Deal with the Brandon

-- A/N --

this is a supplemental! it takes place in the middle of chapter 5, when paige is home from school

-- END A/N --

Ah... Another day of school.

Another day of second period study hall.

Another day of being a certain someone's secret admirer.

Correction: another nerve wracking day of being a certain someone's secret admirer.

Orville was all around a relatively normal boy. He dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He raised his hand in class a moderate amount. He got good to passable grades. And he had a couple of close friends who he loved dearly, even if he didn't really know how to show it.

There was just one issue with that normalcy: Orville had a huge crush on one of his friends.

Paige had to be the sweetest, kindest and prettiest boy on the planet Earth. It was like him and his snow white hair had descended from a higher plane or something. Of this, Orville was convinced.

But he was also convinced that despite all that, Paige wouldn't reciprocate his feelings.

Sure, they hung out every now and then, and when they did Paige would laugh a lot at his jokes and make melodic sounds Orville loved to hear, and Paige would let him talk about industrials until his voice gave out while listening intently and asking questions, and Paige had made him that mixtape that one time...

Oh goodness. The mixtape.

They lived in the year 2018-iPods and MP3 players were everywhere. And yet, somehow, some way, Paige had gifted him a physical cassette tape filled with songs that reminded him of Orville for his birthday last year.

To this day, Orville can't think of a gesture that had ever touched him more.

But, he had gotten off track, as usual.

Even under the weight of all of that, there was still a huge ball of doubt in Orville's heart. After all, wasn't that all just things friends did for each other? There could've been no extra meaning. And then Orville would confess. And Paige would turn him down. And Orville would turn and walk away and go home and tell his moms they had to pack up and skip town-leave the state-escape the country!

...Okay. Maybe that was a bit extreme. But still! The first parts actually had a realistic chance to happen! The simple possibility was too much for Orville to gamble on, so he had decided to do the one thing he could think of:

Become Paige's secret admirer.

Orville quietly slips away from where he's supposed to be in favor of roaming the halls. He already had his note written out for the day, complete with a fun fact, a silly pick up line and a question to encourage a back and forth.

It'd be one thing to just leave notes-something Orville had thought long and hard about before actually adding the question on his first note. It wasn't originally something he was going to do, but he realized a one sided conversation would get him nowhere. No, the only way he could be sure Paige wouldn't just be creeped out by suddenly getting random love letters was to see if he would reply.

And reply he did.

The first reply he'd ever given, the one about his favorite breed of cat, was "orange".

Orange.

He was ridiculous. That wasn't a breed of cat! Orville would know-he spent several years learning all about everything cats! They were very interesting creatures, after all, so Orville knew, "orange" cats were absolutely not a specific breed of cat.