Drowning

Partner - See Definition 1

Finley absentmindedly scrolled through her Instagram feed as she waited for class to start. Her green notebook was already on her desk, open, and waiting for the lead pencil to once again color it's pages. The chatter of students was background noise to her, although occasionally she would hear snippets of conversations, most of which she had no interest in listening to any further. She pressed the home button on her phone and quickly checked her email. The rolling of her eyes proceeded the deletion of yet another college email. It was sophomore year, she didn't really care where she was going to college yet and was sick and tired of the numerous emails every day saying "we think you'd make a great addition to our school!" No you don't. You think "oh another sucker we can put in debt for the rest of their lives".

The bell rang and the sound of desks scraping across the floor filled the room. Binders opened and shut with loud clacks followed by the rustling of papers that were being taken out. Finley shut her phone off and stuffed it in her jeans pocket as Ms. Griffiths walked to the front of the classroom and stood behind the lab table that stretched across a good portion of the front of the room. She turned on the projector and after a 2 second delay, the screen lit up with the excel spreadsheet from the day before.

"Alright everyone we are going to get into our lab groups today. At table 1 will be groups 1 and 2, table 2 will be groups 3 and 4, and so forth. Please make sure you have your packets for the lab that you picked up yesterday on the way out. If you were not here or forgot to pick one up, please come see me and I will get you one."

The sound of desks screeching and shuffling papers once again filled the room as all of the students got up to go to their lab stations. Finley noticed one guy go up to get a packet from Ms. Griffiths and couldn't stifle her eye roll; she knew Ross had been here yesterday and had taken one, yet somehow, already misplaced it.

Finley made her way to lab table 4 and set her books on the black countertop before sitting herself up on the stool. A small smile appeared on her lips as she discovered she didn't have a stool that wobbled this time around. Her brown eyes focused on the front of the room and noticed the teacher was talking to a student about who knows what. She didn't notice the boy next to her quickly shoot her a glance before going back to looking at his notes.

Finley bit the inside of her cheek as she glanced over at Eli. With the teacher currently preoccupied, now was the perfect time for small talk- to introduce herself, to get to know the kid a little. But how do you start that conversation? Although honestly she probably already knew a lot more about him than the average person.

The boy next to her was studying his notebook like he had just found out there was a pop quiz and he needed to cram as much information as possible into his short-term memory. She noticed that his hands were loosely closed in fists, with his knuckles pressed together, and his thumbs were absentmindedly fiddling with each other. It almost looked like he was thumb wresting himself. She looked at him a little more closely, taking in his appearance as best she could. It had been awhile since she had seen him (unless you counted glances in the hallway)... not since eighth grade.

He had sat behind her in English class, although she doubted he remembered that. The only reason she remembered ... well that wasn't true, there was another reason, but that wasn't really important. She remembered his friend.... what was his name? De-? De- something. Anyway, he had been jokingly singing Let It Go before class started one day and she had turned around because it wasn't half bad. The smile that Eli had on his face watching his friend was still burned in her mind.

Demetri! That's his name.

But she hadn't seen Eli freshman year at all. His dirty blonde hair, that was almost copperish in color, was slightly longer now, and it looked good on him. He wore a big baggy sweater that honestly just looked like the best thing to curl up on the couch in after school. And for that she admired him, for also placing comfort over style.