Over the Wall: A Collection of Short Stories (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Day 19: Little Old Men on Mountains

Note: This took a while to write because I had almost no inspiration today but I finally got it done! Luckily I had some things stacked up I could add in so I could get it done. They actually gave me a title for this story :) The conversation at the end is basically a paragraph I had, at least what the guy was saying. I really like it so mock everything but that okay?

He was just so stupid in love with her. Not that she knew that. Not that she would ever know that. He could never tell her. Not that he didn’t want to. Not that he didn’t feel like he needed to. He just couldn’t, shouldn’t tell her.

She was wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt, sort of her regular uniform. Yesterday she had worn the same thing except then the t-shirt had been gray. Blue looked good on her. Her hair was down, which was unusual, but by halfway through class she had pulled her hair into a messy bun high up on her head. He liked her hair like that.

She turned and saw him looking. He looked down at his paper. He snuck a look up at her and she was still looking, a little smile on his face. He immediately ducked his head back down but he had a little smile on his face too. She was smiling at him!

He resumed working on the math problem in front of him. Her sitting right in his eyeline had not helped his math grade in the slightest. But instead of figuring out trig functions like he was supposed to, he found himself writing something else.

It was two words.

A name.

He was pathetic.

She did have a pretty name, though. Celina Lowell. It sounded so nice. Celina, Celina, Celina. He wondered what her middle name was. It was probably just as pretty as the rest of her name. He had to know.

Then, he heard someone calling his name. His head snapped up and he saw his teacher glaring at him and the class snickering at him. He blushed and said,

“Excuse me?”

“The problem.” She said.

“The problem?” He asked.

“Yes, the problem you were just supposed to be working on. What did you get for the answer?” He looked around, panicked. He hadn’t finished the problem. He hadn’t really started it, actually.

“Um, I got stuck on that one.” He said. His teacher rolled her eyes.

“Yes, it does become very challenging to do a math problem when you’re staring at Miss. Lowell.” She said. He blushed even more and the class laughed.

Assholes, he thought.

He said nothing and kept his eyes low, not wanting to see Celina’s face. When his teacher had moved on to her next victim he looked up, scared to see her expression. She was looking at him but for once he didn’t look away. She was smiling again. She did look very pretty.

He smiled back and she grinned, then turned back around in her chair. He kept looking at her, she had smiled at him again!

When the class ended he did not hesitate to get out of the classroom as quickly as possible. He hated math class so much. Except for the fact Celina was in it, which sometimes wasn’t enough to make it bearable. But today it had.

He walked to his locker and put in his combination. Two twists, 23-16-5. It snapped open and he pushed his textbook into the mess that was his locker. He should really clean that out. He always meant to but every year he ended up dragging a trash can over to his locker and dumping stuff into it. It was a flawed system but it was his system nonetheless.

In his next class, one without Celina, his english class, they watched a movie. It was some adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” one of those adaptations where it actually has nothing to do with the movie except for the fact that it had the whole forbidden love and star-crossed lovers thing going on. He hated those kinds of movies.