Shining Star: A Pavel Chekov Fanfiction

Seven

Pavel is nine years old when he makes his first real friend.

Sure, he has some sort-of friends. Like Avijit, his lab partner in science. They don't talk a lot about things other than the assignments, but between them, they get the work done just fine. Or Anna, whom he sits next to at lunch. He saw her sitting alone one day and joined her on a whim, but they didn't really have much in common, so they've just spent every lunch period sitting next to each other doing their own things. Still, though, it seems to work out well. But he's never had a real friend—someone he can actually talk to, laugh with. Until he meets Valentina.

It's the last day of his first marking period of seventh grade. His history teacher has decided to rearrange seats again—most teachers just have desks in rows, but the history teacher says she doesn't like things to stay the same for too long, it bores her. It's only been six weeks, and the desk arrangement has changed about eleven times. Not that Pavel is complaining. When he walks into class and sees the desks are pushed together into groups of two, he shrugs and finds his seat. He wonders who will sit next to him—who his partner will be.

As the classroom slowly begins to fill up, he finds out the answer. The person who sits down next to him is a tall girl with brown hair framing her face and gold hoop earrings swinging with each movement. She smiles at him and immediately sticks out her hand. "Hello! I'm Valentina. What's your name?"

She's said six words to him, right off the bat, without any mention of his age. Pavel takes this as a good sign, and he extends his hand as well. "I'm Pavel. It's nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too!" she says. Pavel can practically hear the exclamation points in her words. "I like your shirt!"

"Thank you." He looks down at his shirt—blue with the logo of his favorite movie series, Battles for the Cosmos, on it. "Are you a fan?"

"Am I?" she gushes. "I love that series! My older brother introduced it to me and now I'm kind of obsessed. I think that now I know more about it than he does!" She laughs. "So who's your favorite character?"

"Um, I like Minerva," Pavel says. "She's really smart. She can think her way out of anything."

"Yeah, Minerva's awesome!" exclaims Valentina. "But my favorite character has to be Xavier. Those fencing moves!"

"It's just a great series, all around," Pavel says, smiling. "Even though the science isn't very accurate."

"I know, right?" Valentina replies. "Every time they say, 'oh, we have to escape the bad guys by flying into this black hole,' I die a little inside."

"Exactly!" says Pavel. "I think they're confusing black holes with wormholes—but come on, if you fly into a black hole, you have much bigger problems than escaping the bad guys!"

Valentina laughs at that. Pavel notices that her whole face lights up when she laughs. "Yeah, if people regularly flew into black holes, Starfleet would have a much higher casualty rate."

"I actually live near the Starfleet shipyards," Pavel says. "I watch the starships take off sometimes. It's really cool knowing that we can fly through space. That it's not just a fantasy."

"Yeah, I think it would be cool to work for Starfleet," replied Valentina. "One of us could be the next Captain Heracles. Or the next Minerva or Xavier."

Just then, the bell rings for the start of class. As the history teacher walks in, her heels clicking against the floor tiles, Valentina smiles at Pavel. He smiles back as he opens his history textbook. He has just made a friend! A real friend! What would they talk about next? He wonders what her next class is and if it's close to his chemistry class, so they can walk together and talk about Battles for the Cosmos and...

His reverie is cut short by the loudspeaker crackling to life. "Will Pavel Chekov please come to the guidance counselor's office?"

His heart sinks. Getting called to the counselor's office can only mean one of two things: something bad has happened to his parents (not likely) or, in his case, he's going to have to take another test to be bumped up into the next grade (more likely—it is the last day of the marking period, after all). Which means he's going to leave his blooming friendship with Valentina. He'll have to start all over again.

As he gathers his things and leaves the classroom, Valentina waves at him. He manages a wave back and a weak smile.

While taking the test that will put him into eighth grade, he tries to get a few answers wrong to throw off his score, just to stay in seventh grade a little bit longer. But he knows in his heart that it's no use.