it was time for one of my least favourite lessons of the entire day: chemistry. to be fair, I hated most of my subjects, but I felt such a burning rage whenever I walked into that dismal chemistry classroom. i sat down in my seat next to wade and got out the stuff that I would need. me and wade engaged in conversation as we waited for the teacher to do his job and teach us. he was wandering around the classroom like a headless chicken doing god knows what, so me and wade just talked to each other whilst we waited for him to get set up.
after about five minutes of just non-stop talking, I stopped when I felt movement next to me, which was weird since nobody sat on the other side of me. well, until now anyway.
i looked beside me and saw sean sitting there. I had absolutely no idea why since that wasn't his normal seat, he sat at the back of the classroom with some random kid that I didn't know. he looked up at me and we made solid eye contact as if we were speaking to each other telepathically. I looked away when I saw the chemistry teacher standing there and noticed that he was actually speaking to me.
"i'm moving sean over here next to you, is that okay?" I felt like I really didn't have much choice in the matter anyway.
"sure...how come?" I asked. I saw sean look away out of the corner of my eye. he seemed sad, but i was unsure of the reason why.
"the person he was sitting next to...well, they were having some issues with each other." me and wade nodded slowly before the teacher nodded and walked over to the front of the classroom. i heard wade sigh and groan. sean was still facing away from us.
"why does he always have to come to us when he has problems with other people?" wade asked loudly enough for sean to hear. I elbowed wade and told him to be quiet after seeing the angry yet down expression on his face. I hoped that he wasn't too offended by wade's comment.
halfway through the lesson the teacher began handing out worksheets to every student. as soon as me and wade received them we agreed to work together on the questions. they were pretty easy and we got them done in about five minutes. it was kind of satisfying being the first people to finish. for a while we just talked whilst everybody else worked, obviously not in silence. the main reason people weren't getting it done was because they were all chatting to one another.
i found myself looking over at sean and I noticed that he hadn't done much. he had attempted the first question, but he kept scribbling out his work and I could tell that he was starting to get frustrated. i couldn't help but feel bad for the guy. at least he was trying. I tapped him on the shoulder to grab his attention, I thought it would make him really pissed off, but he just looked at me with wide eyes.
"do you uh...do you want some help?" for a few seconds he just stared at me as if he was debating his answer. suddenly he frowned and rolled his eyes.
"no, i'm fine. leave me alone." I looked over at wade to see that he had curled his fist and was lightly banging it against his forehead. I didn't catch on at first, but when I did I elbowed him again. he didn't seem to be enjoying that.
a couple of minutes later I felt somebody tapping me on the arm lightly. I turned away from wade and saw that it was sean. he let out a deep sigh before speaking to me.
"can you help me?" he asked whilst looking down at the floor and twiddling his thumbs. I smiled, surprised that he was asking.
"of course." he looked up at me and I caught him smiling for a couple of seconds before that smile faded and he looked down at his question sheet. I began to help him out with the first question, asking him what he was trying to do the first few times he attempted it on his own. I helped him recognise what he had done wrong and what he needed to do to get to the correct solution. it took a while to get him to understand how the first question worked, but when he did, he worked through the other ones pretty quickly. I was still helping him of course. and before we could even realise it we had done the entire sheet together.
when that lesson finished and everybody was packing their bags, sean turned to me just as he was about to leave.
"this never happened." he whispered before running away. I knew exactly what he was talking about. was he that embarrassed to be around me? did he dislike me that much? and for what, what had i done? I sighed before turning to wade.
"come on. let's go catch up to the others."
