Rockwell Middle School supposedly boasted 313 of Saberon's most athletic, smartest, and ambitious kids. Motivational posters highlighting the most photogenic hung in the hallways with one-word taglines. 

        Breathe.

Jacquie had known most of the kids who went to Rockwell since elementary school, and she knew most of them didn't fit the picture of "best and brightest". That wasn't to be taken the mean-spirited way, but her classmates seemed like pretty standard kids, nothing like the glorified images the school had built up over the years. 

Jacquie followed the flow of sleepy-eyed students to her homeroom class just as the first bell rang. Throngs of her classmates twisted their chairs to talk to each other, chatting eagerly about their lives. Jacquie took her empty seat and quietly settled in for another full day of school. She didn't share her first two classes with any of her friends, so she didn't talk to anyone during them (outside of when she was paired for group assignments). School was always lonely without friends to talk to, at least that's what she'd learned over the past few years. But she'd gotten used to the taciturn early classes this school year.

Now where in the galaxy is my notebook? Jacquie thought rushing to find that and her thin English textbook before her teacher came into class. It was strange that she hadn't arrived, even though the late bell had come and gone. Jacquie laid her notebook on her desk without taking her gaze out of her backpack. Rummaging around longer, her teacher walked in, and as soon as she'd spotted her textbook, her mind became keenly aware that this scene was familiar. She whipped her head up and took a hard look at the stand-up calendar on her teacher's desk.

November 25. 

Today's date, Jacquie thought as joy circulated through her veins. It had been such a long time since she'd had a vision and an even longer time since she'd felt the joy of seeing everything play out just like she'd saw it before. She was so giddy that she had tuned out what her teacher was saying about the dark-haired boy with her. Jacquie caught his eye again and he gave her the same sheepish grin he did in the vision, making Jacquie give an equally shy one back.

The teacher stopped talking and pointed to a seat in a row behind Jacquie. The boy followed her direction, lightly bumping into the desk across from Jacquie. A small brown box fell out of the back pocket of his coat and Jacquie reached down to pick it up. It was a crude creation of wood, with rough edges and raised ridges irritating her palm and fingertips. She turned it around and the LED lights of her classroom exposed the gold-painted lines that adorned the box. A little gold hinge and latch kept it closed, but Jacquie heard something rattle softly inside the box. 

She turned around to the girl sitting behind her. "Hey," she asked, "can you give this to the guy behind you? In the blue coat," she clarified. The girl nodded and the box was passed three rows until it reached the dark-haired boy, whose eyes grew wide upon receiving it. Jacquie saw him whisper something to the boy in front of him and replied, pointing a finger at Jacquie. The boy from her vision looked directly at her and gave her a quick head bow, mouthing "Thank you" as he slipped the box back into his coat pocket.

Jacquie kept her head turned towards him, watching him ask to share a textbook with the person next to him, and she realized that he didn't wear a backpack. That's odd, she thought. A sharp cough in the front of the classroom whipped Jacquie's attention to her teacher, giving her a mindful side-eye. Jacquie bashfully turned her body away from the boy and flipped to a page in her book, her thoughts on him sunken to the bottom of her mind.

The lunch tray Jacquie walked away with looked less appetizing with each step she took. The alfredo sauce had drenched the pasta and possible chicken in a sea of steamy gray muck. A stiff, most likely reheated breadstick kept the alfredo from sliding over to the broccoli and peas, although that might have made an improvement to the two blandest vegetables Jacquie had ever tasted. 

Trying not to inhale the food, she walked over to the bench where Johnathan already was, talking to a girl Jacquie didn't recognize. She sat across from the two of them, waiting to bump into their conversation. The two of them were practically animated, rapidly firing back responses and talking over one another. As Jacquie watched them, the girl seemed more familiar to her and Jacquie wondered where she'd seen her from. She had waves of chestnut-colored hair that complimented her deep tawny skin. A mole boasted proudly on the left side of her strong nose, and her sea-green eyes sparkled each moment she stayed in vivid discourse. The girl moved a stray lock of hair away from her face and Jacquie noticed a partially healed scar running from her cheek and jawline to under her chin.

"Daniel!" Jacquie exclaimed, finally recognizing who Johnathan was talking to. They paused mid-conversation, the table taking on a more menacing and stifling air. The two of them shared a look, with Johnathan giving a quick nod before turning back to Jacquie. The girl inhaled a deep breath. 

"Hi, you're speaking to Ariel, not a Daniel," she told Jacquie with a smile, extending a hand for her to shake.

Jacquie remained still, continuing to whir all of the evidence in her head while Ariel kept her hand out, a painful and awkward expression growing on her face each second.

She turned to Johnathan. "Are you sure she's cool?"

"Don't worry, she's just thinking it out," he responded.

After 14 seconds of thought, a surge of understanding rushed through Jacquie. Her cheeks blushed with embarrassment as she finally returned Ariel's handshake. "Sorry! I just noticed your scar and--"

"Oh wow, you did?" Ariel moved her hair again and traced the slightly raised scar on her jawline. "I almost forgot I had that. That means you almost saw me perfect my triple ollie nosedive, which would have made everyone's jaws drop."

"You did make them drop, just in a different way," Johnathan said with a snicker. Jacquie nodded in agreement since she and Johnathan saw the aftermath of the event. They had been at the skate park last year, trying (and failing) to ride a skateboard, when they heard a sharp yell and ran over to where a crowd had gathered.  A wide river of blood had opened up on someone's face and they were screaming loudly before someone else much older picked them up and ran off into a car. That day and for many days after, the skate park was filled with murmurs of "Is Daniel okay?" and "That's where Daniel nearly died." Jacquie never got to see the person at the skate park again but firmly came away from it that the stranger's name was Daniel. 

"But that happened a year ago," Jacquie said, "why does your scar still look like it's healing?"

Ariel shrugged. "Oh, I guess I scratched it off the other day. Does that mean you like skateboarding? Rollerblading? Ice skating?" she asked, with little spacing between her sentences.

"No," Jacquie said, "I wasn't any good at skateboarding so I stopped, and I've never gotten around to rollerblading or ice skating."

"What's stuff you do like then? Are you an art person? English buff? Science geek? All of the above?"

"I-I'm good at a lot of those things," Jacquie told her while fiddling with her thumbs, "but I guess I like science the best. Meteorology is what I want to go into when I grow up."

"Meteor science? Does that mean you like space stuff with all the asteroids and moons and aliens and--

"No, well yes, but," Jacquie struggled to get a word in through Ariel's constant stream of questioning. "I like space stuff, yes, but meteorology is the study of weather. Not meteors."

"So then what's the study of meteors?"

"I don't know! I'm not a scientist!" Jacquie finally exclaimed, exhausted by all of Ariel's questions. She was like a faucet of words that Jacquie couldn't turn off. They weren't even really personal questions, just being asked at a rapid-fire pace Jacquie disliked.

Ariel caught on to Jacquie's mood and stopped talking. With an apologetic look, she turned away from her and set her attention towards the students getting lunch behind Johnathan. "Oh, who's that?" she asked.

Johnathan and subsequently Jacquie followed her finger to see a familiar blue-coated figure walking in their direction. The boy from earlier was searching for a place to sit, carrying a grey lunchbox, the kind covered in zippers and probably had a built-in icepack hidden within the walls. He walked with a slow shuffle, but his eyes were searching around, cautiously observing many faces and determining who would be the safest to sit with. Jacquie knew the anxiousness that came with choosing who to spend lunch (and foreseeable lunches) on your first day. She was lucky to have Johnathan that first day, waiting with a second seat at the ready, but to be without someone like that, without anybody you were familiar with, could make the rest of your lunches very lonely. 

The boy caught their gazes, looking at Jacquie with recognition, and a smile formed on his face. His ambling shuffle transitioned into more of a graceful stride as he walked over to the bench. Everyone followed his movements, from Ariel's wide-eyed stare as he walked closer, Johnathan's sideways glances as he took a seat next to Jacquie, and Jacquie's eyes finally locking with his as he turned towards her.

"Hi," he waved, smiling at her. Jacquie didn't say anything back, lost in his eyes. He was much closer now, and she could study the design of his irises. Bold, bright and so, so, blue, his eyes were like an ocean of fractals, winding around and around until they met the void of his pupil. A solid ring of turquoise lined the outside of irises, and they reminded Jacquie of her own eyes. Emerald, save for the lighter shade of jade that stood at the edge of her irises. They were beautiful, she'd always been told, but seeing them so similarly reflected in someone else's eyes made those statements much more real.

The boy didn't seem to be put off by her staring and kept his admiring smile. "I wanted to thank you for returning my box to me. You have no idea what it means to me." 

Jacquie stopped looking at his eyes and nervously darted them in the opposite direction. "It was no problem." The blue-eyed boy began to say something else, but Johnathan cut the budding conversation between them. 

"Do you two," looking between the two of them, "know each other?"

"No," Jacquie said at the same time the boy said, "We share a class."

"Really?" he said, "because I've never seen you around here before."

"I just arrived," the boy replied, sliding into a pose of confidence and collectedness.

"Oh really?" Ariel chimed in with full eagerness at a new person to direct all of her questions at. "From where?"

"Dunsworth."

"How long have you been here?"

"A few days."

"Do you like it here?"

"It's pretty nice."

"Why'd you come here?"

That question didn't come with such a quick answer, as the dark-haired boy's posture stiffened for a moment, in a nearly imperceptible way that only Jacquie seemed to notice.

"Money," he said. "I'd rather not talk about it."

Ariel nodded, satisfied with the answers she had received. The rest of lunch went on in relative silence, the bench remaining quiet while the rest of the cafeteria rumbled with chatter. Jacquie hadn't touched much of the cold gray pasta sludge when the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. She tossed it away in the trash and came back to the bench for her backpack. The boy was still sitting there, not moving with the rush of the other students scurrying to get to their classes before the bell rang again. He was waiting for something. Someone.

Jacquie slung her backpack onto her shoulders and the boy spoke. 

"I would like to know your name."

Jacquie didn't realize she hadn't told him. It must have slipped her mind while she'd been focusing on other things.

  "My name is Jacquie," she said, now waiting for his name.

The dark-haired, blue-eyed boy from her vision stood up and tipped with head forward slightly while keeping Jacquie's gaze.

He said, "I am Kyran."