I made my way over to my new seat and as I was putting down my backpack, I greeted my new seatmate with a nod and silently mouthed a Good morning. As I did so, I heard snickers from the back row and I couldn't control my expression when my eyes darted towards them.

I don't think it would be an overstatement to say I probably looked like I was prepared for murder. 

Great job painting the target on your back bigger than it already was! This is exactly the opposite of what I should be doing.

All I needed to do is quite literally pretend they don't exist, or to continue painting on an obnoxiously sweet smile and they would've lost interest in no time. 

I could've continued doing what I did when I was in the team. Pretend like everything is fine, that’s it.

I feel like ever since that day in the gymnasium when I let my guard down for a moment, it's been biting me in the ass.

When I turned my gaze back towards Ansel he averted his eyes and looked back to his notebook.

Nothing, huh.

I had first seen him in the hallways of the school a few times, and in the beginning he didn't respond to my greetings. I usually greeted anyone I happened to meet eyes with so it's not like I said hello to him specifically, or that I had greeted him every day. What matters is that somewhere along the line he started to respond to me with a nod, so I changed my greeting to match his.

It felt like I was back to square one when I couldn't even get a nod out of him and it did make me wonder if something happened.

As I was pondering the sudden lack of a greeting, I realized there was an oddly familiar odor floating in the air around me. I finally got seated when I heard more giggles from behind me and I didn’t need to see their source(s) to know the back row was still gawking at us.