Dearan scanned his closet, once again entertaining the possibility of wearing one of his few fitted tees, but once again, he just grabbed one of his large bland blue oversized sweatshirts, with loose jeans. He glanced in the mirror before he left the room, seeing his redheaded, short, thin, dimpled, and freckled, form looking back at him.

Swinging his plain grey backpack over his shoulder, Dearan locked up his parents' house, and jumped on the school bus. After getting to the back Dearan sat, staring down at his phone, but doing nothing on it. He just wanted an excuse to ignore others, not that he needed one, no one spoke to him anyway.

As the bus pulled to a stop at Hillside Novor High (WNH), he hurriedly stood up, once again swinging his backpack over his shoulder, and quickly walked to the front of the bus. Hopping down, (due to his height at 5’2” he had to hop), he took not a moment's pause, and walked right to his first classroom, his eyes apparently finding the ground very interesting. His bus had arrived half an hour early, so his classroom was still locked. Sighing, he swung his backpack around, and grabbed his key chain. He used one of his many keys to unlock the classroom, because, of course he had a key, who wouldn’t trust a highschooler with a key to a classroom will valuable technology in it?

Sitting down, Dearan crossed his legs and pulled out his book. His bookmark fell to the ground as he opened the book, with a sigh, he leaned down and tried to reach it, with no success.

With a second, more dramatic sigh, Dearan sat back up, clenching his fist, and he imagined his arm elongating, and reaching down and picking up the bookmark. As he imagined the bookmark being grabbed it began to float, and drifted through the air towards his real hand.

‘Back to reading about kids being taken apart because their parents no longer wanted them…’ Dearan thought with a surprisingly dark smirk for someone so shy. Turning back to his book Scythe, it felt as if Dearan could forget the harsh reality around him when he read, or maybe he just felt the relief because every written character was dealing with WW3, physically abusive parents or something more serious than Dearan’s troubles.

He was shaken back to the real world as he heard another person enter the room, apparently he had forgotten to relock the door. Delicate footsteps that seemed to belong to a heavier person almost made Dearan curious enough to look up, which he didn’t until he heard throat clearing *ahem* sound from the other side of the room. As the “ahem”ing continued Dearan began to be annoyed by the noise, which was breaking his concentration.

“You know, if you drink water, you won’t need to clear your throat every 12 seconds.” Dearan said in a voice colder than most would expect, even Dearan was surprised, for he was known as a shy nerd who would not be rude.

Dearan finally looked up and saw Stephan, a tall, broad shouldered, with a strong jawline, the most popular guy from their Senior year. Stephan looked shocked at the little snap from Dearan, he quickly recovered to say, “Actually I was just clearing my throat to get your attention.”

At this it was Dearan’s turn to be shocked. What would a hot, popular guy want with him? Because of Dearan’s confusion his mind decided he should be sarcastic and rude, “Did you want to copy my winter break reading homework? Want me to find who your crush likes? Want me to give you another follower on instagram? Want to bring up love letters sent to me as a god damn prank getting all excited? I’ll save you some time, I am not going to help you just because I’m that gay shy kid, and your a hot guy.”

Stephan didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. He just stared at Dearan with his mouth slightly open, as Dearan returned to his book as if nothing happened.

“Dearan, I just wanted to ask how your break was,” Stephan said in a soft voice right before the teacher, Ms Alexis opened the door, diminishing the chance of a response from a shocked yet distrustful Dearan.

“Good morning boys, I’m happy to see my two all time favorite students are finally using their keys!”