Michael Wilkinson
I'd had a crush on Michael Wilkinson for 4 years now. He'd been in almost all my classes growing up. With a data scientist dad and biomedical engineer mom, he was always doing at least 0.1% better than me every time. No matter how much I studied, no matter how much I prepared he always beat me. It made me hate him, envy him and fantasize him all at once.
A silly, high school crush, one might say.
This was the last year we would spend together before going off to our separate colleges, to forget our home town and make a name for ourselves.
This was also the last year when I had finally given up trying to get him to notice me as a woman and not as his physics lab-partner. Being some of the highest scorers in the class also meant that we were constantly pairing with each other, great minds think alike they say. Given our history of being great friends also helped, despite the competitiveness that would arise when we got our grades back we always made a great team.
I didn't stop trying to wear mascara or unbuttoning the second button on my shirt because I had given up trying to get him to notice me more, I stopped because he had a girlfriend.
It was new for him, a summer fling turned serious. It turned all my drives to get him out of the platonic zone to a complete halt.
We'd sit huddled over a physics lab on the countertop and he would gush about how in love he was with his girlfriend.
It's crazy because even though he was talking about his girlfriend who wasn't me I could still listen to every word and hang on to everything he said.
Needless to say, I knew everything about his girlfriend thanks to him.
She's 5'11, Bulgarian, long dark brown hair, liked to knit but is also a cheerleader at our rival high school, does this cute thing with her nose where she scrunches it up when she's thinking hard that Michael just absolutely can't resist, and she works at the mall at Urban Outfitters. She was only a junior while Michael was a senior. She was president of the dance committee and best of all she was going to model for Wilhelmina models after high school was over thanks to her Instagram success. And that's just some of the details I had come to learn.
They were perfect for each other, on paper at least.
Me? I was a brown skinned, 5'5, curly haired, skinny lanky thing. A poor excuse of a woman, with hallow cheeks and big eyes, I was far from the seductive siren types that seemed to catch Michael's eye. I was president of science olympiad, had a total of 800 followers on instagram, and I worked as a barista at the local vegan gentrified cafe that my eccentric aunt owned, spending my days charging people $7 for a cup of joe. Essentially, I was not Michael's type.
So here we were, first period of the day in the cold November morning sipping on our hot coffee as I held a stopwatch and he slid a mini cart over our ramp.
His eyes twinkled as he lined the cart to the magnet strip on the ramp and his hair fell forward covering his eyes. I watched as his long slender fingers brushed them back and peered up at me.
"I think we just have to do a few more trials on this ram-" The bell cut him off and I watched him groan from frustration.
"I guess we'll just have to finish the lab tomorrow," I say, forcing myself away from his gaze to pack up our stuff and grab my backpack.
"Yeah see ya...oh and you won't believe it but Nicole's meeting my parents tonight so I'll update you on how that goes tomorrow?" He smiles as he runs his fingers through his honey blonde hair again. Nervous, not about me, about Nicole.
"Yeah, I can't wait to hear all about it," I respond smiling and tuck my black hair behind my ear.
"And that's why I love you...your turn to bring coffee tomorrow morning, see ya!" He says while walking away from me and slings his backpack over his shoulder. I watch from inside the classroom, as he greets his friends outside and make a ruckus.
"Love you too," I whisper to nobody in particular.
I have English next. My worst subject. I absolutely hated reading and writing and everything to do with it. Math had a formula, an instruction, a direction. Writing? Writing was subjective, you had to guess what the other person wants to read. You have to figure out how to make your words, feelings, and thoughts match and align with all the readers. Math only had one answer.
But even worse than that was my missing in action English partner, Ashton DeRose.
Ashton.
I hated him. And I didn't even know who he was. I'd never seen him in my life. And that's because he didn't bother showing up to class. It was November, we were around two months deep into the school year and not once had he shown up to class. From what I knew, he was a new student who was to spend his last year our school; Westin High School.
Rumor has it he was hospitalized right before school started.
Since he was always absent and healing from whatever he was going through I had to do all our assignments alone without a partner. I knew my teacher had a bias, he saw me as a high scoring straight A student, assumed I would've been fine working on the project by myself.
And I would have, if it wasn't my worst subject. So now here I was stuck, doing double the work than I am supposed to for a class I hated.
So there you have it, I hate him. Even though I've never met him in my life. I just needed someone to be mad at for all the extra work I had to do for my least favorite class I guess.
As I entered my English classroom, I frowned when I saw that the desk next to mine was occupied by a dark-haired boy.
He was here?
It was November. He missed two months of school and now he was back just like that? Wasn't there some type of regulation for this? Shouldn't he have to like drop down to a lower English to catch up or something?
I cautiously made my way to my desk, wary of the lean body that occupied the desk next to mine. In the corner of my eye I saw that he was pale skinned, wearing a black windbreaker and grey joggers. He had a silver chain hanging from his belt. A chain. An actual chain. In my head, I scoffed...people didn't dress like that here in Westin.
His shoes were the classic air forces. His right hand held a pencil and he was twirling it around. On that same arm, his wrist held a brown bracelet. He also had silver chain necklace around his neck. His ears were pierced and bright diamond studs hung from them. I didn't want to look farther past his clothes up to his face.
Slowly, I dropped my backpack to the ground against my desk and took a seat.
I kept my face straight ahead and drummed my fingers on the top of my desk. I could feel his sudden focus on me and I couldn't help but feel awkward.
I wanted to ask him questions like where the fuck he's been all year leaving me to do all this work.
I watched as students poured in from the classroom door and I tucked my hair behind my ear as my hands started getting clammy. His eyes were definitely still on me. My heart was racing and I hated that it was. I looked around and let my eyes focus on the white board.
Read it. What did it say? I couldn't focus.
Why was I feeling so nervous? Why was he staring at me? The more uncomfortable I got with his obvious staring the more I fidgeted.
I was about to burst.
In 5
4
3
"Can you stop?" I whisper-shout at him and turn my head towards him.
Unfazed, his eyebrows raise in response and-
Oh, he happened to be the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on.
God surely took his time on this one because wow.
He had brown eyes except they were so light. So, so light they looked like a cat's piercing gaze. They were so light and chilling against his pale skin and raven black hair, it felt like they could stone you. Like Medusa or something.
His cheeks were slightly flushed from the cold weather. And his lips.
They were blood red. And against his paper white skin, they looked big and very kissable. I was going to die.
"You're staring at me...I-I...could you stop the staring?" I awkwardly explain.
"Whatever you want," he responds and the longing pools of honey turn away from me to focus on our teacher trying to grab everyones attention.
Just cause he was pretty was no excuse for his absence.
"Okay guys, for our next reading project we're going to be doing the same thing we did for the last book.
With your English buddy...Dalia I hope you've introduced yourself to Ashton, you'll need to catch him up on a few things....but you're all going to read the book then discuss your thoughts on the recent unfoldments in the novel. As you do, continue to meet your partner once or twice a week to add to your character board.
Our new book for this lesson is Catcher In the Rye. This book is very controversial in our school system because some of us professors disagree on when students should read the book, during their sophomore year or when they're a little older as seniors. Lucia, help me pass the books out."
I muster up all my courage and turn towards Ashton.
"You're my buddy, and you haven't been very present for the past two months so I hope you're ready to start putting in the effort because I've been doing all the group projects on my own and I suck at English and it wasn't fun and I uh- I hope you...you know, are ready...to work," I let out and immediately bite my lip to stop myself from being more embarrassing.
I started off strong and invincible but then he stared at me so intensely that I couldn't help, but break down. Fuck. This wasn't fair.
"If you don't like English why are you taking AP?" He asks.
"I...because I take all advanced classes and honors because I want to go to receive a good scholarship. College is expensive."
"But what's the point if you're doing awful in the class?"
"I'm not awful, I get B's in this class,"
"B's aren't A's,"
"Yeah but I might still end up with A when the year is over. Plus I'm bad at english, so getting a B is okay. I-I...I can still get a scholarship,"
"Who said it was okay?"
"Well...well I'm assuming it's okay?"
"It's not,"
"H-how do you know?"
"Get A's,"
"This class is..h-hard for me," What's going on? Why am I explaining myself to this guy? The same guy who's been gone for 2 months of school wants to tell me about MY grades.
"Why are you stuttering?"
"I am not,"
"I'm gonna call you Stutter,"
"I don't stutter!"
"Do I make you nervous, Stutter?" I wanted to slap his smirk off his face and back to the hospital. Suddenly, I enjoyed working on my own.
"W-what, what are you talking about?...No, no you don't," I turn away from him furious as to how this conversation was unfolding. By then, Lucia comes over to our desks and hands both of us the book.
"So how do you wanna do this?" He asks.
Avoiding eye contact, I stare at the book and explain the project, "We could read the first section and then talk about it tomorrow in class. She gives us a lot of time in class to do this part. As we read the book we have to make a character board. So for this, we'd have to meet outside of English. It's worth like half our grade. After that, once we're done with the book we each have to write an essay on the main character. Then she gives us a final grade for our discussions, character board, and our essays. It's like this for every book but each unit is a different board. The last unit was a plot board. I guess this unit is character and character development," I finish and I let out a steady breath. I was proud of myself for not stuttering once during my whole speech. It was easy when I didn't look at him and kept my face hidden behind my hair and the book.
"Come over tomorrow, Stutter, here...that's my address," he scribbles on a torn piece of paper and hands it to me. I make sure not to touch his fingers as I take the slip of paper.
"Alright," I respond. As if on queue, the class falls silent as everyone collectively starts reading the first section of our new book.
I place the slip of paper into my back pocket and grab my book and start to read.