Daylight

ONE.

Reagan pulled her notebook out from her backpack, adjusting the zipper to keep the contents from spilling out onto the floor. She set it on her desk, opening it to her notes and sliding her pen out from the spiral. She was ready today for the quiz, she just needed to look over her notes one more time to be sure. She was sitting in the back of Mrs. Owen’s class in the third row, right between a girl named Erica and a boy named Kade. The boy was flicking a girl sitting in front of him in the back of the head with his pencil. The girl, Erica, was twisting a strand of her golden hair while tapping the screen of the phone hiding under her desk, the light gleaming white on her dark blouse. The boy in front of Reagan, Brandon, was laughing hysterically at something his friend, Chance, had said, throwing his whole body back, making his desk ram into Regan’s. Shouts and squeals pierced the air around Regan and the smell of cologne and perfume clouded around her nose.

She barley paid any attention to the chaos of the class around her. She was intently focused on cramming in a few more minutes of studying time before the English quiz. Mrs. Owen had informed them of the test yesterday, so Reagan was less prepared than she liked to be and she was trying to catch up on wasted time. The material was bland (mostly about the specifics of grammar correction) and it was a Friday, so she could see why the other students weren’t bothering to study. Still, couldn’t they a little less loud? Reagan thought.

Mrs. O was writing the day’s agenda on the white board in neat cursive, her hand straining to scrawl at the top of the board. She was tiny, probably in her mid-thirties and still a good foot shorter than the junior class, with an oval face and thin blonde hair. She wasn’t a strict teacher, which was nice, but she really let the class off on a lot things.

Brandon turned around in his desk. Reagan looked up from her notes.

“Hey, do you have a pencil?” he asked, brushing his dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. He had a scruff of blonde hair at the point of his chin that she’d never noticed before. Probably, because he had never been this close enough to her to ask a question.

“Yeah,” she replied, reaching down to zip open her backpack again.

“Dammit, we have a quiz today?” he was looking at the notes on her desk with wide brown eyes.

“Yeah, we do,” Regan murmured. He was one of the pitchers on the school’s baseball team, and was more interested in social life rather than studies. He was probably the failing this class. He took the pencil with his long, thick fingers and said “thanks” without another look before turning back around in his desk.

Reagan looked at the clock. It was almost 8:50. It was the beginning of first period and the tardy bell hadn’t rang yet, so she held on to the hope that Embry would be here today. It was stupid, really and she knew that. But, she couldn’t help looking at his empty seat in the front of the room where she could always see the back of his shoulder-length jet-black hair and how it curled over his broad shoulders.

She had to addimt she was obsessed and that made her angry. It was like she was the stock photo of a teenage girl with a crush on a boy she had never spoken to. Stupid, ridiculous, but she was okay with that. Even though they were in the same grade and class, she had never said a word to him, not even an “excuse me“, or “I’m sorry for stepping on your shoes”. Nothing. She wasn’t sure if that would ever change, and she was partially okay with that, too. On the one hand it would be great to actually speak to him, and on the other, what would she even say? The words would form in her head, but they would never make there way out of her mouth being that close to him that she could see his long eyelashes brushing his cheek when he looked down to her. She knew he would have to look down- he was probably six four, six five. Reagan was tall for her being sixteen- she was almost five ten- but Embry was huge. In height and body build. You could see the indentions of his arm muscles through his t-shirt.