Laws of e(Motion)

Four: #65BCEA

In a way, the early start for Emilia's extra credit electronics workshop was a welcome event for the first time this year, for it gave her the time to find the classroom before her formal class there immediately after. The halls were quieter at this time too, everything far slower and easier to handle, with the added bonus of an improbability of running into Arielle. Never an impossibility though, the consideration keeping her anxious as she made her way down to the electronics block, holding the straps of her backpack as she walked if only to give her hands something to do. The tension in her shoulders was almost painful.

Her new classroom for the rest of the year was uncomfortably similar to her previous one, as if someone had rotated the whole room by ninety degrees, which meant she wasn't quite as familiar with everything as she would've liked. In its identical wooden workbenches and varying machinery, it distinctly lacked the little alcove of her old room that had housed the sanding machine. Sometimes she'd take shelter there when the rest of the room was too loud or too much, the ear defenders and goggles that were mandatory when using the machine providing protection from more than sawdust, and it wasn't hard to find something that could do with sanding down on a project whether it was her own or an offer for someone else. It never seemed like a popular process, much to her benefit.

The morning had turned into another situation where Emilia's anxiety had got the better of her and she'd arrived far too early, which was almost as bad as showing up late. The only other person in the room was presumably her teacher for the next year, a surprisingly young man stood behind a desk at the front of the room organising papers. The only thing that really differentiated him from a student who was somewhere they shouldn't have been was his relatively formal shirt and trousers, no tie as was standard for the more practical subjects, but they were still the definition of teacher clothes. He quickly took notice of her still hovering in the doorway.

"Hi, who are you?" So she'd ended up with the overly friendly, exaggerated, quirky type for the next year, pinning her hopes that classes wouldn't be too unbearably informal. His demeanour had put her at ease a little already though, no matter how much she wanted her teachers to act in line with the formality of their job role.

"I'm sorry, I'm really early," Emilia blurted out, already bracing for him to make a joke out of it. "I'm Emilia Croft? I'm in this class for the year."

"You are!" her teacher said as he'd scrolled over presumably his new register for the year in search of her name, his celebration of the fact making her feel a little less guilty for arriving fifteen minutes early. "If you had anything left from last year it should've been put on the side over there," he pointed to the window ledge on the far left side of the classroom, and while Emilia couldn't immediately spot her freshly-started bundle of wiring, she trusted it would be there amongst the many others. "Hopefully this room shouldn't be too different for you, and if I can help with anything, give me a shout."

"Thank you." It took her a moment to process everything, checking through her mental list of questions she had for starting the new class. He'd answered most of them. "Do I just sit anywhere?"

"Yep, open plan unless something starts going horribly wrong." It was the policy for most of the teachers, the reasonable ones at least, but she always liked to know for sure.

Looking over the similar-looking wire piles didn't really help Emilia figure out who else had been moved, or who else she might already know in her new class. It appeared the whole year group had started a new project near the end of the previous year given the state of the circuitry she looked over as she searched for her own bundle of components, luckily not taking long. She didn't have to worry about it going missing anymore, or accidentally finding her way into the wrong class and coincidentally sharing a name with someone who was supposed to be there while she wasn't. The next task on her list was picking a seat, the perceived stakes unreasonably high, but this would be where she sat for the rest of the year and when she had the whole room to choose from, it had to be good. Three out of the five tables could already be written off; one too close to the front of the room, one too far away, and the last right beside the sanding machine which with the new room's layout would be the worst spot in the whole room. With arriving fifteen minutes early came the only upside of having a pick of any seat on the remaining two 'OK' tables, with the perfect angle towards both the front of the classroom. Placing her project carefully on the table, partially expecting the components to fall apart even though most of it at the moment was just wires, Emilia habitually pulled the skirt of her pink pinafore dress down before sitting, taking a second of stillness to reassess the state she'd left her circuitry in. The bare minimum covered it for a description, everything attached but barely, and only in one place even in cases where multiple contacts applied. She could spend the first few hours of her morning soldering, certainly not a bad way to settle into the new class which would hopefully grow beyond just her in the next ten minutes.