This story started off as a photoset on Tumblr, and then transformed into a one-shot ficlet, and now is apparently a multi-chapter fic! So if you read the ficlets (A Beautiful Thing), you'll recognize the first chapter (there, it's Chapter 20: "A Different Person"), but the rest is original to this story. Enjoy!
Sally Ann stepped cautiously through the doorway of her chemistry classroom. It was the first day of school and everything smelled scrubbed and clean, the halls and the floors holding the faint whiff of industrial cleaner. Everyone's clothes even smelled new, like they had just come from the store, or at least washed with a little too much detergent.
She spotted an open desk next to two of her friends from the cheerleading squad and quickly made her way over. Like Sally Ann, they were all wearing their cheer uniforms; their coach, Miss Grimes, had instructed all the girls to wear them as a show of school spirit on the first day, and every single one of them knew that disregarding Miss Grimes' instructions was a sure-fire ticket back down to the JV squad.
"I didn't know you were in this class," said Gwen, turning around in her seat towards Sally Ann, her red-gold curls shining in the light from the nearby windows.
"I switched Spanish classes," Sally Ann replied, opening up her backpack and pulling out a brand new notebook. "I told them about Señor Osborn and how he kept looking at me weird all last spring."
"Ew, gross," offered Sharon, sitting in the next row.
"Yeah, I know," said Sally Ann, shrugging her shoulders casually. "So..."
She let her voice trail off, hoping the conversation would stop there. While it was true that she had caught Señor Osborn staring at her on a number of occasions last year – mostly on days she had been wearing her cheer uniform – that hadn't been the real reason she had wanted to change her schedule. With different class times, she now had the last period of the day free, which allowed her to sign out early from school on the days when she worked the afternoon shift at her part-time job.
Nobody at school knew about the job – and she planned on keeping it that way. Her popularity, as shaky as it was, would take a direct hit if people found out she was working the register at a big box store two towns over. And it was embarrassing, the fact that she and her brother could barely pay their rent, now that his hours at the plant had been cut back. The girls on the squad – even her friends like Gwen and Sharon – they wouldn't understand, not with their nice houses and designer jeans, with the cars their parents bought them for their sixteenth birthdays. It was hard enough not really feeling like one of them; she wasn't about to advertise the depressing realities of her life.
The bell rang and room quieted a little as the teacher came up to the front of the room and began to take attendance. Sally Ann could hear Gwen and Sharon whispering across the row; rather than trying to listen in, she opened up her notebook and started doodling her name, surrounding it with spirals and tiny flowers.
"Sally Ann Evans?"
"Here," she said loudly, not looking up from her notebook.
"Hasil Farrell?"
Sally Ann's head quickly swiveled up and around, as a mumbled "Yeah" eventually emerged from the back corner of the room. She couldn't see him exactly, not with the people blocking her view, but it probably wouldn't have mattered, considering the dark hoodie that he had pulled up onto his head.
From where she was, she could see that he looked a little bigger than he had the last time they had been in a class together, English during freshman year. Back then, he had been small, almost scrawny, sitting behind her as his name followed alphabetically, never saying a word in class or opening a book, making her wonder if he had been able to make it all the way to 9th grade without actually knowing how to read. The only other thing she remembered – aside from his silence – were his eyes, so clear and blue-gray, long dark lashes fanning up towards serious brows. She had only glanced at them on occasion, when she turned in her seat to pass back some handouts, and once when he handed her a pen she had accidentally dropped on the floor, but she had been surprised at how strangely sad they looked, somehow gentle and intently focused at all once. And each time – even more of a surprise – she had caught him staring right back at her.
"Oh, god, Hasil's in this class?" Gwen whispered back at Sally Ann while she quickly scanned the rest of the room. "At least he didn't bring any of his weirdo friends with him."
Their school wasn't that big, and the cliques were pretty well-known: Hasil hung out with the freaks and the skaters who wore overly baggy clothing and spent their time outside of class standing around and smoking while they watched each other practice skate tricks against the concrete edges of the parking lot. That being said, "hung out" was a pretty loose term. He didn't seem to have that many friends, although she knew he had family, a few cousins of unknown quantity whose academic progress appeared to be as spotty as their school attendance. What was even weirder was that they all seemed to live together – aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone – in some ramshackle place on a back road off the highway. She had heard rumors that all they did there was make meth, but she wasn't sure she believed it.
Sally Ann's attention focused back on the front of the room as the teacher, Mr. Houghton, began to talk about the class. It all seemed pretty straightforward, until he explained that they would be assigned lab partners – that they would have for the entire year – and that they would start their first lab today. She looked around, hoping that at least she would be paired with someone halfway normal – maybe even one of her friends, if she was lucky – and then her heart sank as she heard the instructions that Mr. Houghton began to give.
"Okay, folks, we're doing this alphabetically, so Aaronson and Adams over at that first table…" – he pointed to the lab table closest to the door – "…and then Atkinson and Caramazza, Diaz-Heaney and Doyle, Evans and Farrell…"
At that point, Sally Ann stopped listening, simply letting her eyes close in resignation as she let out a tiny sigh.
"Oh, that sucks," Sharon mumbled. "Sorry…"
"Yeah," said Sally Ann, opening her eyes to see her two friends staring sympathetically back at her. "Well, just my luck, huh?"
"Don't let him say any weird things to you, or breathe on you weird," added Gwen. "You should totally tell if he does, though. Maybe you can get him suspended, or like expelled or something…"
"Uh, okay," said Sally Ann, as she gathered up her pen and notebook. Now that the lab partners had been assigned, Mr. Houghton was explaining, they were supposed to start work at their tables. She gave her friends one final grimace before making her way over to her assigned table, where printed instructions and glassware had already been left for the two of them.
Sally Ann picked up the instructions, trying her best to study them intently even as she was half-watching the figure emerge from the last row of desks and walk towards where she was standing. As he came closer, finally stopping right next to her, she was shocked at how tall he had gotten. He towered almost a head over her, and had filled out in other areas as well, clearly visible even underneath his over-sized clothes. He had pushed the hoodie off his head, but he was wearing a knit gray hat that covered almost all of his light brown hair, although a few curls edged their way over the tops of his ears and down the back of his neck.
He was looking at her again, in that way she remembered, and she found herself feeling incredibly self-conscious, her cheer uniform now far too small and short for her liking, her arms and legs too bare. She quickly brushed her hair so it fell over her shoulder, letting it cover that bit of skin that was the closest to him.
"So, uh, should we get started?" she asked, trying to keep her voice normal and calm – and not in the least bit shaky – as she stared back at the paper in her hands.
He didn't say anything, but she saw him nod out of the corner of her eye. Shifting his weight a little, he put both of his hands up against the edge of the table, and as she looked down she noticed that two of his fingers seemed to be missing.
"Oh my god, what happened to your hand?" she asked without thinking.
He lifted his left hand off the table and glanced at it for a moment; he was wearing fingerless leather gloves, but it was clear now that his last two fingers were completely gone.
"Just an accident," he said quietly, his gaze now catching hers.
"An accident?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in doubt.
"Yeah," he replied, and as he looked at her, Sally Ann found it harder and harder to glance away. There was something in his eyes, a mystery she found herself wanting to solve, something odd and curious and strangely different. Because he was looking at her – and while she was more than used to boys looking at her, eyeing her up-and-down hungrily with acquisitiveness in their gaze, standing next to Hasil, it felt like he was actually seeing her somehow, seeing all her doubts and fears and secrets, baring them more easily than the skin she had half-displayed to the world. But that couldn't be real, could it? She didn't know him, and he certainly didn't even know her. They were too different to be anything more than strangers.
There was no reason that her heart should be beating as fast as it was, an insistent rhythm that she found oddly difficult to ignore.
"Um… okay, then," she said, finally wresting her gaze away. It was only then that she thought to wonder what kind of accident would cause someone to lose two fingers.
She turned her attention back to the instructions, hoping that by focusing on the lab she could set aside all of the strange feelings that Hasil Farrell seemed to be stirring up in her just by his mere proximity. They began to follow the steps laid out for them, Sally Ann reading everything aloud in her clearest voice and Hasil working with the lab equipment after listening to her directions. As he finished each step, she also set herself the task of recording all their results, printing the data neatly on the sheet.
Mostly, they were quiet as they worked, Sally Ann taking quick moments to look as he precisely watched the measurements and used the weighted scale to balance out their liquid-filled beaker.
"You're really good at this," she eventually said in partial surprise. "You practice your chemistry at home or something?"
She realized what she had said – or at least what she had implied – a half-second too late, because he looked back at her, a look of dismay suddenly clouding over his face.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't… well, it's just…"
Sally Ann didn't know quite what else to say. It was difficult to apologize for unintentionally implying that his family made meth without actually acknowledging the rumor itself.
"'s okay," he murmured, turning his face back towards the lab equipment on the table.
"No, it's not," she said insistently. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean anything by it, I promise." He glanced back at her again and she decided to take her chances and offer him a smile, nothing too big, but enough to let him know she was being genuine. "I swear from this point forward, I'll only make jokes about you being bad at chemistry."
"Okay," he said, nodding a little, and Sally Ann could have sworn that she saw the corner of his mouth tick up slightly before he turned his attention back to their work.
Before long, they had finished all their steps and tabulated the results, Sally Ann writing out their final conclusions in the final space at the bottom of the sheet. She hadn't even realized how quickly the time had passed until she heard the bell ring, sharply bringing her out of the quiet camaraderie she had been sharing with him.
Before she took their completed results up to the teacher's desk, though, she caught his eye.
"So… I'll see you tomorrow, Hasil," she said, offering him one last smile. She could feel warmth course up through her chest and across her face, catching along the roundness of her cheeks.
"See you tomorrow... Sally Ann," he replied, his blue-gray eyes trained intently on hers, his lips slowly curling into a boyish smile that she realized was meant for her and her alone. And then he turned, making his way towards the door – he hadn't brought anything to class, she realized, not even a pencil – and she could only stand there, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Eventually, she would need to grab her things and make her way to her next class, and after that was over, she would change and go to cheer practice and she would be with her friends and it would be as if the last hour never even happened. But she would know. She would remember how he looked at her and how he said her name. She would remember what he looked like when he smiled at her, his face lit up as if he was a different person – a person, she now sensed, maybe only she knew.