Juliana

1. Blondie

"Robert Patterson and Juliana Keating, " Our AP Chemistry teacher, Mr. Saltzstein, looked at me then at the blonde girl a couple tables to the right of me. "You two are partners this year. You'll be working at lab table three. Don't move there quite yet."

I groaned to myself. My teachers never failed at pairing me with the dumb blondes who made me do all the work because they didn't want to get their hands dirty. Give me a friggin' break.

"Is there a problem, Robert?" Mr. Salzstein asked me, raising his eyebrows.

"It's Robbie... not Robert, and no sir; there's no problem." I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair.

While Mr. Salzstein finished calling out all the partners, I zoned out. Honestly, I didn't care who was paired with who; I just wanted to get this class period started and over with. I had my partner already. Why did I have to listen to everybody else's?

"Okay. Now that everyone has their partners, you guys can move to your respective lab tables."

The screeching sound of the chairs scuffing the floor filled the room as everyone moved to their new table. I grabbed my backpack out from underneath the table I was sitting at and slung it over my shoulder. Looking for the right table, I strolled around the room.

Once I finally saw the bold number three printed on neon-green paper, I knew I was in the right place. I took my backpack off my shoulder and kicked it under the table. I plopped down in my rolling chair, trying my best to ignore the Barbie-like girl that was beside me.

Mr. Salzstein must have seen that everyone had finally settled in at their new table because he made yet another announcement. "Now that everyone's at their new table, the rest of the class period is going to be spent getting to know your partner."

"Juliana." She said, holding out her hand.

"I'm Robbie." I shook her hand. "Nice to meet ya..." I paused for a second, "partner."

"You too." She started writing down something quickly in her notebook.

Okay. Not to be disrespectful to Mr. Salzstein or anything, but this whole 'getting to know you partner thing' was pretty much a fail; my partner was boring. All she wanted to do was sit there and scribble stuff down in her notebook.

"Um." I coughed. "We're supposed to be getting to know each other. You know, like talking back and forth."

"I'm listening." She said, still writing something in her notebook. "I'm just not very good at asking people I don't know really all that well questions... especially guys..."

Like me asking her questions was any easier? This was going to be a long year.

I picked the conversation back up. "So, you excited for senior year to be over?"

She put her pen down. "I guess?" She looked at me confused. "It kinda just started a week ago..." She picked the pen back up and started scribbling again.

I fidgeted in my chair. "Well... all I know is that I'm ready to get to college. Ya know?"

"Yeah." She nodded her head. "Where do you want to go?"

"Probably just Mississippi State. I'll go somewhere bigger for grad school." I moved my chair side to side. "How about you?"

"MIT." She smiled. "I think I want to go into biomedical engineering."