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1. Umbrella

"Landon!" Ms. Wright shouted towards the back of the room, where I was seated, and just happened to be taking a quick nap, "I'd like for you to pay attention to my lecture today, this is not a class that you can sleep in."

"S-sorry Ms. Wr-" I was interrupted by a huge yawn, to which everybody laughed and directed their attention back towards the projector screen. I reached into my backpack and managed to pull a crumpled sheet of paper out and proceeded to pretend that I was scribbling notes down.

When I looked back up from my blank paper, I noticed that not everybody's gaze was towards the front; Paige was looking at me and when our eyes met, she let out a small smile and turned her head back down to her paper, which was full of notes- as always.

Paige Moore, what can't you say about Paige? She wasn't the popular girl and there were no rumors about her promiscuity, maybe that's what drew my attention to her all those years ago. But, she knew everybody and everybody knew her, she had the warmest smile with the whitest teeth, her eyes relayed every single one of her emotions and her laugh, oh her laugh, I could listen to it all day.

The bell rang, pulling me out of my trance, and the class made their way through the door, trudging through the mud outside that had been created by a sudden storm looming over the campus. I didn't have an umbrella and my class was near the main building, crap. I looked all around me, planning a route to my next class when my eyes landed on a polka-dot umbrella.

"Hey hot-shot! Come over here." Paige raised her voice in my direction, waving her hand in front of her. Was she serious? Was she talking to me?

"Landon! You're going to make me late!" she was talking to me! Why would I make her late?

I slowly made my way across the sidewalk to where she was standing, dressed in a jacket and rainboots; she must have checked the weather today.

"What do you need, Paige?" I tried to keep my voice at a normal level, because on the inside I was screaming- she was really talking to me.

"I have a wild guess that you don't have an umbrella and," she looked past me, up at the sky, scrunching her nose at the sight, "our next class is all the way across campus so I figured we could share mine. Unless you don't want to be seen carrying a polka-dot umbrella?" Humor was evident in her voice and I laughed along, ready to turn her down when her eyes bulged out looking down at my hand.

"Is that your backpack?" she squealed, "How do you find anything in there? Here, hold this," she says, thrusting her umbrella into my open hand as she grabs my backpack from my other.

"You better start walking, or we are going to be late." she says, looking down, shuffling through my backpack, obviously trying to organize it while walking. I do my best to keep the umbrella over her head after we get out from under the overhang.

Paige mumbled something beside me and as turn to ask her what she said, I find sparkling blue eyes burrowing holes right into mine.

"What did you say?" I ask her, the eye contact is almost uncomfortable, I feel like she can see right through me.

"Your shoulder is getting soaked. I said that we could share the umbrella, you're barely even covering yourself." Her tone is almost accusatory. I hadn't realized that I wasn't holding the umbrella over me at all; my arm had been outstretched to the side making sure not a drop of water landed on Paige.

"Oh, you're right I guess." I pulled the umbrella over my head by just a centimeter. Looking up from my tattered oxfords I saw saw the main building towering over me.

A tap on my shoulder brought my attention back to the brunette by my side, her arm stretched out to hand me back my backpack, now organized after minutes of tossing crumpled papers in trash cans as we passed them.

"English here we come!" Paige exclaimed beside me, full of fake enthusiasm. She got along with all of her teachers but Mr. Reid was managed to get under her skin.

The bell rang signaling that we were late, shit. I could possibly get out of a detention, but since Mr. Reid was always out to get Paige, there was no way that she would get any less than a referral.

Looking down at her, she was obviously in a hurry to get to class. Shoving her still wet umbrella into her backpack after I handed it back to her, she started towards the entrance, but she stopped and pointed her lovely face back at me.

"Are you coming or not?" Paige laughed, nodding her head towards the door.

"You really think I have to?" I breathed out, trying to make a joke. Without answering, Paige walked back towards me, grabbed my upper arm and pulled me towards room 108.

Her chilly fingers felt comforting on my bicep- good thing I've been working out. What am I saying? I sound like the ultimate jock.

The almost uncomfortable eye contact came around again, but she never took her hand off of my arm, still leading me to our next class. As we neared the door, I puffed up my chest ready to defend Paige from any fire Mr. Reid sends her way.

I managed to talk Mr. Reid out of referrals for Paige and I, and we both settled on an after-school detention.

"Thank you so much, Landon." She whispered to me as we sat back down at our desks, I could tell that she was extremely grateful for my negotiating skills.

"Alright class, let's get back to what we were discussing before we were rudely interrupted," Mr. Reid looks over to our table, making eye contact with Paige. She looked down at her paper, blushing, obviously embarrassed. "How about we try being on time for once, Miss Moore, hm?"

Paige almost looked as if she had tears in her eyes, "Yes, Mr. Reid, it won't happen again." She mumbled towards the front of the room before returning her gaze to a blank sheet of notebbook paper on the desk in front of her.

My blood was boiling, why was he being so cruel to her? I was late, too. It took everything I had not get up from my plastic seat in the back of the room and knock him to the ground for being so unkind to Paige.

After several more not-so subtle digs at Paige, my breathing was ragged, I was trying to calm myself down when I felt a hand on my shoulder blade. I almost turned around to swing, thinking it was Mr. Reid, when I saw a waterfall of silky, mahogany hair.

"You can calm down Landon, I'm okay," Paige tried to comfort me, and it was nearly working. Her clear blue eyes met mine and I was instantly settled. She continued to move her hand up and down my back, and I didn't want her to stop. I closed my eyes, repeating her sentence in my head over and over again.

"I picked you as a partner, I hope you don't mind," she said, looking down at a paper on my desk titled: YOUR CLASSMATES: WHO ARE THEY?, "he was explaining it while you were planning his death," she smiled a sly smile, looking up at me, before continuing on, "all we have to do is present each other in front of the class, using this," she removed her hand from my back to point at the paper, "criteria."

And to my surprise, almost like a reflex, her hand found its way to my back once again, continuing its up-and-down movements, even though I was obviously calmed. She looked up at me with so much interest, it was baffling, I could tell she was about to ask about my freak-out.

"You don't have to tell me, if you, um, don't want to," she spoke next to me, reading my mind.

"Just a little stressed, that's all." I plastered a fake smile on my face, looking down to read this project that I was now doing with Paige.

"Okay, we'll lets start 'getting to know each other'" she laughed, imitating Mr. Reid's obviously fake European accent. Her smile lifting me out of my previous mood, all death plots forgotten.