A/N: Hey, guys. For all of my Collide readers, no I have not abandoned you! I am, however, trying to do NaNoWriMo a month and a half late (I hit the 15,000 word mark today, my sixth day, so I'm pretty freaking happy), so all of my fanfics are on an extremely brief hiatus until the middle of January, when this hell will be over. The DB Eman thread is doing a "6 Days of Eman," and although they're currently on the fourth day and I'm only on the first, I'm trying to catch up. I'm putting all of my fics into a six-chapter "story." Each day has a theme, and I'll be sure to explain every one-shot in a brief author's note. This one-shot is about their first meeting, and their thoughts on it. I hope you all enjoy!
What was Mr. Simpson talking about? Emma wasn't sure, really. Even though she lived and breathed for school, for any opportunity to learn something new, she'd shied away from computers ever since it had happened. She'd also started going home and staying tucked away in her room as soon as school was out and listening to her friends' advice. All of the things that had contributed to her huge mistake were cut out of her life, the forefront of which was romance. If she was honest with herself, she knew that Toby had the smallest of crushes on her. And it wasn't that she didn't like him or that he wasn't nice to her; he was honest and smart and a whole lot more sensitive than JT, and plenty more (a lot of times too much more). Right now Emma just couldn't picture holding someone's hand, talking about things like she had with Jordan. Because if there was one thing that she'd learned from her combined experiences with Jordan, JT, Toby, and her own long gone father, it was that the only that the only times boys said something that took emotion to get out, it was only them echoing back her own feelings because they wanted something from her. Something she wasn't willing to give.
The door thudded closed softly, and Mr. Simpson's voice took on that enthusiastic, welcoming feel it had had the first day of school. He uttered a name, Sean, maybe, and her interest was suddenly piqued. Their class was fairly small, and she was surprised that they hadn't been told about a new student coming in. She rearranged her notebook until it was a neat, straight square in the middle of her desk before glancing up. Something strange ran up her spine.
As she looked at him, suddenly the nightmare of a few months ago that she'd been thinking about and the spiral bound stack of loose leaf paper she'd been obsessing over just a moment before didn't seem nearly as important. The only tangible thing that she could wrap her head around was the poorly hidden sadness in his eyes. He looked tired, she thought; so tired that it was as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. For all she knew, it might. Emma realized that she wanted nothing more than to ask him what that felt like, as well as a million other things. Was it hard coming into a new school filled with strangers after the year had already started? Did that denim jacket stretched across his back and arms wear as comfortably as it appeared to? And most of all, she wondered, why was he so sad? What was so hopeless about life that he couldn't be bothered with keeping his head above his crossed arms while it went on around him?
Homeroom ended quickly, and as she picked up her books she turned her head to catch one last look at him, hoping he wouldn't see her and how fascinated by him she was. The blue of his eyes met hers, though, and if eyes could shrug, she was sure that that was exactly what his were doing. 'Why do you care?' they seemed to say. 'This is nothing new for me. Just ignore me and let me sit here moping by myself.' That was it, she realized. The reason she gravitated toward him like he was magnetic was because they were both trying to hide from something. She hid behind movie nights with her mom and hushed gossip fests with Manny in the hallways; he hid behind the very thing that made him look so defeated. Emma had always been a perceptive person, which was part of the reason that she'd been so lucky with her choice of friends and so unwilling to believe she could have been stupid about Jordan. Seeing someone whose pain both mirrored and contradicted hers raised questions in her mind. At the forefront of it all, she wondered if maybe they could help each other; if he could make her stop pretending to be fine to appease her friends and her mom, if she could wipe that miserable grimace off his face and get him to smile. It was silly and stupid, she knew, and she hated that her mind had already decided that they could be good friends (or something more) simply because he came into class with a bad attitude that she was sure must only be a façade. After all, Emma Nelson had always tried to look for the best in people; and with Sean, she had a feeling it wouldn't be all that hard.
-0-0-0-
The classroom was warmer than it had been last year. Sean knew that he would probably have to shed his jacket by the second hour of the school day, but he didn't bother taking it off as he surveyed his new classmates and then slinked over to the only unoccupied desk in the classroom. It was crazy that out of all the things that had changed in the past six months (Spinner Mason's hairdo, for starters), the only one that he could focus on was that Mr. Raditch had finally relaxed his tightfisted grip on the school's annual budget enough to get professionals to come in and check the central heating.
He felt a pair of eyes on him, and when he opened one of his own just enough to peek out at the person in question, he caught sight of a pair of huge brown eyes that immediately snapped back to the front of the room, the face they belonged to getting hit with the slightest shade of pink. She thought that he hadn't caught her looking. The realization brought the corner of Sean's mouth up in amusement. The girls he'd known back in Wasaga had been thirteen going on twenty-three, all short skirts and blouses that left almost nothing to the imagination. Even the girls he'd met at Degrassi last year had known how to play the dating game, holding eye contact a minute longer than necessary and saying things filled with double meanings, faces inviting and flirtatious. There was none of that in her, though; this girl, whoever she was, was innocent to the bone.
Maybe not completely innocent, he decided a few moments later, when he caught sight of the blankness in her gaze as she fiddled with her notebook for the umpteenth time. Her hair fell into her face and an awkward hand attached to a long, skinny arm reached up to brush it away. There wasn't anything sexy or even blaringly cute about her, but nevertheless Sean kept on sneaking glances at her whenever he wasn't feigning indifference to the whole lesson.
He noticed a lot of things about her during those fifteen minutes. He noticed that while everyone else sat back easily and made jokes during morning announcements, she sat intently at the edge of her seat, pen poised to scribble down anything important (she would be waiting a long time for that). He noticed that the uncomfortable, compulsive movements that he'd found so annoying minutes before became part of her charm if he watched her long ago. Most of all, he noticed that when she inclined her head toward the dark-haired girl sitting beside her and laughed in surprise, she had the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.
As the bell rang, bringing him out of his reverie, Sean hung back. If he was lucky, he'd have another minute or two before Mr. Simpson hinted less than subtly that he should be well on his way to his next class. Something unexpected happened, though. The girl swung around to face him one last time, and their eyes met. She made him uncomfortable, and he felt like she was asking him a question he wasn't prepared to answer. The longer their staring contest went on, the more convinced he became that she was trying to piece him together like a jigsaw puzzle in her mind, connected the sour expression with the worn clothes with the feelings she was bringing to the surface somehow. It could have only been a minute, but it was more than enough time for him to realize that he was interested. And she, although she had no idea how obvious it was to him, was interested too. It scared him. Everything he touched went bad. If he tried holding her hand he was convinced he would accidentally snap its delicate bones like a pile of twigs; if he talked to her he'd unquestionably say the wrong thing. And once she saw how damaged he really was, she wouldn't want him. No one did.
She should have been gone by the time he made it to the front of the classroom, but instead she was holding the door open. He nodded his thanks and took off down the hall wordlessly. The raven-haired girl that he'd noticed sitting next to her earlier brushed past him, going in the opposite direction. "Emma, why are you all the way back here? Class starts in less than two minutes!" Sean couldn't hear what she said in reply, only her high-pitched, incredibly sweet voice. When he realized that they were heading toward the same classroom, he was glad; he wouldn't mind having more time to stare at her. Not at all.