Thank you to everyone who has given me (and Morgan) a chance :) Much love! Enjoy! There's a little shout out to season 7 of CSI in here, it's very subtle but it's still there!
V
Despite the pure feeling of dread that accompanied me every single day, the first two months of school flew by. With the nerves dragging down my day, it would make sense that the weeks would drag, but that was not the case. I guess the feeling of having to actually go back into the building sped time up; whenever I got an anxious feeling, it often made time appear to pass much faster. My lack of homework also gave the days a bit less of a drag to them. School always came naturally to me, and the fact that I didn't have many distractions in terms of socialization in my classes contributed to the amount of effort I had to put into my education while I was at home, or lack thereof.
I was slowly starting to make a few friends, but they honestly just made me feel worse about myself without trying to. They, of course, were already familiar with each other from the previous year, making me a prominent outsider. I was positive they were viewing me the way I was viewing myself; unwanted and too nervous to actually maintain a relationship of substance. If being the outsider wasn't enough, being overly aware of this contributed to my inability to get past that awkward stage of friendship. I wanted nothing more than to be able to just be sarcastic and goofy like I typically was with my old friends, but my mind told me I couldn't whenever the opportunity came up. Thinking about the fact that these people didn't know me made me jump to the conclusion that they were spending every moment they spent with me as a chance to judge any of my potential flaws (and trust me, I was aware of a lot of them), which made my desire to be myself dwindle.
While I prevented myself from socializing properly, I wondered when it would just come naturally to be just Morgan-like. This obviously didn't happen with my other friends; I was completely comfortable with not even thinking about any potential judgment with them, but that didn't make much of a difference as I sat with these strangers at lunch. Would they always just think I was some painfully shy loser who never could contribute to a conversation properly? Did they think I was a burden; did they flip a coin to see who had to try and make conversation with me on any given day? To me, this was a perfectly logical conclusion.
At the beginning of another dreaded week, my first class after lunch was English, which I simply adored. I really enjoyed the actual subject of the class, and my teacher was pretty cool, but there was another reason why I loved going there so much. There was assigned seating. For my ten previous years of education, I had hated assigned seating with every fibre of my being, just like any other kid. I'm sure everyone else in my class still hated it in this year, but I worshiped the idea. When you lose the complete and utter stress of choosing where to sit every day, it makes your life a little easier. I didn't have to walk in and legitimately want to start crying out of the worry of picking the wrong place to sit. I could just walk in, head to my assigned seat, and not make conversation with whatever Neanderthal was sitting next to me because he was too concerned with flirting with whatever stereotypical popular high school girl was behind or in front of him. (I was way too nerdy for his liking; I actually did work in class. Shocking, I know.) This made me look forward to going to English each day; it was almost like a break from my anxious behaviors.
On this particular day, my teacher decided to rearrange our seating, which honestly made me a little worried. I wasn't looking to sit with someone who wanted to try and chat with me or worse, pick out my flaws and exploit them. I knew Ms. Delancey liked me though, so she probably wouldn't completely screw me over, but there was always a chance of disaster.
After an agonizing few minutes of being rearranged, my emotions settled down when I was told to sit next to one of the somewhat quieter boys in the class. He wasn't shy, but he wasn't loud and obnoxious like a few of them were. Also, he was rather cute, in my opinion. I was unsure of his name, but that was no surprise. Having dozens of names spat in your direction for two months straight is an easy way to never remember any of them. Once I was informed of my seat, I took a second to try to silence the slow feeling of worrying creeping into my stomach, and then I sat down in one of the extremely uncomfortable blue chairs and set my English binder on my new desk.
"Hey, newbie," he said with a bit of a smile-like smirk. I gave a bit of a nervous laugh and silently cursed that it was still painfully obvious that I was a new student after two months.
"Hey. It's Morgan," I said quietly with a smile. He looked at me and I had a very brief moment of awkward eye contact before I slightly darted my eyes to the side. His bright brown eyes were too nice to be stuck looking into mine.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Ethan," he replied as I gave an internal sigh of relief that he didn't assume I already knew his name. As an extra beat of a second passed without me responding, I involuntarily grabbed several strands of my straightened hair and started twisting it around my index finger.
"Nice to meet you, too," I said, awkwardly halting the brief flow of conversation we had going. Oh well, if Ethan was going to stuck with me for a few weeks, he might as well learn that I can't hold any form of communication without a lot of assistance on his part.
"How was your summer?" he asked with a smile on his face, like he knew that I felt totally out of my element. First of all, I was interacting with a boy, and that rarely ever happened even when I was in an environment I was more comfortable with. Second of all, he was actually continuing our socialization, whereas my previous seating partner didn't even start it in the first place.
"Well, it was alright, I guess. I was at my dad's for about half of it, but then I… came back here for the rest of it, which made everything a little more tolerable. It all could've been better though... Anyway, how about you?" I asked, mentally scolding myself for over-talking a little bit, but praising myself for making good word choices so I didn't come across as having an incredibly dysfunctional family. Nobody should have to know the truth about that.
As Ethan delved into some of the details of his summer, I couldn't help but get distracted by how he actually could communicate in a friendly manner, unlike most boys at this school. He didn't seem to care that I was so much more awkward than he was, and he was genuinely nice. Also, as I mentioned, he was cute, and that didn't help my distraction. He had dark hair, which was a quality that teenage Morgan coveted in men, and even when we were both sitting I could tell he was tall.
"Do you have anywhere to eat lunch here? Not to be rude, but since you're new and all," Ethan asked. My heart gave a small leap that could have been from happiness or nerves, or a combination of the two.
"Well, kind of, but I don't know the girls I eat with very well, so if I can't find them or they go somewhere without me, I'm kind of stuck," I explained quickly, not wanting to come across as though I actually enjoyed eating lunch with them.
"You should come hang out with me. I'm always around the science corridor right from the start of lunch, if you want," he suggested with a light tone. I had to hold in a happy squeal of joy.
"Yeah, that would be cool," I said, trying to sound passive, but with an undertone of being ecstatic.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, definitely, really cool," I said with a grin. It was one of the first real smiles I had mustered this school year, and it felt pretty awesome. At that point, a new assignment was being handed out and explained, so I lacked an opportunity to continue on with one of the best conversations I had shared with someone in a while. Plus, the someone I shared the conversation with was getting cuter by the second.
After saying goodbye to my newest acquaintance, I exited the classroom with more evidence of happiness that I had had in a long time. I wasn't darting my eyes to the ground to avoid knowing there were people looking at me, and I had a bit more confidence as I walked. I'm not saying I was pushing people out of my way to get to my last class, but I just had the smallest essence of confidence to me. I longed for someone I could tell about my exciting news, but I had lost most of the contact with my old friends, so sharing this with them would probably make them wonder if I'd gone off the deep end. I couldn't tell my mom; she would either mock me for having a crush on someone (and this was not a crush. At all. I don't get "crushes.") or give me a long lecture about I don't even want to know what. This was something I'd just have to keep to myself, and keeping things I was excited about to myself was something I would just have to get used to.
I just want to say that this new character I have introduced is not for the purpose of a fluffy relationship or anything, there is definitely a story line there that will add plot :) Thanks again for reading!