The Minor Complications of Love

Chapter Twelve: Where to Start?

Where is Mia? Where is Mia? Drew chanted this in his mind repeatedly as he had felt that he had covered and patted over every single inch of his classroom without finding her and even worse, without even getting to find anyone for that matter. Did everyone just leave him?

"Marco!" Drew shouted. 

"Polo!" A ton of students answered simultaneously. Great, they didn't leave just yet, he gratefully thought to himself.

"Marco!" He said again.

"Polo!" 

Bingo. Drew smiled. Through the pool of voices he had just heard Mia's voice. He turned around and walked to wherever the voice could have possibly come from. 

"Marco!"

"Polo!" 

Bingo -- that was Mia's voice again. Displaying a smirk across his face, Drew crouched down and pressed his hands against the cold tiles of the floor. He heard a little bit more of the laughter everywhere in the room. He couldn't wait until this could be over. He seemed to be acting like a total loser.

"Marco!"

"Polo!"

Mia's voice was getting nearer. Perfect. Drew continued crawling, this time with a much more faster pace.

"Marco!"

"Polo!"

Her voice sounded like it was just a few inches away. He could deduce this much, because her voice was getting louder and was getting clearer compared to the other continuous shouts of, "Polo," in the other parts of the classroom.

"Marco!"

"Polo!"

Still with a smile wide across his face, Drew felt a hand touch his as he continued crawling. The hand felt rather warm -- warmer than anything he could have felt before. He held the hand tightly. The hand's skin was rather soft and was smaller than his. As he held onto the hand, he felt so comfortable. It was as if suddenly, everything felt so right -- if that even made sense. Drew took a deep breath and softly said, "Marco?"

"Polo," he heard Mia's voice whisper.

Drew smiled as he guessed whose hand he was holding, "Mia!" Quickly, Drew took off his blindfold and sitting right before him on the floor and leaning against the wall of the classroom was none other than...

...Jason Morris?

Even if he was surprised, Drew couldn't do anything but stand still. He didn't understand why, but there was some part in him that didn't want to let Jason's hand go. Jason and him weren't close at all. They were from two different worlds. Jason was the one who would be hanging out with the cool kids, being a varsity player on the football team and all, while Drew was a really awkward kid who would be hanging out with the geeks. With his puberty hormones almost kicking, Drew would have felt completely uneasy and would have thought how awkward it must be for Jason that he wasn't stopping himself from holding his hand. That was what he should do. That was what he would normally do. But, Drew just couldn't let him go and to be fair, if anyone would ask him when did everything start, it would most definitely have to be this moment -- this moment when his heart pounded in his chest like some kind of thunder, this moment when he suddenly felt the type of safety that he had seemed to have never felt before, and this moment when he felt like he was more of himself than he ever was in his entire life.

"Guess you didn't get it after all!" Mia giggled, interrupting that whole moment and causing Drew to let go of the hand of a seemingly uncomfortable Jason.