Okay.. Let's see if I can't get this one finished, shall we?

I was still working on my assignment when the new girl came.

I have to admit that I was pretty nervous when she walked through the door of the science room in her white sweater and faded denim skirt and sat down right next to me. There were no other free seats. I kept thinking I would mess something up and make her think I was weird or something. After all, I still hadn't quite gotten over what happened with Johnny and Windrixville and the rumble and all. Writing out the story helped a lot, but I was still forgetting everything and somehow even the chocolate cake tasted like baloney every morning.

I could tell just by looking at her she wasn't quite a Soc, and she was definately not a greaser. Sort of middle class, you know. Her hair was short, just above her shoulders, and really light brown, clipped back behind her ears with little blue clips. She turned to face me and I could see her eyes were bright green with flecks of gold in them. They were real pretty. I felt my stomach flip.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

The bell rang then, and Mr. Smith came in from his side office and started flipping through the papers on his desk. "Alright, class," he said, "Turn to page 57 in your textbooks, please."

The room filled with rustling pages as everyone went on with his instructions. Everyone except me. I didn't realize until he said anything that I'd forgotten my textbook. Here I go again, I thought, always messing stuff up.

The new girl noticed my mistake right away. It was kind of weird, though. She didn't even say anything to me, just slid her book over a little toward me so I could see, too. Huh. Well, at least she's nice.

The lesson was all about the weather. Something about the temperature and humidity effecting the rain or whatever. I didn't care. I can tell the weather just fine: if it's grey, it'll rain, if it's not, it won't. Simple as that.

Eventually he stopped talking and started handing out worksheets as homework. We had 15 minutes till the end of class. I stared at my sheet blankly. There was a circle in the middle, all the way filled in except for a white bar in its center. There was a line coming out of its right side with two smaller lines coming off of that, one a little longer than the other. There were numbers all around it, and at the top it said Lable each: Temperature, dewpoint, humidity, wind speed and directing, cloud cover.

Great. I don't know how to do any of this.

The new girl reached over to her stack of books and folders for a pencil and started working right away. I noticed she was reading The Screwtape Letters. I'd heard of C. S. Lewis before. I wondered if she liked reading that sort of thing. Maybe she just liked reading. Maybe she even liked sunsets, too.

Sighing, I pulled a pen from my pocket and wrote my name on the worksheet. I could do that much, at least. Hopefully Darry would know some of this.

Then I heard her whisper a soft little, "Oh," and she was suddenly scooting her chair closer to mine. "Do you need help?" she asked.

I felt my face get hot. "Uh," I said. Stupid. I cleared my throat. "Yeah. I don't get it."

She smiled encouragingly. "Here." She reached over and pulled my worksheet between us both. "The circle in the middle means cloud cover. So the more black there is in the circle --"

"The more clouds there are." I said.

"Right. Now, since it's almost all black, we call this 90 coverage." She wrote it between the numbers in neat cursive. "Get it?"

"Yeah." I pointed to the line on the right side. "What's this?"

"That's --"

"Are you so new here that you don't know nothing?" The Soc across from us asked. He had the same madras shirt and short hair cut that the rest of them had. Nothing interesting about him. "We don't help stupid greasers here." he said 'greaser' like it was a swear word.

I went even hotter. I looked down, but was still watching her out of the corner of my eye, waiting for her to shrink away and go back to her work.

But she didn't. She just stared at the Soc coolly and said, "You may not, but I do." Then she turned back to me and the worksheet and continued helping me like nothing happened. "That's the wind direction. It's on the right side, which means it's blowing," she pointed to the left, "That way. East. And the smaller lines mean wind speed. The bigger one is ten knots, the smaller is five. So the wind is blowing East at 15 knots." She wrote it down.

We went on like that through the whole thing. She made it real easy to understand, and we were done with 7 minutes left in class.

"Thanks a lot," I said.

She smiled. "No problem."

We were quiet for a bit, then she said, "I never did get your name."

"I'm Ponyboy. Ponyboy Curtis. And don't laugh, my dad named me."

She looked confused. "Why would I laugh?"

"A lot of people do." I shrugged. "Ponyboy's not a very common name."

"I think it's a great name. I'm tired of the usual names. Every new face is either a Tom, Dick or Harry lately."

I laughed a little. "Yeah, no kidding."

"I'm Heather, by the way." She said. "Heather Reed."

Heather. It fit her nicely. "Pleased to meet you." I stuck out my hand.

She shook it. "Pleased to meet you, too."

The bell rang again, and everyone cleared out. Heather gathered her books quietly as I headed for the door. I had English next, and I wanted to show my teacher how far I'd gotten on my assignment --

"Ponyboy!"

I turned to see Heather running up to me with my books and pen under one arm. "You forgot your stuff." she said.

"Oh." I must have looked like a lobster, my face was so hot. I carefully took them from her, looking down at my feet. "Thanks."

She blushed, too. "No problem." Then she ran down the hallway and dissapeared in all the faces.

A/N: Please read and reveiw! I have high hopes for this one...