peaches | fillie

one

Finn tapped his pencil against his desk, a steady stream of boredom pouring out of his head.

The chair next to him remained empty, probably because of the fear everyone felt when they were around him.

Finn wasn't necessarily a bad person, but he wasn't a good one either. His anger often got the best of him, leading to stupid decisions and a fist without boundaries.

His eyes averted from the cold metal beside him and onto one of the windows instead. The world outside of the glass gleamed brightly, reflecting the warm weather that awaited him. The school year was finally coming to a close, merely a month of education and work to be completed. Only a month of hell until he was a senior, the head of the school.

While his mind wandered, Finn attempted to keep his gaze focused on the board, but his eyes kept falling onto the scattered trees along the front lawn. A girl sat underneath one, a collection of papers spread out against her crossed legs. They wrinkled in the breeze and she hurried to flatten out the creases. Her hair was a hickory brown and she wore a pleated skirt, though their school didn't have a uniform.  Finn watched as she smiled gently to herself, pulling her body off of the mulch and slinging a bag over her shoulder. 

Even though he had been through three years of high school and two of middle school with the same kids, Finn had never seen this girl before.

He wondered how he had been so oblivious to her existence as she skipped up the school steps.

***

The school bell rang, the obnoxious chatter of students overbearing the sound. Millie rolled her eyes, following the crowd of her peers toward the front doors. Most of the day she had worked on her final project for her music composition class outside, and she craved the feeling of sunshine against her skin again. 

She took a sharp turn beside a large potted fern, walking swiftly down a narrow hallway. The hall was lined with classrooms, mostly for the arts, an occasional science room mixed in. Her brown hair tickled her ears, it's length falling delicately against her skin.

 When she had entered the desired room, Millie hurriedly grabbed her cello case and lugged it out into the now nearly empty hallways, shuffling outside.

***

Millie wasn't "different" in the sense that she was weird, but she was certainly something other than most girls within the school walls.

She dressed up almost every day and kept to herself. Unless she was with her friends, which was when she was able to unleash her true self. Their friend group, consisting of Millie, Noah, and Gaten, were tightly bound and had been inseparable since elementary years. When Millie had moved from Britain into the boy's third-grade class in North Carolina, they immediately knew the connection they had was different.

Even though many admired their friendship, others thought they were uncomfortably close or overly peppy. Because of the unusual amounts of positivity the group radiated, the people of their school referred to them as the "dreamers," as true happiness was only a figment of their imaginations.

Millie scanned the crowded front yard of the school, searching for the familiar faces of her friends. They would sit under a large tree, talking about random things and finishing their homework before walking each other home.

She spotted Gaten's disheveled, curly hair, and began making her way to the spot they were sitting.

***

Walking across the concrete, Finn felt the presence of two new people arriving on either side of his body. On the left stood Sadie, an angst-filled 16-year-old with fiery hair, and on the right was Caleb, an upperclassmen good-boy turned bad. The group made their way towards the schoolyard, the two others following Finn's lead. 

This was another moment where Finn chose to hold his reputation at the school, fists clenched at his sides and the sea of students parting to accommodate his path. They shrunk back when he walked by, many beginning to shuffle off of the school property completely.

Finn kept his head held high as he felt the adrenaline start to flow through his veins. He ran a hand through the slump of curls that sat on top, his eyes set on a certain collection of fools sitting under a dogwood tree. They all seemed so excited about life, and he wanted to give them a reality check.

His long legs took only a few more strides before reaching his targets, but he stopped short when he saw the only girl of the group. 

The girl that was outside during his math class.

She was giggling loudly, playing with the hem of her skirt. She noticed Finn staring, and shot him a playful smirk. He maintained a hard expression but felt his cheeks burning red.

"What are you doing?" Sadie questioned, flustered. Out of all of the years he had been in charge of the group, he had never once gotten like this before finishing a mission. Finn cleared his throat, advancing once more. 

AUTHORS NOTE: 

welcome to peaches!

i hope you enjoy reading this and make sure that you check out my other stories while you're at it :)

thank you so much for reading, i hope you'll stick around!!

-paige

{3/3/2018: i rewrote nearly this entire part!! it doesn't affect the plot, i just hated the original a lot. feel free to ignore this update if you want, it isn't essential to re-read :) }