulder and we both pull back slightly as we realise how close our faces are.

He clears his throat as he scratches the back of his neck with his free arm so I move away from him.

"Yeah, sounds good to me. What would we put on them though?" I ask, moving further away to get my book. With my pencil, I draw a rough sketch as well and start a list of potential ideas for cards.

"That's where the theme comes in. Mrs Doctor said something personal to us, didn't she?"

I nod. "So family? Hobbies?" I suggest.