I looked down at my backpack, which was sitting in between my best friend Kayla's desk and me. There was a folded piece of paper tucked under the handle- our way of passing notes. I looked to the front of the room again towards our teacher, Ms. Carpenter. Lucky for us, she always kept teaching to the very last second, this time it was something about World War II. With one eye on the board I reached behind me to my backpack and grabbed the folded note. I opened it up and read Kayla's cat-scratch handwriting. "Can I copy ur homework tomorrow?"

I smiled and rolled my eyes. "Ur asking the wrong person. I wouldn't have anythin copy" I wrote back, in my not-so-cat-scratch/not-so-neat-either writing. I put it back under the handle and went back to doodling in my notebook. This time it was chibi Johnlock. I know, I know, but hey, that's what a hiatus does to someone. I had probably filled that notebook with more mediocre fan art than actual notes. Oh well, it was almost summer anyway. I was just getting to details like Sherlock's scarf when I felt a kick under my desk. "Ouch!" I whispered. I reached back and grabbed the note back.

"Lol oh yeah I forgot. Wanna hang out later?" I read it over in my head. Yes I wanted to hang out, but I had so much to do! I had to check my pages, work on my fanfic, AND catch up on everything they just added to Netflix! Then the bell rang, thank Gallifrey. I shoved the note into my pocket as everyone started packing up to go home. Ms. Carpenter tried to talk over the noise, but no one was listening.

"And don't forget to finish whatever book questions you were too lazy to finish yesterday in class. That means you, Ms. Gaudet."

"Yes Ms. Carpenter" answered Kayla, rolling her eyes. We picked up our bags and walked out of the room and down the hall. "Hold on a sec, I gotta go to my locker." She said, slowing down near her locker. I stopped and walked a few steps closer to her and leaned against the wall. She bent over and picked up some papers that had fallen out. "So?" she said, returning to her upright position and shutting her locker

"So, what?" I replied, only half-listening.

"Do you want to come over later?" she said as we started walking down the stairs.

"Oh yeah, sorry, I can't. They just added season four of Pretty Little Liars to Netflix, and I have to catch up."

"Oh come on! All you do all day is sit on Tumblr and write your stories and watch your shows! Seriously, have some human interaction for once!" We got off the stairs with the large crowd of students and headed out the front doors of our high school.

"Only normal people need human interaction, my dear Kayla," I said with a smile, as we turned a corner and headed down the road.

"Yes, but only you, my dearest Sarah, need to spend at least eight hours a day fangirling over some Benjamin Cucumberbutt" she said, smiling back.

"I'm not the only one who fangirls over him, unless of course you are implying that I myself am the human form of all of tumblr. And his name is Benedict Cumberbatch."

"No, no, no. I specifically remember you saying something about a butt."

I sighed, she never did understand my references. "Cumberbooty. I was referring to the Cumberbooty."

"See, exactly! I mean, who fangirls over a British guy's butt?"

"How many times do I have to mention Tumblr in this conversation?" A black car pulled up next to us. Kayla's mom rolled down the window.

"I gotta go" said Kayla, pulling her bag back onto her shoulder. "Text me later." She got into the car and shut the door.

"Alright, alright. Talk to you later," I said as they drove away. Some people just don't understand the fandom life. "Oh well," I said to myself. I put in my headphones and pressed shuffle on my iPod. Carry on my Wayward Son began to play. I smiled to myself and started walking down the street again. It was an okay walk—long, but okay. I got through Carry on my Wayward Son, two AVbyte musicals, and Let it Go. Just as the first few seconds of Bohemian Rhapsody began to play, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I paused my music and turned my head. There, behind me, stood someone from my school. He was really thin and had hair that was a dirty blonde kind of color. He had big glasses, not quite Harry Potter, not quite hipster, and wore a Star Wars t-shirt. He carried about three textbooks in his hand with a giant backpack on his back. I had seen him a few times in the halls, and had even worked with him on a lab project in chemistry. Why he was now coming up to me on the sidewalk was a mystery. I took one headphone out of my ear and looked at him. He was pretty much as tall as me, maybe an inch shorter, so about 5'5". "Um, hi?" I said, as I pulled the other headphone out of my ear and crammed them in my sweatshirt pocket with Kayla's note. "K-"

"Kyle" he finished. I never was really good with names.

"Kyle. Right, sorry. What's up?"

"You're smart, right?"

"Well I'm no Sherlock Holmes. I do okay though, why?"

"Well, um" he stammered. He was either really nervous, or a bad liar. I hoped for the first. "I've been trying to cram for my English final, and I just can't seem to grasp any of the concepts. I was wondering if you

could help me study. I mean, I heard you liked to write, and that usually means you're smart, or at least, know a little about English, so I was kind of hoping you could help me out." He shifted his books and adjusted his glasses.

"Um, yeah, I guess so. When's your final?"

"Tomorrow." He replied. Crap. I mean, I wanted to help him out and all, but it's so much better to just do nothing all day. And besides, I had no clue how to even begin to study! I would usually just wing it. But I could try, right?

"So you want me to help you today?"

"Yeah, I was hoping you could come over? I promise I'm not an ax murderer or a psychopath or anything."

I let out a small laugh. "No, I believe you. Um, sure, yeah I guess that would be cool. Lemme just ask my mom first so she doesn't think I've been kidnapped and call the police or something." I took out my phone, typed in my password, and texted my mom. "Can I go over a friend's house and help him study?" Message sent. I really hoped we had something going on today.

I got her reply a few seconds later, "Sure. Don't do anything you wouldn't do with Grandma in the room. Be home before dinner, let me know when to pick you up. xo" Of course I have to have the super cool mom, with an inappropriate mind.

I turned back to Kyle "Sounds like a plan. How far to your house?"

"Not very far, about a block away."

"Cool. Lead the way." We started walking down the street towards his house. It was awkward, to say the least, but hey, this counted as human interaction, right? We walked for about a block, just as he had said, until we got to this mansion of a house. Well, not a mansion, but it was huge! And it had tons of flowers and bushes in the front- it was gorgeous. We walked up the front steps, Kyle leading the way, and in through the front door. The outside was nothing compared to the interior. I can't even describe it, it was just amazing, one of those houses where you see it and you're just like, "Oh my god, wow…"

"Dad I'm home! I brought someone who's going to help me study so leave us alone for a bit, okay?" Kyle shouted up the stairs.

"Okay! Be done by dinner, I'll just be up here filling out some paperwork!" Shouted an older man from upstairs. His dad, I assumed.

"I really like your house." I said, still admiring everything.

"Thanks. It's been kind of lonely here though, ever since my mom left. Come on, we can go down to the basement."

Now this is the point where any normal person would see the red flags and think to themselves, "hmm, I barely know this person. We are at their house, going down to their basement, with an adult neck deep in paperwork two floors above us. Maybe I should GET OUT!" But no. I mean, yes, I saw these red flags, but they didn't stop me from trying to be a nice person. So, I followed him down. It was pretty cool there, to be honest. The walls were painted red—not deep red, a nice red. And there was a black horizontal stripe through the middle. There was a big TV on the wall across from a queen sized bed, and seemingly enough empty floor space to fit an elephant. He took off his bag and put his books on his bed, while I sat myself down in a beanbag chair near the TV.

"So, English then." I said. We opened up our books and I tried my best to explain adverbs, helping verbs, and participial phrases. I then realized that I am the worst teacher of all time. Anyway, we quote-unquote "studied" for about half of an hour before eventually giving up, so we just started talking. Just small talk really, a little break. We talked about school and friends and parents, nothing too close.

"So then, she goes over to the teacher and complains that my reading is too distracting!" I exclaimed. I took a sip of water and put the glass cup on the floor next to me.

"No way."

"No I'm serious! She went right up to him and said it exactly like that!"

"Some people, I swear. So what then?"

"I looked up right to her and said, If you have a right to complain that me expanding my horizons with an amazing work of literature is distracting you, then I have a right to complain that the fact that all you do in this class is text and yell across the room is distracting. At least I wait until I finish my work to do something else, meanwhile you sit down at the beginning of class and start blasting your music and yelling to your boyfriend across the room how much you can't wait to quote-unquote "hang out" this weekend."

"No way!"

"More or less, yeah. I am just so fed up with people! I wish I could just go and be with fictional characters for the rest of my life." Kyle let out a chuckle, well, more like a deep puff of breath through his nose that implied subtle laughter, and, well, you get the idea. "Yeah, I get it" he said, a half smile creeping onto his face while he looked down to the floor. Cue awkward silence. "Alright, spill it," I said.

"What?" he replied. Obviously I had caught him off guard. "I don't-"

"Come on, you've practically been teaching me this stuff the whole time, and while you went upstairs to go to the bathroom, I went on the school website." I said, holding up my phone. "The boy who is number two in our class ranks behind Lucy Carmac did not invite me to his house to study, so spill it."

He sighed and looked back at the ground. "You're right, I didn't ask you here to study. See the thing is, I've seen you around school, and I see you talking to your friends, or reading or just drawing on your notebook. I've seen you every day for the past 3 years of high school, and I really like you."

I stayed surprisingly quiet and calm with this. Well, if you call panicked and freaking out calm, that is. I mean, no one has ever liked me before! I've never liked anyone before! I don't like any real people, let alone one who I just started hanging out with! And what did he mean by "he had seen me?" Did that mean he was watching me? Did I have a stalker now? On the inside I was on full Red Alert, but what did I do on the outside?

"Oh."

Oh? Oh?! That's all I could come up with? Oh?! While I smacked myself upside the head internally, things got worse. He stood up off of the edge of his bed and moved over to the closet on the other side of the room.

"Now I know how creepy that might sound, but I've just had a big crush on you for a while and didn't know how to tell you, so I did something else for you."

This is the point where if I used the term freaking out, it would be the understatement of the century.

"I know how much you love your fandoms, and I figured out your favorite characters, mostly based off of your notebooks."

"Okay… I'm not sure I understand…"

"You always wished they could be real right?" he grinned, looking more and more psychotic by the minute. My head started to hurt and the room started to spin around me. I looked over to Kyle again.

"Well," he said, "I guess you can say that I'm your magic genie." I blinked a few times as the room continued to spin. My head pounded and I finally knew what the Master had gone through, because I felt like there were drums pounding in my ears, over and over and over again. I pushed myself up against the wall and tried to stand.

"What did you…"

"Hmm, yeah. Try to fall backwards." he said. I could hear the blood pumping in my head as my eyesight got fuzzier and the room spun more. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to keep myself from falling so I could figure out what was going on. I looked down at my glass of water on the floor.

"You little f" I said as I fell. Then I hit the ground.