Hopeless

Houston, we're making an unexpected landing

"Oh, hello," I say stupidly as I stare up at the boy who is holding me in his arms with a fairly funny look on his face. "Are you new?"

There is a moment of complete silence as the entire class, including the handsome young man holding me in his arms, stare at me in disbelief.

I take it he's not new.

Slowly, I push myself away from not new boy's arms and land gracefully on my feet... not. I push myself backwards and, still in complete shock from the "Are you new?" incident (Which happened like ten seconds ago he should be over it by now), my sort of saviour lets go completely and I thump to the floor like a sack of potatoes. An extremely attractive sack of potatoes I might add.

Obviously my overly supportive and caring friends did absolutely nothing to help me and just stood there snickering. Thanks guys.

And so I awkwardly scramble back to my feet just as the bell rings, allowing my swift departure. Compared to my long, laborious change before, this one is almost over withing a second and I am just about dressed and ready to leave when Izzy plonks her stuff down next to me and begins to unbutton her shirt.

"I never thought anything could be more ungraceful than Melanie Parker running that cross country race last month but here you sit." she chortles, pulling the blue polo shirt over her head. She is quickly joined by Jessica who shoves into the space next to me, laughing along.

"How can you be so bad at trampolining? You literally just bounce." I glare up at her for a second before giving in and chuckling along... it is after all quite funny. "And then you go and land in Nathan Matthews' arms and ask 'are you new?', are you a complete social recluse? We have been to parties with Nathan, you are in most of his classes, last week we went to watch him play football instead of doing PE"

I stare at her for a moment, "Oh, so that's his name." Jessica and Izzy throw their hands in the air in frustration and I laugh at them. Soon they are changed and we head off to our form room for break, the majority of which we have missed since the other two are like drugged up snails when it comes to getting changed, a sloth could beat them in a race.

So we spend our remaining five minutes lazing around before heading off to our English classes, unluckily for me I haven't been put in a class with either of them, I do feel that this is partially due to the ten minute long speech we presented to the class as our spoken English submission on Jaffa cakes (But really, they said to choose any topic). I have been stuck with the infamous Mr Harson, infamous for being particularly strict and for holding a deep and abiding loathing for me.

Needless to say English is my favourite subject.

I scurry to the back of the room to claim one of the chairs there, that's the only thing Harson has going for him really, no seating plan, and begin the laborious task of making the wooden table in front of me suitable to rest my head upon to while the next hour away.

I am halfway through arranging my books and pencil case into a pillow shape when the sound of someone clearing their throat breaks my attention. I look up to see the fairly amused face of my rescuer from before, Nick... or was it Nathan?

"Oh hi um... Neil?" I try, cringing inside as he stares back at me in disbelief.

"You've been at this school for like five years and I've been in your classes for most of that time, how can you not know my name?"

"What? I do know it, you're Nick." I try again, crossing my fingers under the desk in hope.

"Nathan. It's Nathan." he laughs, taking the seat next to mine and unpacking his books and pens.