Slowly, a bright, heart stoppingly beautiful smile spread across his handsome face. He had straight, white, even teeth. He probably had them professionally bleached.
“That’s the first thing I’ll write down about you,” he told me while continuing to blind me with his smile.
And I watched as he did just that. He pulled a notebook and black ink pen out from his backpack, opened the notebook up to a blank page and in bold, angry slashes, he wrote:
Ariel Kimber is my partner for this semester in Mr. Franklin’s class even though she very much wishes not to be partnered with me. I can’t say I blame her because, along with my fellow classmates, I wasn’t very nice to her yesterday.
For a second all I wondered was how he knew my full name, but then I remembered Mr. Franklin calling me by it yesterday.
I was speechless. His written words surprised me.
“I’ll make things easier on you and go first. You don’t even have to ask me any questions if you don’t want to. I’m Tyson Alexander,” he kept smiling at me as he spoke in his sweet but rough voice. “I live in the house right next door to yours with my Uncle Quinton and two of our family friends. I’m seventeen and I spent the entire summer camping and hiking with my Uncle and our friends. We do it every summer and have since we were kids.” His voice trailed off as he tugged at the collar of his plain black t-shirt. When he started he’d sounded so confident. Now, he looked nervous.
This kid was weird. Definitely.
And why did he live with his Uncle? It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to ask that question, so I didn’t. If he wanted me to know he would have told me.
Still tugging on his shirt collar, he raised an eyebrow at me in a silent question. Shit. I’d been sitting here, stupidly staring at him when I should have been writing down the things he’d told me about himself. I knew I would remember every single word he’d said to me, but he didn’t know that. I unzipped my bookbag and pulled out a notebook and a black ink pen. Then I slid my bag off the desk and onto my lap. I flipped the notebook open to a blank page and started to write.
Tyson Alexander is not only my partner but also my next door neighbor. He’s seventeen. We’re the same age. He lives with his Uncle and they spent the summer camping with their friends (or so he claims. The gossip going around school says that he has no friends
). I believe him to have multiple personalities, and I might be slightly jealous because his hair is prettier than mine. Yesterday I would have said I didn’t think much of Tyson except to think of him as an A-hole. Today, however, I’m not sure what to think.
Laughter came from beside me. Tyson had been shamelessly reading over my shoulder as I wrote. I didn’t mind, I’d read his too and he hadn’t minded or tried to hide it from me.
“Don’t hold back on me, girl.” He smirked at me. “Let me know how you really feel.”
Yes, he definitely had multiple personalities.
“And you’ve got nothing to be jealous about because your hair is way prettier than mine.”
I blushed. Him thinking anything about me was pretty made me warm inside. Should I thank him now for the compliment? That didn’t seem right.
“What’s your favorite color?" he asked me.
“Canary yellow,” I told him. I hoped all of his questions were this easy. He got far more personal with the information he’d given me than I planned to give him. I didn’t know what this project was about but I had no intention of sharing my life story or divulging all my dirty secrets just so I could get an A.
“Bright,” he muttered more to himself than me. “Unexpected.”
I looked at him and thankfully he’d stopped trying to blind me with his handsome smile. He was looking down at his paper, writing. Belatedly, I noticed he was left handed.
“Unexpected? What do you mean by that?” I asked. Please, please don’t let him call me a freak show or turn back to the Dark Side on me. What’s unexpected about me liking a bright color? It seemed completely normal enough to me, but who knew what this weirdo would think.
He looked up at me and blinked slowly. Some of his dark hair fell forward across his left cheek. Absently, like this happened all the time and he didn’t even notice when he did it, he swiped a hand across his cheek, putting the hair back in place behind his ear.
“Girl,” he muttered in his rough voice, “day two and you’ve got nothing but black on again, so I’m thinking it’s your normal. It works for you, but I expected you to say it was your favorite color. Not something bright and cheery.” He shrugged, looking massively uncomfortable. “Unexpected. But not bad.”
Huh. Well, okay then. Nothing for me to find offensive there. I did wear a lot of black and I wasn’t a bright and cheery person. I was really girly when no one else was around to witness it and only then, but I never wore bright, girly colors. Still… he’d noticed what I wore yesterday? I liked that. I’d have to have more care when getting ready for school tomorrow now that I knew someone would be paying attention. And I wanted to smack myself upside the head for thinking that way.
“Next question,” I demanded in the most serious voice I could muster. These questions were starting to make me slightly uncomfortable.
He said something but it was completely lost to me because I was too busy paying attention to the other students. Desks were pushed together in small groupings, the other kids huddled together, talking quietly amongst themselves. Not a single one of them were turned our way and gawking at us. There were no fingers out, pointed in our direction. There were whispers and animated faces, sure, but I sensed we weren’t at the heart of it.
“I don’t get it,” I blurted out loud. I wanted to stuff the words back in my mouth as soon as they left it. The last thing I needed was to explain that train of thought.
Turned out I didn’t have to, he got me. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he grinned, blinding me once again with that damn smile, “but you’re old news as of today.”
“What do you mean?” I was confused. Great. By the end of the hour he’d think I was a complete moron. And I wouldn’t be able to hold it against him if he did.