Merry Christmas, Love Wattpad

To: @aftermath

To: @aftermath

From: @fairylights_

 - - -

“Okay, kids, when I call your name, come pick a slip of paper out of the bowl and sit back down at your seats. No peeking. And yes, that’s directed towards you, Noah.” A collective snicker floated around the room at a blushing Noah Berkley’s expense before the teacher continued speaking with a satisfied smirk on his face. “Once everyone’s gotten a slip, you can unfold them and see who you got, but don’t tell anyone else, okay? It’s called Secret Santa for a reason.”

After he gave the instructions, the teacher, Mr. Hayes, proceeded to randomly read off names on the roster, waiting for each student to retrieve a slip from the bowl located on his desk. While he went through the process, his eyes roamed across the small group of high school seniors.

In opposite corners in the back of the classroom sat two young students that had spoken no more than ten words to each other before. Yet, even so, they never failed to sneak not-so-surreptitious glances at each other every few minutes and blush whenever they were caught doing so by the other. The one in the right corner was a girl with dark brown hair and thoughtful emerald eyes, which always seemed transfixed on the scene outside the window she sat beside. Sometimes she was scrawling furiously in a blue notebook or dozing off against her arms folded on her desk; other times, she was staring out the tall pane of glass next to her, watching the leaves tremble on branches and the sky turn different shades of blue and silver. But just when it seemed like her mind was entirely ensnared by nature or writing, she’d slowly flick her eyes over to the boy who sat in the opposite corner. 

The boy had been a transfer student two years ago, hailing from across the pond with an English accent that all the boys rolled their eyes at and all the girls fawned over. After the initial novelty of a new (cute) British student had passed, the other kids had begun realizing that the boy himself wasn’t very exciting and was actually very boring and dull - or at least that was what /they/ concluded when he proved to be rather shy and soft-spoken. But the girl always watched him, always observed him, and liked to think she knew him quite well (which was possibly very silly since she hadn’t actually held a conversation with him - /ever/), so she knew how sweet and lovely and kind he really was. The others never saw the softness in his jade eyes, or the way he just lived so /gently/, or the amount of care he put into his work, academic and otherwise. Once, they’d been in art class, both quietly working on their paintings on opposite sides of the room, and she had spent twenty minutes simply watching him glide his paintbrush over a petal of the rose he was working on, blending the scarlet hues with careful strokes. The motion of his hand had been so delicate, so mesmerizing, his fingers so gentle and precise, and -

“Kristen,” Mr. Hayes called out loudly. When the girl - Kristen - jerked her head up to stare at the teacher with startled doe eyes, she forcefully snapped herself back to the present and remembered the activity they were doing. Then, cheeks flushing with embarrassment when she realized he’d actually been calling her name repeatedly, she scrambled out of her seat and scampered towards the front of the room. He gave an exaggerated sigh of relief when she reached his desk, stating with more than a hint of sarcasm, “Thought we’d lost you for a minute there,” but despite the teasing tone of his voice, he still eyed her kindly and with more understanding than most.

Kristen let a tiny smile grace her lips briefly as she fished inside the bowl and plucked a slip of paper out of it. Mr. Hayes had always been her favorite teacher since he was one of the only people at this school that didn’t think of her as a space case or a loner, but rather as a quiet, artistic spirit. He knew she tended to lose herself in her own little world sometimes, mostly when she was writing in that notebook of hers, but he never berated her for it because he knew she preferred it that way.