Felicity walked through the double doors that led into her school with her head down. She was pretty much a loner; she had a small friend group, every single one of them an introvert, a bookworm, a music lover, a total geek for a school subject. Felicity was a science girl, though. She especially loved watching the stars and learning about space. Astronomy. She spent lots of her free time studying everything in the universe beyond the earth's atmosphere. Out of everything in the universe, the stars always fascinated Felicity. She found them so captivating. Every star had a name, and every star had a story.
Sometimes, she hoped that the stars were smiling at her, to tell her the odds were on her side and everything would eventually be okay. She hoped that everything would be okay in the end. Her mum was so sick, and Felicity was beginning to struggle with coping. If something took a turn for the worst, she would lose everything. Her dad was already not in the picture. Her parents had divorced over a decade ago and had never communicated with one another since. It was like her father had completely forgotten she existed. Just another missed star.
She kept her head low as she walked down the hallway. She could hear other students snickering behind their hands as she walked past. A boy tried to trip her. It was pretty obvious she was not well-liked at all. Unfortunately, behaviour like this from her peers is something she calls normal. She kept walking, one foot in front of the other. Eventually, she reached her locker, and only then did she lift her head to look at her friends who were waiting at her locker for her. She silently collected the things she needed from her locker and quietly walked off with her friends.
None of them actually needed to speak to each other. They just enjoyed being in each other's presence. They walked back down the hall to their first class together. This time, though, they didn't need to walk down the busy hallway with their heads down because they felt much more confident when they were with one another. But they could still hear all the whispers behind hands, and see the strange looks some of their own classmates were giving them. As they walked into their first class and sat down at their desks, the four friends shot sympathetic smiles toward one another. Commerce wasn't that bad.
The commerce teacher, Mrs Kyler, walked in briskly through the door muttering apologies for being a few minutes late. "Sorry, so sorry!" she breathed. "Traffic, people, too much for me to handle!"
The forty-year-old woman was always quietly spoken. Felicity always thought she had too much anxiety to be a teacher, especially a teacher of rowdy teenagers. She pulled off her puffer jacket and hung it around the back of the chair that sat behind her desk. She shivered a little as the cold from outside caught up to her. She took a stack of documents out of her bag that she had walked in slung around her shoulder and gingerly placed the papers and bag on the desk.
"Um, okay. Everyone, we are doing a technology study based on the unit we are studying this semester. This means you will need to pair up with someone, conduct lots of research and present it."
As she paused, there was the typical chatter among all the classmates that normally happens when a teacher announces something like an assignment. Felicity and her three other friends looked at each other. Claudia and Louise looked at each other, and Felicity and Jules shot a glance at each other. They were all best of friends, but they worked in pairs better like that. It was just easier.
"Quiet down! I haven't given you any assignment details yet!" She stopped talking again and picked up the stack of papers she had placed down on the desk earlier. "This class is your headstart. Take this time to ask me any questions you have. My emails are always open, too." She began to walk briskly around the classroom, placing a piece of paper in front of each student. It had all the details on it; the task description, the requirements, and the due date.
"You may notice that the due date is in two weeks," she continued, still walking around the classroom. "So you will need to work really hard on this. We're asking a lot from you! Lots of research, oh, and you're being marked on presentation - both aesthetic and presenting skills."
To this, everyone groaned. Trust this teacher to make an assignment that will be marked on the aesthetic of a PowerPoint.
The class eventually finished, and Felicity thought she could go braindead. That was the most painful research task of her life and she still had so much more to do. Why does she need to write a mini-essay about the CEO of Apple?
The end of the day was growing nearer, and she was thanking time for progressing so fast that day. Felicity had one class of the day left: Mechanical Science. It's not that she didn't enjoy it, she just wasn't very good at it. She thought that that class could make time stand still.
As she walked in with her friends, she noticed that one person was already in the classroom, waiting for the teacher. He was sitting at the back of the classroom with his feet on the desk. She was intrigued by this boy, even if she didn't know his name. She'd only ever heard rumours about him, and none of them were nice. Apparently, he'd started a few fights with some other boys, and maybe gotten himself suspended once or twice. She knew for a fact, though, that he had the biggest temper. His patience was thin, and he was not welcomed into any of the friendship groups or gangs the boys had. Maybe, he's also a missed star.
Felicity also knew that he was top of the class in mechanical science, which she slightly envied. Her grades in this class were appalling, but she couldn't pluck up the courage to ask him to help her. She was terrified he'd fly into a rage with her. She briefly imagined him yelling at her and humiliating her in front of everyone.
Her own childhood was suddenly before her. She could practically hear her dad yelling at her and her mum. The cuss words he had screamed were intimidating. The hands he had thrown around him as if he would hit her were traumatising. The utter rage in his eyes was frightening. She shuddered as she sat down at her desk next to her friends, trying to block out her train of thought and pretend nothing happened.
The teacher came in about five minutes later. He wasn't exactly late, but he wasn't on time either. He was probably the most laid-back person to have ever walked this earth and the kind of teacher to be friends with you on Facebook. To Felicity, he was also a bit lazy. He began writing on the whiteboard in his messy handwriting with his back to the class of students.
They began to talk quietly amongst themselves and Felicity turned to her friends to start a conversation, but she was stopped when she felt something hard hit the back of her head. She recoiled in her seat but then she heard contagious laughter from the back of the room. She turned around to face the moron who'd flung their eraser at her head with her friends following suit. And then she saw him.
He laughed harder when she had turned around. "I believe we haven't met. I'm Jared, but I know you're Felicity." He smiled cockily and pointed to the floor. "Reckon you could chuck me my rubber back?"
Felicity almost felt used. "Sure," she said, showing no emotion whatsoever and hiding how unimpressed she was by how he started his conversations with people he had never spoken to before. She picked up the rubber to throw back to him, almost wishing that when she threw it, it hit him square in the nose. She noticed that the eraser was overrun by holes that had been stabbed into it by a pencil.
Once she had tossed it back to him with a blank yet unamused expression, Jared's still smiling face fell. "Oh, I'm sorry. But seriously, my name is Jared and I heard you're really good at astronomy. I was wondering if you could help me with astronomy and I could help you with mechanics since it's pretty obvious that you need help with it." He seemed completely sincere and genuine when he said this, even though the proposal could come off as arrogant.
"Yeah, maybe," she responded. She wasn't unsure or sceptical, but she was talking quietly and shyly and was also shocked at the offer of tutoring each other. She turned back around in her seat and began to write something on a sticky note she pulled out of her pencil case. Jared was confused until she turned back around and handed him the paper. "Here's my number," she said simply.
"So call you maybe?" He jokingly asked, his face breaking into a smile again that Felicity couldn't help but think was beautiful.
She laughed softly. "Something like that."
When she got home that afternoon, Felicity sat on her bed with her hand on her cheek replaying the conversation in her mind. She didn't regret giving him her number. She wasn't afraid of being tutored by him. She had a feeling something was going to happen and she just wanted everything to stay normal.
YOU ARE READING
She's Not An Introvert
Teen Fiction"She's an introvert. She doesn't talk," everyone said. He stood in the corner of the room quietly and hid a smile. Only he knew she didn't shut up. They also said he had a temper that was as hot as boiling water. Nobody knew he could melt like ice w...
