Raven's DarkNess | ✔

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter trigger warning: urm there's a trigger in this one that i can't say cause I don't want to spoil. But just be mentally prepared for this one.

Nine Years Earlier...

"I think that this is the answer," I said, turning to Carrie as we both sat on the bleachers. I bit the tip of my pencil as I pushed my huge square-shaped glasses over the bridge of my nose. Carrie looked over at my answer and scanned my notes then nodded.

"Oh Roey, you're so fucking smart! I just love you!" She exclaimed and made notes. We had both hunched over our Calculus notes for the past hour and a half after school had ended. The homework was hard but somehow, I managed to crack it. Now, I stared into the basketball court and watched the boys play. I tugged at my braids that were plaited in two distinct pigtails, wishing I was athletic enough to join the basketball team or volleyball team or football team or just anything.

Carrie's phone beeped and she handed me back my notes.

"I have to go," Carrie told me and she stood up and shoved everything she owned into her backpack. She kissed my cheek before rushing away and I took back my notes, wanting to crosscheck them.

It was almost 5pm but I didn't want to go back home yet. My father has to go on a business today but he'll leave at six so I decided that I would stay here till then. Ever since I missed the first star school by just one stupid point, my home had become a nightmare for me. I avoided it as much as I could.

In my pack, the top 100 high schools were called star schools because they were extremely hard to get into and only the best students from my pack or other packs that applied got into them. After 9th grade, all of us wrote a Regional board exam. Based on the percentile of our scores, we were placed/accepted into high schools according to our percentile-based ranking. Well, I missed out on the first star school by one flimsy point and my father went berserk over it. He's been upset since then. Just one point. One!

I ended up being the first student placed in the second star school which is now the one I attend. It's been six weeks of hell. I didn't know how to interact with anyone except Carrie who was only my friend because we both came from the same middle school. I sighed. No one seemed to like the nerd, it seemed.

I watched the basketball players as they shot their hoops, noticing the girls that had also come to watch the boys play. Then, my eyes caught him - Robin, my crush. He was so handsome and anytime I saw him, I felt flutters and butterflies in my belly. I squeezed the pencil in my hands as my braces suddenly became uncomfortable.

Robin was a senior. He was in eleventh grade while I was in tenth but he helped me out during the school organised orientation when I first arrived here. His sister was also in my batch but I loved how his blonde hair always seemed to glisten. I also loved how the blue of his eyes seemed to rival mine and how whenever I saw him, his sleeves were always rolled up to his elbow as he showed off his expensive gold watch.

I just wished that he would notice me but other than the day when he gave me a flyer to join the martial arts club which he was heavily invested him, we just had no interaction whatsoever. I couldn't join that club. I had zero athleticism in me and I didn't think getting my bones broken every day was something that appealed to me. I was ugly enough as it was with my awkward posture, lanky limbs, acne-ridden face, braces and huge glasses so I didn't want to add bloody bruises or internal injuries to my list of imperfections.

But Robin loved basketball. He also played sometimes so I came here after the final bell rung every day for the past three weeks with the wish to catch even a small glimpse of him and with an even bigger dream that he would maybe notice me? Maybe?