Make a list of all the things that could go wrong, my mother always said, and out of them, choose the worst one. Facing the worst will prepare you to handle the world.
That's a peculiar advice, I had always thought. I had never really applied it, but I didn't have to. I was a normal girl, maybe the kind who likes to stay in her own company in silence, the classic quiet girl at the back of the class. And of course, the biggest decision I had had to take in my life was whether I should've painted the walls of my room white, or light blue. And in the end, I had them painted of white, feeling like the colour blue was too daring for my likings.
I only had one friend and did not go out in the evenings, but I was quite content with how I was leading my life.
That is, until he came around.
His name was Harry Styles, and be it the way he carried himself around or his extremely wondrous looks, I knew he would've made my life a tad bit harder the second I first looked at him. He was in only one of my classes, and sat far away from me, almost on the opposite side of the room. Needless to say, my grade in maths dropped a little bit. I would sit on the edge of my seat, my gaze moving between my notes and him, the monotonous voice of my teacher in the background. And more than once I had looked at my notepad, just to realise I had been inadvertently sketching him. I had always ripped the page off right after, balling it up and throwing it away the second I left the room.
He never looked at me. More like, he never even glanced in my direction, not even by mistake. He seemed not to notice anything that wasn't in his line of view, metaphorically.
He only hung out with the most known people in the school, because we all know popular people have an uncanny interest in beautiful ones, and if his looks didn't describe the word beautiful, I didn't know what would. Soon enough, his dashing looks had made him known, the word spreading like wildfire. He was the most popular person in the school, and nobody even knew why.
However, his lack of interest in anyone that wasn't his friends wasn't a completely misfortune to me, for it allowed me to look at him a bit more than I would've usually trusted to look at anyone else.
He was beautiful and, unfortunately, nothing attracted me more than beautiful people. I couldn't even pinpoint what it was that made him so absolutely perfect in my eyes, if his own, of a sharp silvery green, or the way his dark locks contrasted his milky complexion, or how soft his rosy lips seemed to be. It was just him, in his entirety. He was more than I'd ever seen, and as much as I loved it, I also hated it. He was too much for my sight to hold.
"Sierra? Are you zoning out again?" A sharp voice next to me asked, and I glanced in the direction it came from.
I gathered my thoughts, going back to looking at my notes as a wide smile spread on Ella's face. "Or are you looking at Harry Styles again?"
"I'm not" I whispered, automatically lowering my voice as our maths teacher passed by.
"You so are. You should go talk to him" she replied as the bell rang.
My eyes widened. "Are you crazy? No!" I hissed.
"Alright then" she said, "If you don't want to talk to him, then I will. I'm not gonna let such a hottie pass by me without doing anything." She fixed her short dress, short enough to challenge the school code, before making her way towards him, her golden head held up proudly as if she had nothing to be afraid of. She stopped right in front of his desk as he gathered his things, not lifting his head.
"Hi!" I heard her say excitedly, and the second hand embarrassment washed over me, making me wish I could've hidden under my desk.
He glanced up at the sound of her voice, an impassible look on his face as he stood up, towering over her. He looked at her straight in the eyes for a few seconds, without saying a single word.
"Harry, are you coming?" The boy with clear blue eyes said from the classroom door, and he turned his head towards him before walking away, leaving her in front of the now empty desk with not even as much as a single word.
She shut her eyes taking a deep breath, taking in the rejection, as I stared with wide eyes at the door he had just exited from, not believing what had just happened.
Ella walked back to her desk, next to mine, putting her books together and taking them with fast movements. "Well" she said snappily, "He's an asshole. There you have it, no need to waste your time on him." She turned around and rushed out of the classroom, leaving me alone.
I took my books and followed her, erasing the incredulous look off my face. I walked alone in the middle of the corridor looking down at my feet as I always did, multitudes of students, in small groups or alone, walking past me. I raised my head to spot where she had gone, but my attention was soon stolen away by someone else.
He was standing right in front of me, leaning against a locker while staring at his blue eyed friend as he told him something. He bit his lower lip in a subconscious move, making my pace slow down considerably, side-glancing at him as I walked past.
I shook my head forcing myself to look right in front of me and search my friend, who seemed to have disappeared. I spotted her at her locker and rushed towards her.
"Why did you run away?" I asked her, my thumb tracing the side of the notepad in my hands, the awareness that I had forgotten to throw away my drawing when I exited the class making it burn in my arms.
She lightly shook her head, shutting the locker close harshly. "It was getting late. I don't want to be late" she replied, but she couldn't have fooled me like that, and she knew it.
"I'm sorry" I said, "for... you know."
She sighed. "I should've known. I mean, look at him, he's so..." she paused for a few seconds, trying to find the perfect word to describe her distaste of him, and let out an annoyed hiss as she realised she couldn't find any. "I bet he's gay" she muttered, glaring at the metal of the locker.
I raised my gaze to look behind her, where I knew his locker was by then. He was talking to a tall, blonde girl. She was trying so hard to impress him, it was obvious by the way she kept trying to raise her skirt as subtly as possible, one hand over his forearm, as he looked at her with a smug look on his face.
"Uh, are you sure about that?" I asked her, motioning to the scene that was going on behind her.
She turned around, an outraged look on her face as she realised what was going on. "That fucker!" She hissed, hitting her locker with the palm of her hand, the loud sound making everyone turn towards us. Everyone but him, of course.
"Let's go, we have English" I sighed, and we started walking to our class.
"I can't believe it! He totally ignored me, but then he talked to that... skunk!" She said, shocked, and I stifled a laugh at her words.
What a peculiar way to refer to someone she didn't like.
She looked at me. "Do you think it's funny? Then what about you go talk to him and get rejected?"
"I'd never" I replied fast as we got into the classroom.
We sat down at the far end corner of the room, glancing at the door every once in a while, waiting for the teacher, that was mysteriously nowhere to be seen, to walk into the room.
"Well, he's a prick, but I wouldn't mind his friend, at all" she said all of a sudden, and I turned around.
The blue eyed boy had entered the room, reaching the seat at the other side of the class with a confident stride, sitting at it, no books with him.
"Him?" I asked her confusedly, and she nodded.
"Should I go say hi?" She asked me, already making sure her blonde hair looked perfect.
"I mean, if you want to" I hesitantly replied, trying not to think about how badly it could've gone.
"Alright, I will then" she chirped before standing up and walking towards him, taking advantage of the fact that the teacher was yet to come into the room.
I saw her say something, and the blue eyed boy looked at her, sizing her up with a bored look. They exchanged a few words, and then she came back.
"How did it go?" I asked her curiously.
She stared annoyedly at the desk for a few seconds before replying. "He asked me, and I quote, what do you want. Can you believe him? I went there to say hi, and he asked me what I wanted. I can't believe him!"
"Maybe he didn't mean it in a bad way" I said in a thin voice, and she glared at me.
"In what possible way could asking that be okay?"
The arrival of the teacher in the room spared me from having to reply.
• • •
When the class was over Ella rushed out again, wanting to leave the rejection behind her, leaving me alone to follow.
I stood up, gathering my books together, before walking out of the room. I glanced up, to see a pair of familiar green eyes standing by the door. For a second I wondered what he was doing there, but then I remembered that his friend was in that class, and that he was probably waiting for him. I walked slowly towards the door - and consequently towards him, my eyes not leaving him, knowing that he wouldn't have looked at me.
A girl exiting the room, that I recognised as the blonde I had seen him talk to before, told him something, her hand resting on his shoulder for less than a second, making his head turn towards her, and he raised an eyebrow. What I hadn't noticed though, was that by then I was only a few feet away from him, his friend on my right. As he turned his head to glance at the blue eyed boy, his gaze met mine, as icy as I'd never seen it, urging me to look somewhere else. He didn't spare a second of his time too long on me, and looked at the blue eyed boy.
"Can you move faster? It's getting tiring here" he said, his husky voice hitting my eardrums as I walked past him, pressing against the opposite side of the door not to brush against him.