Jane tended to daydream in class, her brain unable to focus for more than a couple of moments as Mr Clarke talked about the earth's atmosphere. She found it interesting - really, she did - but her mind tended to wander without her permission, her hands immediately looking for something to fiddle with. Her legs started to bounce and she twiddled her thumbs, breathing in and out slowly so that she would not think back to that night. Everyone knew her as the freak that cried in class last spring, each of them giving her strange looks as if they had to walk on eggshells around her. None of them really knew what they were talking about, but it didn't stop them from making up stupid rumors about why she suddenly burst into tears, her apple cheeks turning red and hot as tears dripped down to her chin.
Being the girl who burst out crying for no reason, it didn't really give her a good chance to make friends. The people in the classroom that day spread it around the school, that she had some kind of social anxiety or that she couldn't handle the pressure of class. None of them knew what had really happened that day and now she could hardly concentrate in class, too busy distracting herself so that it wouldn't happen again.
Her father, the chief of Hawkins police, had given her an elastic band to play with once the school told him what had happened. He looked into her teary eyes, his own eyes filled with deep pain as he placed a small elastic band in the palm of her hand.
"Play with this during class" he told her gently, "it helped me at work to stop thinking about it. Just don't lose it or let it snap, kid."
The small elastic band helped her to focus, her ears perking up with interest while she listened to her earth and biology teacher. She would flick the small object back and forth between her fingers, tangling them in it loosely as she focused on the snapping sound that it made. It was the first thing that she remembered to put in her pocket every morning, it fitting snugly into a teared corner of her mom jeans, easily accessible for her to play with in class. Over the past months, it had grown more worn due to how much she fiddled with it, and that afternoon, something happened that set her on edge.
The elastic band snapped.
She gasped lightly, watching it snap back against her wrist painfully before hurling itself to the opposite side of the room, snapped clean in half. She watched it for a moment, frozen in shock a if she could not really contemplate what had happened as it left her fingers. Something within her changed, like the elastic band was a metaphor itself for how her life was about to change, perhaps without her even realizing it at first. She felt her hands start to shake, needing something to occupy her before the memories fled through her brain again, every single one more painful than the last. She felt her eyes flicker across the room for another elastic band or for some kind of toy to fiddle with, feeling like an impatient toddler until she came up with nothing, her face falling.
She looked down at the wooden desk before her, clean apart from a couple of hearts scribbled messily in the corner and her fingers hesitated. Before she could talk herself out of it, worried that she would get in trouble like when she graffiti-ed the bathroom stall, her pen started moving. She didn't know what to write, her fingers itching to move so that she could take her mind off everything else, everything painful in her life. Eventually she settled on one simple word, a word only two letter's long - a word that she was unaware would change everything.
Hi
She retraced the letters until her hands hurt, the ring of the bell harshly bringing her back to reality to see her classmates packing up their books. She hurried to walk away from the wooden desk, worried that she would get caught by Mr Clarke who was collecting their essays on the desks. She saw him pass it without a trace of anger, quickly moving onto the next desk and some part of her let out a breath of relief. She asked her father that night for another elastic band, but he sent her an apologetic smile before telling her that he would bring her home one from work, not having any at the small wooden cabin that they lived in.
She went to school the next day, with her pen in her shaking hands, worried that she would get caught but knowing that she had no other option. Every step was filled with nerves, her small pink converse hitting the floor softly as she rushed to the desk at the back of the classroom. She settled down in it with a sigh, before her eyes widened. There was something underneath her word scribbled into the wood, something that put on her edge but somehow made her feel less alone for once, despite the word being only two letters long.
Hi
xxx
I am so excited to continue this, it will probably be finished by the end of next week as I have a lot of time off work this week! Like I said, it will only be short anyway but filled with a lot of fluff and cuteness, so I hope that you like the look of it so far! Who could be replying to her??? Hmmm....it's a TOTAL MYSTERY!!
Please leave some feed back before reading the next chapter, it will be up already and like I said more will be up in a couple of days! I would love to know what you think so please leave some comments<3
~Jodie
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Writing On The Desk | MILEVEN AU
FanfictionJane Hopper was bored one day, scribbling away on her desk in class. She never imagined for even a second, that someone would reply.
