You're a quiet girl in sophomore year. You know you're smart. You're convicted. You've had an awkward upbringing, but that is behind you now.

Now you've had a dream. Since when you don't know, but it was roughly around seventh to eighth grade. It was to find a husband and have kids.

You're in sophomore year and a crush you shut down last year comes back to haunt you.

Brady Brock.

A popular boy in your grade you've known since the start of middle school. You've never talked to him except for to say sorry for putting your stuff on his desk.

In freshman year, you decided that in order to get rid of your fear of communicating, or whatnot, whether it be social anxiety or just simply to see how somebody would react to head-on eye contact.

Conducting this experiment, he looks you in the eyes too as you both are passing one another.

For some reason, it didn't click for you to just look away. But when you both did and you were both on your separate ways, that's when your brain started to betray you and let him worm his way into your everyday thought.

Now, of course, over the summer you had trouble getting over him. You hadn't tried to really talk to him once or let him know that you were into him.

Instead you ignored the fact you both shared that moment in fear that people would just start making a joke out of you again like they did in middle school. And a joke over liking someone would feel worse than any other joke people tried to pull. You knew it. Everyone knew that. It was kind of basic knowledge.

You thought he was talking with his friends about you anyway, calling you weird or whatever popular guys called quiet girls that looked at them weird. So that was another reason to back off.

..Since sophomore year started, you hadn't really thought of him. After all you both were just in each other's second period. And lunch. But like that mattered, right?

Well.

It was the second month into this year. Everything was nice. Except for your friends. Your friends just drained you and didn't really talk to you anyway, so you figured it would just be better if you cut yourself off from them first. Slow. But painless. Plus you had peace from their wild and unreasonable comments.

You talked to some of them sometimes. Or some other people. Friendly. But you were more absent and looking at everything stuck to the walls now.

You noticed, while carrying your stuff to your sixth period class, that Brady was walking down a hall perpendicular to a hall you were walking through. He looked down the hall and made instant eye contact with you.

You hadn't noticed at first. You were looking up. Not really thinking. You'd gotten good at just going through the motions. But you did notice a moment later. Just when he realized you made eye contact back, he looked away. Then down, forcing his head to face the floor as he passed you.

You'd blink. And try to convince yourself it was nothing.

But you look back at the field trip your Art class had. When he was talking to everybody but you and avoiding eye contact with you.

You sat in your bed that night clenching your jaw, trying to get back the mindset before, that he just thought you were some weirdo.

Oh how us young ones love unrequited feelings.

...The next morning.