Infinite, Sometimes

3

    The five minutes were dragging by painfully while Ryan looked slightly off to the side and watched as the person next to him wrote frantically on a notebook page. He directed his eyes to something else every time the boy slammed his pen down and folded his arms over the notebook to support his head. During these moments, he would run his eyes through the hair on the boy's head and hope to catch a glimpse of the concealed words that were scribbled on the pages that the boy was laying on. Ryan was desperate to put a name to this boy's face but he found it strangely hard to introduce himself properly. He was normally comfortable around people ever since he convinced himself that he needed to open up and not close himself off to everyone, and while he was usually outgoing enough to at least catch someone's name, he was now finding himself terrified of opening his mouth and saying something he would instantly regret.

Ryan did not approve of the constant condescending tone that the principal's voice held while it echoed out of the intercom. He couldn't have cared less about sports tryouts or the debate team, but the mention of the school's annual back-to-school dance briefly caught his attention. He looked at the clock again: 8:07, and Ryan could have sworn he saw the minute hand move backwards. With the quick realization that his mind was starting to act against him, he followed the boy's previous example and rested his head on his arms. Instead of words on paper, Ryan was trying to hide his thoughts, even from himself. He concentrated on his breathing in an attempt to slow his heart and prevent it from exploding and leaving him with quite a mess to deal with. Ryan was starting to drift off from listening to the soft scratches of the pen against the boy's notebook. A soft thud on his head snapped him out of his trance so quickly that he didn't remember sitting up. Wide eyed, he made eye contact with Miss Davis. She gave him an amused grin accompanied by the copy of the student handbook that had been her weapon of choice in tapping him on the head.

"Sorry Ryan. Can't share my coffee with ya no matter how much you need it."

Ryan shuffled his folder and pen around on the table in a desperate attempt to look busy. "Oh, no I was just thinking, sorry 'bout that."

"Thinking, eh? You mean you were using your brain to form ideas and thoughts? I didn't think anyone liked doin' that anymore!" She sarcastically raised her hand to her mouth and winked at Ryan to assure him that he was in no trouble. "You could probably teach some people a thing or two about that lost art. Nobody seems to appreciate it anymore." She tapped the surface of the table before heading back to her desk where she would continue to avoid her chair, choosing instead to sit on top of her giant desktop calendar and gently kick her feet back and forth.

Ryan was grateful for the fact that almost everyone was too preoccupied to notice their exchange, but it still didn't stop his face from burning. He could tell he already liked Miss Davis, even if for the simple fact that she didn't walk over and tape a detention slip to his head, a practice that his previous teachers seemed to live for each time students decided to lay their heads down. He twisted his pen around in his hands and glanced over to the boy, almost as if he was looking for some sort of support that he wasn't even sure he needed. Ryan's brow was raised in a small gesture of 'what should I do now?' and the boy just smiled and shrugged, leaving his shoulders lifted slightly longer than was to be expected. His eyes lit up again as he flashed Ryan another smile before shyly looking back toward the red sleeved arms on top of his notebook. His chair squeaked as the boy started to bounce his leg up and down, so the nervous repetition ended quickly, but not before Ryan felt the boy's leg brush against his own several times.

The classroom erupted as the bell finally rang and Ryan shot up from his seat perhaps more quickly than he thought he should have. He compensated by stretching his arms toward the ceiling and subsequently exposing the bottom half of his stomach with hipbones peeking over the waist of his jeans. The boy was slowly emerging from his seat while Ryan walked to the other end of the table and turned to look at him. He set himself up for conversation before he had found any words, and now Ryan had to fish for something to say.