Even after attending the same school for years, Emilia still found it impossible to shake the discomfort of even being there alone. The shelter of the building hardly felt warmer than the autumn air outside from her walk in, her ears almost painfully cold. Simultaneously she felt like everyone was watching her as she kept walking directly for her locker while she also knew that almost everyone there to watch her didn't even know who she was, and there was certainly nothing notable to look at.
Daisy Collins' earlier mornings always acted as extra reassurance on the days she didn't have a sports team waiting for her instead. Emilia's closest friend would be by their lockers instead, acting as a warm anchor for her morning. The task of loading her bag with her textbooks for the day didn't feel so daunting if Emilia was protected while her back was turned, and Daisy was well adjusted to doing just that.
"How are you feeling?" Daisy asked, running her fingers through her messy blonde ponytail. Maybe she'd already finished training for the morning, Emilia was very quick to lose track of schedules that didn't impact her. "Has your timetable changed much?"
"Too much," she smiled. Making light of it would make it easier to cope with, for she only needed to go through the stress once, when it was actually happening and not before.
"Anything would be too much," Daisy commented. She knew her friend well enough to be exactly right.
"Yeah. I don't know. I guess I haven't thought about it because I have to do it regardless of how I feel about it."
"Yeah, don't think too hard about it," Daisy said. "Do you want to get out of here?" At Emilia's nod, they both knew the chosen destination of her physics lab, arriving early to her class first thing being no issue.
The bright white of every surface in the lab interior didn't put stress on Emilia's senses like it really should've done, the relative quiet to the corridors welcomed. Comfortably familiar with the height of the stool, she was quick to take her chosen seat midway across the side stretch of the U-shaped marble-topped tables that curved around three sides of the room. It kept her largely out of sight from the front of the class, hidden behind the rows that filled the middle in, her preference for the right side of the classroom simply from how that angle felt to her.
"You're going to be alright on your own?" Daisy asked. She was far more concerned than she needed to be, or at least Emilia told herself to avoid feeling like a child forced from parents on the first day of nursery.
"I'll be fine," she reassured her. "Maybe see you at lunch?" Mentally, Emilia decided that lunch would not be happening based on the amount of times it had been promised before a sport took her place.
"Maybe," Daisy confirmed Emilia's thought process. "Have a good day." With a final smile over her shoulder, Daisy left for her own class.
As was usual, Emilia was the first one there with plenty of desk space to get her things ready, and plenty of time to Max-proof his usual seat to the right, setting the stool itself as far away from hers as was acceptable, and making sure her pencil case was pushed past the halfway point between them so it would look like he was closer than he really was when he sat down. From there she could find her favourite pen, gel for her rough notes so it didn't get caught on the page, and a pink ballpoint for messily circling anything important. Passing time by looking over her last lesson's notes and trying to ignore the test script tucked into the back of her notebook, she still found herself torn away from her place of focus every time the door opened. Slowly the class filled up, all people Emilia knew by name so far, and well enough to smile at as they made eye contact, some of them close enough with her to share a brief greeting before they took their own seats. She'd started unscrewing the end of her pen, a habitual fidget, while she waited. Both Max and Clara were yet to show up and while she didn't hate it, she was starting to worry on their behalf. The door opened again.
Getting hopelessly lost hadn't been unexpected, but it had been classed in Jay's mind as an unnecessary worry, not something that would actually have him sweaty-palmed as he considered trying to force himself into the social setting of his new class after arriving late. For a school he'd always attended, and a class he'd never not taken, finding the new and considerably more out-of-the-way room felt unfairly difficult. Upon the hope that the door in front of him was the right one, he found himself checking the room number on the door against the printed number on the crumpled paper in his hand many times more than was giving him any more clarity, quickly realising that and making the decision to just go in already.
The room immediately looked different to his previous class, everything a little lower to the ground, but that was the only real difference. Physics classrooms could only differ so much. His next task was finding a seat. Had he been earlier, hoping for somewhere quietly non-intimidating would have been a priority, but that was looking a little late. Becoming aware of just how long he'd been hovering in the doorway, Jay took the closest one he could find, hoping the girl staring hard at the page of notes in front of her wouldn't belittle him too much with every inevitable wrong answer he'd give this year.
Emilia had tried to ignore Max as he sat beside her, focussing tunnel vision on the equations in front of her, no longer even reading them. When he didn't pull the chair closer to hers or enthusiastically greet her, Emilia considered that maybe the person who had sat down quietly, keeping to themselves, was not Max Bateman or anyone close to the boy who would sit so close he was practically on her lap, or stare between her and her notes all lesson, or condescendingly correct her. She looked across at the exact wrong time, and was forced into eye contact with the boy who had taken Max's seat, considering saying anything before just offering a smile. A reflected, awkward smile filled his eyes, a warm shade of bright blue that matched his slightly curly brown hair in a way only Emilia could consider a match. She quickly looked down again before she started looking at him for too long.
In a loud bang, the door bouncing back from the wall from the force that had been exerted on it (Newton's third law, Emilia habitually noted), Clara Omega and her unfortunate last name entered the room with her head down and back slightly hunched, pulling her unbuttoned plaid shirt across her chest to hide her Batman t-shirt underneath it, nothing out of the ordinary fortunately. The day she appeared confident was the day Emilia would start worrying about her.
She mumbled a brief, "morning," as she sat down on the corner seat to Emilia's left, possibly even more out of sight from the front of the room than Emilia was, getting out her own things. Clara's proper sized A4 file-paper book had Emilia's A5 notebook looking even smaller than it realistically was, and only after she'd fully prepared the layout of her desk for the next hour or so did she turn off the heavy metal music that was still bleeding through her earphones. That didn't mean she'd actually make any attempt at conversation though, and Emilia knew that, turning back to the comfort of her familiar notes in front of her.
"Alright, let's get going!"
Carrying armfuls of paper, Mr Treverton spoke exactly like he looked, always a little dishevelled. His sleeves seemed to have a preference for one sitting higher up his arm than the other, and he never remembered to untuck his tie from the buttons of his shirt after finishing a practical demonstration, so it stayed there nearly permanently. Investing in a tie clip or simply not wearing one were also options that had clearly not crossed his mind. Still, he was perfectly organised enough in every other sense, arriving exactly on time and looking a little confused at the two empty seats that had never been left vacant before. "Or not. Still missing a few people?"
"Must be the new people," Max's very distinct, always-right tone piped up from across the room. Emilia hadn't noticed him come in, but looking at his irritated expression told her exactly how he felt about the change in seating arrangement.
"Most of us should be the same... just Martha, Olivia's not starting for a few days, and—" he paused, spotting the boy beside Emilia. "Jay?"
"Yeah, that's me," he quietly replied, more uncomfortable than the word could mean to be so isolated within the first half hour of being in the room, even if the context was neutral. Emilia silently willed herself to forget his name. She hadn't been told it personally so it felt like she shouldn't know it.
"Right, here's your test script, we'll be going over them in just a few minutes," Mr Treverton explained. "You picked a good spot too." It was the more lighthearted, less stressed version of her teacher, and when Emilia realised he simply meant to the right of her, regardless of the location in the classroom, her face warmed. It wasn't a secret that physics was her strong point, but even mentally admitting it felt arrogant and uncomfortable.
"So, is this your favourite subject?" Jay asked in an assumptive whisper, taking Emilia off-guard at his interest in her. Very few people engaged in conversation with her this much, especially people who had only met her.
"No, I'm just interested—" she replied on autopilot, valuing any response over an accurate one. Then she realised he hadn't inferred superhuman intelligence like most people did. "Wait, yes, yeah, sorry." Lost in her own clumsiness, Emilia felt like she had to explain herself. "Every time I say I do physics, people always assume I'm amazingly intelligent when really I just love learning the subject."
"I get that," he nodded, willing himself to stop talking, he was talking too much. "I've been scraping the bottom of the grades barrel." As he'd said it, Jay had second guessed the actual meaning of the phrase, but Emilia definitely didn't know better.
"Yeah, I'm definitely not the science prodigy people assume I am," Emilia said, her embarrassed and awkward smile directed at the desk in front of her, to try and subtly hide her expression as if it wouldn't exist as observable. Realistically she was a little too big for the observation rules of quantum physics to apply, and Jay was sat close enough to her to notice the nearly permanent glow in her cheeks from just how many times she'd been put in such situations before the class had even started.
Pen on paper beside him was the only distraction that could break Jay out of the many other distractions of the new room. Trying to adjust to a fresh setting was clearly taking him longer than it had anyone else, and reading the various posters of physics basics in their aesthetically pleasing layouts was far easier than listening to someone unfamiliar talking over things he didn't quite understand. Where asking for repetition had become his defining character trait in last year's class, Jay didn't know Mr Treverton and his teaching style well enough yet to say something, and Emilia's real-time notes were getting him through enough as things were anyway. Her handwriting over the test script was admirably neat too, another distraction that Jay was yet to catch himself in, little block capitals in pink pen that felt like a hint as to who she was as a person. Had it been Max staring at her notes, Emilia would have been far more anxious as she awaited unsolicited correction, but with Jay shifting constantly between her notes and his own corrections, there was a part of her that considered believing in her own intelligence. Tearing another near-enough perfect square out of the back of her notebook, Emilia's fingers were so adjusted to each fold that she barely needed to look as she made them. At first Jay had assumed it was just to play with until she dropped the completed paper crane on the desk in front of her, pushing it aside and closer to him as she scribbled down another few lines of workings alternative to her own correct answer from what Clara was saying from hers.
"Good start, can I have someone else to finish that?" Mr Treverton asked, Emilia hoping that enough mental 'not me's would protect her as she began folding another crane. "Emilia maybe?" She hadn't known it, but she was the only one with a correct end to the question in front of her.
"Oh, I-" Just as she'd been about to beg him to ask anyone else, her first crane was placed back in front of her with the words 'be brave' scrawled and slightly smudged in Jay's haste across its wingspan. He hadn't put any thought into doing it, just aware that she needed the encouragement, but now it felt embarrassing, it was far too involved, way too intense. "Okay." Her agreement erased the feeling a little.
As she read from her test paper, translating numbers to words, Jay could hardly do anything but sit in awe. He didn't understand half of it which made it harder to copy down, but he tried his best to keep up despite the distraction of her workings beside him and the ease at which she spoke every messy number into organised words, the pink lid of her pen trailing over them, keeping track.
"So I concluded that while the answers didn't match, the percentage difference was actually 0.04% just that working with numbers that big makes the difference look huge. So given that it's negligible, the student was technically correct, but you could maybe argue either way," Emilia finished, a tightness compressing her chest while she waited for some kind of response.
"Yep, because of the phrasing of the question you were spot on to do a percentage difference," Mr Treverton agreed, Emilia releasing the breath she'd been subconsciously holding back, her tension freed with it. "You only get all the marks if you agree with the student via Emilia's method at the end, that's why this is such a high making question."
Shaking the adrenaline out of her body via her hands under the desk, Emilia's eyes yet again landed on the paper crane and Jay's encouragement written across it, a repressed smile tugging at the corners of her lips. His handwriting was certainly messy, but far neater than she'd expected from someone who wrote that fast and looked so tense all the time, especially given the little phrase had been scribbled across a very small bit of folded paper. Looking across at him was unavoidable and no distraction to Jay who was still just trying to get everything down, rapidly looking from the board to his notes and back again, a warm smile brought out of Emilia from a place she couldn't explain. She jotted back a tiny 'thank you' in the top right of her notebook page, pushing it towards him and gently nudging his arm to get his attention, hoping as an afterthought that it wouldn't destroy his handwritten page of notes. Jay had looked right to her face at first before Emilia tapped the page with the end of her pen, drawing his attention to her note. At that point she looked across to him to meet his smile, about to take her notebook back before his pen was hovering just below her words, an equally small smiley face accompanying them in blue ink.
"Next lesson we'll be continuing this so don't forget your test scripts," Mr Treverton called over the noise of the class packing their things away at the exact end of the timetabled class. "Thanks everyone." Adamant to keep her routines and habits intact, Emilia was used to blocking out the chaos surrounding her as she packed her things away at her own pace. It gave Jay a lead to follow, and time to say everything that had been on his mind in varying scripted forms since the class had started.
"Emilia?" he said, immediately second-guessing it."That was your name, right?"
"Yeah," she smiled. "You're Jay?" She didn't need to question it, but if she'd allowed herself to feel certain she worried she'd have got it wrong.
"Yeah." Phrasing the things he actually wanted to say felt daunting. "I um, I just wanted to ask if you didn't mind if I sat next to— if I sat here every lesson? I should have asked earlier."
"No, no, go for it," Emilia said. She almost felt bad at how nervous he'd seemed the whole lesson, especially if that had been why, if she'd been the reason. "It's okay."
"Cool, okay. Thank you." Jay took a visible breath. Maybe feeling comfortable in this class was possible, maybe even sooner than he could have hoped.
"No problem," she smiled. It was the most confident in herself she'd felt in a while. "Oh, and thanks for the bird." Acknowledging it now, verbally, even after thanking him in written words just seemed appropriate.
Jay nodded, a little uncertain how to reply and then unsure as to where his words had gone.
"You're welcome."