“Hi, mom. This is Oliver, he’s new in my class. We’re doing homework together!” I presented Oliver to my parents, and seconds later, we had disappeared into my room. 

“Get comfortable anywhere. Sorry I don’t have that much space,” I mumbled, chuckling awkwardly. My little room only had space for my bed, a rather small desk and its chair. I didn’t even have my own TV, and my chair was ready to fall apart any minute now. 

“It’s okay,” Oliver said after gazing around the room, only to decide to sit on my bed, stretching his legs as far as possible. Sitting on the foot-end of it, he’d left me enough space to sit beside me, and we used the bed as a sporadic couch, leaning against the wall it was tucked against. 

At the very moment he sat down, though, a squirm tickled his face and he lifted his lower body, only to pull one of my teddy bears out from beneath the blanket. My entire face burned bright red, and I rushed to snatch it out of his fingers as he stared at it, almost confused, and I threw it to the side. 

“S-So, where do you have the most problems? What should I help you with?” I crawled into the bed, sitting beside him, only to notice an ever so faint smile on his lips, already fading as I’d realized too late. 

“Um,” he buzzed, zipping open his backpack. 

“All of it?” 

In silence, he nodded, opening his own notebook for math. He’d written down the problems for the homework, in such horrible handwriting even I had trouble deciphering the numbers, which forced me to grasp my own papers. 

“You know, it’d be a lot easier to study with your notes if you could actually read them.” 

“…” Oliver chewed on his lower lip. “Sorry.” 

Once more, a blush rushed across my face. Stop saying it like that, you big … puppy! What the hell? 

“Don’t apologize! I—I just meant, you know, you should write down more during class, and it’ll make your life much easier after.” 

“I guess you’re right,” he whispered, staring at the spare few pages of notes he had. 

“Do you have trouble focusing in class? Mr Tully speaks so monotone, even I could fall asleep in his class.” I giggled, and even Oliver let out a silent chuckle, nodding in response. 

Though I’d long realized, despite the teacher’s way of speaking, that Oliver couldn’t focus for long. His focus was best in the early morning, during our very first class of the day, and would dwindle about half-way through that very first class. 

At the end of the day, he’d have no energy left to even listen to what was being said, and he’d get distracted by his own pens, by his phone beneath the desk, or the view out of the window. Every few seconds, something else caught his attention, but it was never the teacher’s speeches. 

Would he even listen to me? If I explained it to him, where would his attention fall? 

He actually tried his very best. 

With a pencil in hand, he scribbled notes about everything I said, and tried to solve our homework to the best of his ability, only to ask me for help when he couldn’t quite get it right. His pencil appeared so small in his rather large fingers, and sometimes, I couldn’t help but stare. 

“Hey, you got it! Awesome.” 

Oliver nodded awkwardly, clearing his throat right after. “You explained it well,” he whispered. A few weeks, or even days ago, I would have never seen this coming — us, doing homework together in my room? I wasn’t even scared of him anymore. Right now, he appeared so polite, so tame, not at all threatening. 

Maybe that was why I gained the tiniest bit of confidence. “Hey, Oliver, can I ask you something?” My heart pounded all the quicker when Oliver lifted his head to meet my gaze. 

“Okay.”

“Are you always in the library during recess?” I asked. “What are you doing there? Are you studying?” 

I asked too many questions at once, which I began to regret when Oliver sighed, dropping his pencil into his notebook. I jerked backwards ever so slightly, and watched him lean forward, his bent back showing each and every muscle to ever exist. 

“You—You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I stuttered all the quicker. 

“I try to study, but it doesn’t work,” Oliver said. “I go there to be left alone.”

“And what do you do? You always rush off so fast, as if you can’t wait to be in the library.” 

Oliver’s shoulders jerked upwards. “I’m on my phone, or I nap, I guess.”

“Why do you want to be alone?” 

“Just because. I thought it’s for the best.” My head bobbed to the side, which he noticed. After a deep breath, he explained further, but it wasn’t much. “I’m trying to stay out of trouble.” 

The way he cleared his throat, and the way his eyes jittered towards me, only to flee right after, told me he was uncomfortable. And yet, I kept digging. “Why did you think I was making fun of you when I found you in the library that day?” 

“You had a perfect 100, and you were staring at my test.”

“S-Sorry!” I blushed, suddenly feeling bad about it all. “I didn’t mean to pry, or, y-you know! I just … Were you embarrassed?” I had no idea how to explain that I was just curious about him, about everything about him. 

“Yeah.” How quickly he admitted it surprised me. With reddened ears, he avoided me, hiding his face by tucking it into his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll try not to look next time. But it’s no big deal, you know? Some of our classmates always get those horrible grades.”

“But they don’t have to repeat the year,” he mumbled. “This is my second try, and I’m doing just as bad.” I was positively overwhelmed by his honesty, as awkward as it was. 

“It was just one test. You’ll do better from now on, I’m sure of it. And if you need help, just ask me, hm?” 

His head turned towards me, dark eyes piercing mine, jaw tense. Observing me from head to toe, the way I had made myself comfortable on my bed, cuddling one of my pillows. Endlessly, he stared, and stared, forcing a nervous chuckle out of me. 

“Thank you for helping me,” he whispered, his voice a deep scratch that forced goosebumps down my arms. 

“N-No problem.”

“When you said no one liked me … Is that still true?” His eyes were like daggers, forcing the truth out of me. What was he trying to ask? What was he implying? What was it he wanted to know? 

He didn’t care about our classmates, and whether they liked him or not. He hadn’t made any effort to talk to them outside of gym class with the other guys!

Badump. Badump. Badump. My own heart had become unbearably loud. 

“I—I guess you’re not so bad, after all.” It was all I could bring myself to say, but it was enough to make Oliver look away and hide his neck beneath his hands, blush poking through his fingers. Only seconds, it took, for his ears to turn red. 

“I promised my mom I’d have dinner with her, so I should go,” he whispered right after, his voice a quiet, embarrassed peep. Not once did he look at me as he fled the room, and my house altogether, leaving me behind in a perplexed state and jitters of a heart.