At First Glance//(Harry Styles FanFic)

2. Surprise

Harry's POV

    I had no idea what to really make of this new school, except it was painfully obvious that both us Downeys and Towneys didn't know how to act when we were in each other's domains.

I was expecting to see a lot more fighting and yelling, but so far things had been pretty calm. Like the calm before a storm though, not the good kind. You could tell that as soon as the newness wore off with us all being together, all hell was going to break loose.

Personally, I didn't really care about what the Towneys thought of us. And I'd actually met a couple of them that seemed pretty decent. Growing up on my side of the town, we'd always heard from older folks that the Towneys looked down on us and thought they were better because of the amount of change they carried in their pockets.

And while I'm sure some kids were like that, a lot of the others seemed fine. Like the small quiet girl I met in my science class, Bea she called herself.

The poor girl looked white as a ghost when I felt her staring at me. At first I thought maybe she was scared of me, but after talking to her, I was just willing to bet she was scared of being in a class on her first day of high school with no one she knew. She looked like she was ready to toss her breakfast up at any second.

After the teacher had walked in we never spoke to each other again, but I felt her looking at me a couple times. My guess was she had never seen a Downey before and was curious, and usually that might annoy me to be stared at like a lab rat. But for some reason, the innocence and kindness of this girl radiate off her in waves, and made it nearly impossible to feel anything negative towards her.

Like now. I was sitting in the lunch room at a table with my friends who shared this same lunch period, and the Bea girl was sitting alone at a table. She had a book in her lap and half a sandwich in the other. I saw her glance up a couple of times and look at the faces around her, but she once again looked like she didn't recognize anyone.

And for whatever reason, I had the strongest urge to go and sit with her so she didn't look so alone and scared.

"Who you staring at bro?" My friend Liam asks who is sitting beside me on the left.

I nodded my head in the direction of Bea. "That young girl. She was in my advanced science class this morning. She was shaking like a leaf then and doing it now too." Which had me confused. She said she wasn't new to the school district, so why did she seem to not know anyone?

"Jesus, how old is she? She looks like she's 12."

"She's 14," I answer automatically, remembering her rambling this morning in class.

Liam looks at me funnily. "Do I even wanna know why you know that?"

    I roll my eyes. "She told me in the class we share together that she was a new freshmen."

    Liam shrugs. "Whatever, we all love a little jail bait every now and then I guess."

    I slap the back of his head roughly. "What the hell is wrong with you man? You have a little sister."

    "I'm not saying real jail bait, just like younger then us. Someone you can teach stuff to. It's not like it's illegal or anything." Liam explains, and the shoulder shrugs and small grunts from the guys around me voice their agreement.

    I had just turned 17, so while it wasn't technically illegal, it still didn't seem right either. "She's practically a kid. Something about a senior hooking up with a young freshmen just doesn't seem right."