This idea has been mobbing my head for the past two weeks. Not that I mind.
Dedicated to the lovely folks at the SnakexLizzie FC.
Lines
"We need the reflection of this line, which would be…? Chris?"
"Five-X plus three equals y."
"Good! Next…"
Satisfied that Chris was three rows away and there was barely ten minutes left to class, Snake zoned back out. Linear Algebra petrified Snake beyond all rational thought. Mister Williams, while not a completely old-fashioned teacher, still liked to teach his class in an old-fashioned way. This meant that students could be expected to be called on, in turn, to give answers verbally or come up to the chalk board to write answers out. Snake supposes that, if he had to choose between the two (in the same way that he would choose between hanging and lethal injection), he would choose writing at the chalkboard. His neat, cursive handwriting was one of the few things he had pride in. Furthermore, his voice was always too painfully soft to hear.
Snake spent a lot of Linear Algebra drawing on the graph paper in front of him with the colored pencils that the teacher insisted upon ("Most kids learn visually," he would explain, cheerfully passing out handfuls of colored pencils). If he wasn't called on to draw at the board (or, horror of horrors, to speak), Snake could doodle the entire class away. He drew solid lines, dotted lines, ruler-straight lines, pink-blue-green lines, free-hand lines, and slightly wobbly lines if he noticed that Elizabeth Middleford, the girl who sat in front of him, was giving an answer.
Elizabeth Middleford had been in every single math class Snake had ever taken since fifth grade. She was, in a lot of ways, everything that Snake wasn't. He didn't envy her in the slightest though. Snake wanted nothing to do with the spotlight that Elizabeth didn't crave, but still found herself in very frequently. She was bubbly, cheerful, ready to wow the world with little more than an fluff-topped pencil, blonde pigtails, and a smile that could light up half of town.
She shined, even in the taupe-colored classroom where she wrote squiggly notes to Ciel Phantomhive. Ciel was a hard-worker and would usually ignore Elizabeth's notes. Snake didn't hate Ciel. Ciel hadn't actually done anything to Snake, so it was impossible for Snake to hate Ciel. Snake just wished that Ciel would pay attention to the origami frogs that piled up on Ciel's desk. There were five, at the moment, and Elizabeth Middleford was working on a sixth.
Snake lowers his head and draws more lines. If he could, Snake would graph a different world where all the curly-cue-covered paper frogs were answered with clean, cursive responses. He would settle for a world where Elizabeth Middleford knew his name. He's been in her class since forever and she's never spoken to him. Then again, very few people do speak to him. Sometimes, Snake wonders if his voice will stop working because he barely speaks. But Snake wishes that Elizabeth Middleford would speak to him. Maybe ask him about part of the homework, if she didn't understand it.
The bell rings over his head. It makes his head hurt, as most loud noises do. He packs away his own pencil, leaving Williams' colored pencils out for the next student. Elizabeth Middleford does the same, quickly stashing her fluffy pencil in her designer bag and pulling on Ciel's arm. Ciel neither pushes her away, nor pulls her closer. He just acts as if he has another backpack on him. Snake wonders if that's a good sort of weight, having another person hanging onto his arm. He wonders if he'll ever know firsthand.
Might be continued, might stay the same. I'll leave it open.