Not Your Average Love Story

It was just the average Tuesday when he first walked into the classroom. I was stressing over some comments some of the popular kids had made about me this morning (just like I did every morning) and worrying about the fact there was a school dance coming up and no one had asked me, again. But then he came and all my worries seemed to float out of my head. He even made Miss Hill, the boring Maths teacher who's eyes are usually glued to her online bingo games, look at him in surprise. First of all, he wasn't wearing the pea green and grey school uniform (considered a criminal offence to our ancient teachers) but it wasn't his average teenage boy clothes that made us all stare. There was something about him, something in his cute crooked smile or his bright, almost sparkling eyes. Maybe it was the sort of exotic lilt in his voice when he introduced himself.

"Um, hello." He raised his hand in an awkward kind of greeting. "I'm Toby. I think I'm supposed to join this class?"

"What are you wearing?" asked Miss Hill, completley ignoring Toby's question.

"This? Um, well, this is a t-shirt and these are jeans. Toby spoke without any hint of humor in his voice, but a girly giggle exploded from the back of the class.

We all turned to stare at Rhiannon Taylor, the 'popular' girl in our school. She sat at her desk twirling her bleach-blonde hair between her perfectly manicured fingers, blowing a pink bubblegum bubble the exact same shade as her pouted lips. She fluttered her eyelashes, and I was practcally crossing my fingers hoping that Toby would not be reeled in by her 'charm', (as every other boy this school had been.) But to Rhiannon surprise, he turned his bck on her and carried on talking to Miss Hill.

"Er, can I sit down?" Toby asked, and suddenly all eyes were on the two empty spaces in the room, one next to Rhiannon, and one next to me.

"Wherever you like... Toby, is it?" Miss Hill ruffled through some papers on her desk. She handed Toby a booklet. "The school dress code. That," she pointed to what he was wearing. "Does not suffice."

"I'll uh, keep that in mind." Toby put the booklet in his back pocket as walked through the desks and hovered next to the empty chair by me.

"Is it alright if I sit here?" I nodded, hearing a lot of gasps through the class as they realised Toby had just ignored their Queen Bee.

"Hey," he said, shrugging off his jacket. "I'm Toby." He held out his hand for me to shake, an oddly old fashioned gesture.

"Grace." I said, slowly shaking his hand. "So, did - did you just move here?"

"Yeah, two days ago to be precise. Could I er - could I borrow a pen? I haven't really come prepared." Toby smile that crooked smile again, while I stared at him like an idiot.

"Oh, a pen? Um, yeah, sure." I stuttered, jumbling thorugh my pencil case.

"Thanks." He whispered quietly, as Miss Hill had carried on teaching. "So, who's that?" Toby was pointing at the back of the class, straight at Rhiannon Taylor.

"That's Rhiannon Taylor. She's the 'popular' one here." I answered, and Toby looked surprised.

"And you're not?" I laughed out loud, causing Miss Hill to glare at us.

"Are you serious?" I asked. "Me. Popular? You know, if you weren't new here, that would have been the stupidest thing you could have said." Toby was silet for a few moments, thinking, then mumbled: "So I guess they don't choose the pretty ones to be popular."

After staring at him for a while I blushed and turned away. Did he just call me pretty? When I finally dared to look back at him his head was bent over his work, apparently completley engrossed in Pythagorus' Therom. I glanced over at Rhiannon, who I saw was glaring at me. Did she know what Toby had said? And then I thought, did I care? I looked back down at the table, sneaking looks at Toby until the bell went for the end of class.