A hush went through the halls at Echo Creek High when he walked by. Everyone knew his name. Girls wanted to date him. Guys wanted to be him. Every day at 7:56, he would nod at one certain girl, although several others would claim it was them.
Her name was Star Butterfly.
Ironic, as butterflies were happy, flittering creatures, whilst she was nothing of the sort. She sat in the back of the classroom each period, doodling monsters with beaks and lobster arms in a sketchbook half her size.
She was quiet, didn't talk much, and would have blended into any crowd if it wasn't for the red stripe of color in her blonde hair.
And since sixth grade, Marco Diaz, the most popular student in the school, was adamant that she would be his girlfriend.
"Morning, Star." he smoothly said after nodding. She scoffed, hiding her face behind her sketch pad.
"Oh lord, not today..." she grumbled under her breath.
If someone had said she didn't return his affections they would have been wrong. It was far more.
She couldn't stand him. The bubbly, suave personality was so see-through to her that she could have seen the lockers behind him. Often times he was the subject of her comics, getting eaten by whatever atrocity she'd come up with the class period before.
Today it was a crocodile-looking monster in a suit missing half a finger.
She liked to believe one day she'd make these terrible figments of her imagination into real creatures, but for now she was stuck in the "process" phase, where her robots were mostly cardboard boxes and rusty nails, plus assorted parts from her toaster.
The bell for first period rang, shaking her out of her fantasies and rushing to get to Algebra to claim her seat before the evil popular demon clique bombarded her area.
However, at three minutes late, and yet another tardy to add to her endless record, she was forced to sit next to the hellion himself.
"Hey." he greeted her. She returned the favor with a less-than-kind gesture of the hand behind her sketchbook.
Once the lesson began she took to her characters again. This time she was a princess with a magic wand, fighting off the demons to save...sigh...Oskar.
She knew he was out of her league. Quite frankly, he was out of anyone's league. He was perfect.
And yet her polar opposite, with his hair combed away from his face, not a piece astray. His polo shirt was IRONED. Her mother didn't even own an iron. And he played classical piano.
Star played the trombone. As in past tense played. She stopped in grade 7 when she got her braces stuck to the instrument.
However, her fantasies of dating Oskar could not be, as he already had a girlfriend.
Which meant she was stuck sitting next to...
"What are you drawing?" Marco whispered. She glared at him and turned in her seat.
"Nothing you'd want to see." she retorted. "I thought you had a "perfect record"."
"I do." he replied.
"Then I suggest you remove your nose from my business or I'll tell the teacher you were harassing me."
"Okay, god." he said, turning around and studiously finishing the assignment.
She continued on her comic. Currently Prince Oskar was in peril (and his girlfriend was eaten by a piranha, much to Star's delight) and she was the only one with the power to save him from the crocodile monster, who was nameless at the moment because she couldn't think of something terrible enough.
However, that made the current panel impossible to finish.
"Hey." she heard, and felt someone lightly elbow her, making a line across part of her paper.
"What now?" she said, glaring at Marco once again.
"You're really good at drawing." he said. She turned slightly pink.
"Not really." she said. "Did you bother me just for that?"
"No. Toffee?" he asked.
"Excuse me?" she retorted.
"How about Toffee? You know, for your evil alligator."
"Toffee? Are you serious?" she rolled her eyes. "And he's a crocodile, idiot."
"Okay, sorry." Marco said, looking at her unfinished worksheet. "You want help with that?"
"Pfft, no." she said, blowing some hair out of her face. "I can do it myself."
When Marco turned away, Star entertained herself by doodling Prince Oskar in peril, but when she finished she realized that the cartoon boy she'd drawn resembled Marco more than it did Oskar.
"Oh, screw it." she muttered to herself. It's not like anyone but her saw these comics anyways.
The rest of Star's day seemed to fly by, her pencil moving across the paper rapidly for hours on end, and the doctor's note she'd faked to get out of Phys Ed for the next week was holding up nicely. She didn't look up all day, intent on making the magical princess and her laser puppy save the prince.
By the end of the day, she was on her thirty-seventh and final panel, with a massive load of homework that would go ignored as usual. As she was adding on a finishing touch to the final scene while she walked home, which was, despite her belief that romance was a scam, a kiss, one of the older boys hit her arm and grabbed her sketch pad.
"Give it back, Justin." Star protested, but Justin laughed and held it up higher.
"And you're going to make me?" Justin said. "What is this crap anyways? Magic? Evil alligators? God, I knew you were weird, but not this weird."
"It's too complex for you idiots to understand." she said, immediately regretting her word choice.
"Idiots, eh?" One of the cronies mocked her, and pushed her hard enough she fell down."Good luck getting your stupid book back now, freshie."
"She said give it back." Star heard from behind her, and as she turned to see who was behind her one of the older boys hit her arm again, knocking her pencils to the ground. She winced in pain, holding back the tears.
The voice began to resonate as familiar in the back of her mind and she realized who it was at the same time as Justin.
"Marco?" they said in unison, Star's a tone of confusion and Justin's of disbelief.
"Look, dude, I don't want to hurt a freshman." Justin said.
"Really? Because it seems hypocritical based on the circumstances." Marco said, pointing to Star, who was collecting her pencils off of the ground.
Justin dropped the book onto the ground, laughing. "Whatever." he said, walking off.
"Are you okay?" Marco asked, offering Star a hand. She smacked it away and winced.
"I'm fine." she snapped, picking up her book and starting to walk off. Her arm was seriously painful but there was no way she was letting him know.
"I saw them hit your arm, and I saw you fall." Marco said, walking next to her, and slowly lifting her sleeve to reveal a few scrapes and bruises. "Oh my god."
"It's nothing." she replied, pulling her sleeve down.
"Star, that isn't nothing." Marco insisted. "Come on, my house is right up the street. I think I have some painkillers in my cabinet, and I'll make you nachos.
"I said no." she protested, and he lightly grabbed her arm, making her wince and drop her pencils.
"You really think you're fine?" Marco asked, picking up her pencils and passing them back to her.
"...Not really," Star admitted. "Fine. I'll go to your house, but only because you promised me nachos."
Star didn't talk as they walked to his house. She didn't talk when she sat down at the counter, waiting for him to bring her a painkiller pill.
He came downstairs with a full first-aid kit.
She didn't talk when he asked her to take off her hoodie, revealing a light blue t-shirt with an octopus on the front.
The first sound she made was when he began rubbing alcohol on her cuts.
"Ow." she squeaked. "Can you not do this part?"
"It keeps your cuts from getting infected." he said. "And I don't want to hurt you, I promise."
Star let her lips form into a small smile, which quickly faded into a grimace when he moved on to another cut.
"Almost done." he said, looking through the red bag. "Crap, I forgot the band-aids. I'll be right back."
"Okay." Star said under her breath.
She let herself smile thinking about how careful he'd been and how he'd reassured her that she'd be okay. And she hadn't noticed until he was inches from her face how gorgeous his chocolate-brown eyes were, and the cute little mole on his cheek.
She hadn't realized he was actually attractive.
Maybe, she let herself think, there was a reason that she'd accidentally drawn him instead of Oskar that morning.
"Okay, I grabbed like fifteen, we should be good." he said, shaking her out of her fantasies. He carefully bandages each cut and each time her smile grew a little wider.
He insisted on walking her home, and she didn't protest. They didn't talk, but about halfway to her house she did something she'd never have expected herself to do.
She grabbed his hand.
As their fingers interlaced both turned slightly pink but neither commented, and the walk seemed to get shorter by a mile with each step.
She walked up the steps to her door, putting her hand on the doorknob and stopped.
"Hey, Marco." she called out. He stopped walking back and turned around.
"Yeah?" he asked, walking up the steps.
"Thanks." Star said, smiling.
He took a deep breath and kissed her cheek.
"No problem." he said, walking back down the steps and down the sidewalk.
Star watched him go, frozen in shock on her porch for about ten minutes.
"He kissed me." she said to herself, and it made her giggle.
When she finally opened the door she had concluded that she was looking forward to tomorrow.
