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"Wait, so you bumped right into him and he helped you up, then you both had to sit at the back table during first period because you were late, and then when you guys were on your way to the assembly, your class was full of idiots and your teacher was absentminded, so the guy brought you to the bathroom and tried to make you feel uncomfortable to test your trust and you felt something weird from him, and then you guys made it to the assembly a few minutes late, then when you two had World Siv together, everything just felt . . . weird?" Jack talked with alacrity that I could hardly understand a word he said. He tried summarizing my interesting experience from this morning. I tried best to ignore him.

The assembly and my last two classes went by in a flash. We were at lunch and sat pretty much alone at our table except for the weird guys who sat on the second half, far from us. I was having pizza for lunch and Jack was having the school's best mozzarella sticks. I hate to admit it, but I spent most of this time searching for Aiden, but eventually, I lost hope. He probably didn't have the same lunch period as me anyway.

It felt like my mind continued to wander from there because I heard Jack repeating my name over and over again. "Vincent? Vincent!" I couldn't count the number of times I spaced out in the middle of a conversation with him that he'd have to yell my name multiple times, just for me to snap out of it.

"Sorry! What?" I yelped.

"Were you even listening to a word I just said?"

"Yeah, definitely . . ." I picked at my pizza, still looking at the doors. Five more minutes, I told myself. If he doesn't show up then, I'd know that he doesn't have lunch with me, or he's just incredibly late, which isn't much of a surprise. The reason I wasn't surprised, though, was because we were late to first period, the assembly, and he was even late to World Siv because he had to use the bathroom. But he was never this late.

Jack shook me for a second to knock me out of my thought process for the thousandth time. "What's his name anyway?" he asked. I felt his gaze on me but I kept my eyes locked on the doors to the cafeteria.

"Aiden," I told him, not daring to look away.

Suddenly, something happened. Something really good happened. Aiden walked through the door right as I said his name. But my eyes still didn't move. Instead of moving, it caught sight of Aiden looking right back at me. And the spell was broken. I turned back at Jack with a smile. "His name is Aiden Johnson. I only talked to him because I thought being friends with him would help. I told myself this morning that I would make new friends and I'm not letting it go."

I looked over at Aiden again. He looked at me too and smiled.

"Hey," he mouthed.

I couldn't control my smile. Jack noticed and looked at where I was staring. "Is that him?" he asked.

I nodded. As soon as Jack looked away, Aiden winked. Then he turned around with a satisfied grin. I took this spare time to listen to Jack, something I haven't done in forever.

"Who was that guy he's talking to?" Jack asked me. "He looks familiar. He looks like someone I know, just . . . older."

Both of us looked at the guy in thought. Then a lightbulb went off in my head. I could sense that the same thing happened to Jack.

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