She tripped along through the hallways, keeping her head down. As she got into class and sat down, she let out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, he wasn't in class yet. Unfortunately, about a second after the bell rang, he walked through the door, muttering a false apology to the teacher while smirking at his friends, and sat down in his seat. Right next to hers of course. She focused completely on the teacher, driving herself into the lesson about the Pythagorean Theorem. He breezed his way through the lesson, and every time his hand went up, hers followed. He didn't know it, heck, he didn't even know her name, she was pretty sure, but they were mortal enemies. She was the top student, and she wasn't going to let some ginormous high school crush get in the way of that.

When the blessed bell finally rang an hour later, she got up in a rush, trying to get out as soon as possible so that she didn't make a fool of herself as she always seemed to do in his presence. Of course, as soon as she tried to move, she realized that somehow she had managed to get her foot tangled in the strap of her book bag, causing her to trip forward. Someone caught her just in time before she lost her balance completely and hit the ground. At first she was thankful, until she realized that the hand on her arm was his.

Surprised, she made the mistake of looking up into those incredibly, gorgeously, deep sapphire eyes of his. "I'm sorry," she stuttered, quietly, and her already emerald skin blushed a deep forest green. He smiled slightly.

"Eh, it's okay, I've heard that praying mantises have extremely bad balance," he replied, smirking.

She was utterly mortified, and rushed out of the room after untangling her leg and grabbing her stuff. Behind her she could hear his friends' loud laughter, and she dug her fingernails into her palm until it bled, a trick she had learned to help prevent unwanted tears from leaking out. She had thought that maybe, just maybe, Fiyero was different. Now she knew, her crush would always remain only a crush. Now she knew, she could try to move on. Now she knew, but it didn't make it hurt any less.