Jacob Sartorius Imagines

The Compliment Game (cute)

This is written from the POV of a high-school you, retelling the story of a 7th grade love story :)

Health is a period every kid dreaded. Not because you learned about sex, but because the teacher who taught it would do anything in his power to make you embarrassed or uncomfortable. His name was Mr. Jeffrey. Mr. Jeffrey had a deck of cards with all the kids' names on them. He would pick two random cards from the deck and the two kids would have to stand up, make eye contact, and compliment each other. And the compliment couldn't be something physical like "I like your shoes" or "your hair is cool." It had to be something more personal.

I sat on one side of the classroom, while Jacob Sartorius sat on the other. We didn't know anything about each other. I had only heard things about Jacob. Mostly negative.

Jacob had only known that I was extremely shy in class, but out of class I was the total opposite. I hated being put on the spot, especially when I didn't raise my hand. I rarely raised my hand at all. Jacob also knew (well, the whole school knew) that I wrote. A lot. And I was fucking good at it.

Whenever I was minding my own business, alone, walking down the hallway I would sometimes notice people laughing at me. Either about how weird it was to write stories, or how "stupid" I dressed. Who knew how out of style pig tails were?

I only knew Jacob from his entering talent shows that I never went to or posting videos of him singing on his snapchat. Everyone, including most teachers, knew about the videos. I knew everyone made fun of him for singing, just like they did with me and writing. I didn't know the extent of it, and i never openly felt bad about it. No one wanted anything to do with him, and at the time, as much as I hate to admit it now, neither did I.

I glanced up at the clock, impatiently counting each space in between each number and multiplying it by five. We had 15 minutes of class left and things couldn't get more boring. We were learning about mental health and how your brain processes things and all that. I blocked out Mr. Jeffrey's voice and used my imagination to pass the time.

I started thinking about early today. First period, I had PE. God, I hate PE. I've always had this weird thought that one day while I'm running the lap, the dragon from "Shrek" will come pick me up, and I'll never have to do PE again. I've never told anyone about that scenario.

I replayed everything we did in PE today. I thought about walking into the locker room and observing all the other girls throw open their lockers, slamming it into the one next to it. The room echoed, so all you could hear was the giggling and loud voices of teenage girls, lockers being slammed open, and the water from the showers hitting the floor.

Today, after our warm up laps, we played volleyball. Volleyball. Something really weird happened on the volleyball court today. I was standing on the court, contributing as little as possible to the game as usual. I remember there being an argument about whether the ball was in our out.

I felt a pair of eyes burn into my shoulder from behind. I attempted to ignore it, but failed. I felt so weird. Who was staring at me? I turned my head slightly and saw Jacob Sartorius watching my every move. He was in the back; he had been the one that served the volleyball, initiating the class argument. He gave me an embarrassed look before quickly looking down at glossy court floor.

If anyone else was looking at me like that I probably would've confronted them. But it was Jacob. Everyone else gave him a hard time for everything else. He'd probably already heard enough, so I let it slide. As weird as he was acting, I still continued to play, as if nothing happened.

The hustle of everyone's backpack's pulled me out of my daydream. Everyone was packing up. I looked up at the clock, and we had five minutes left of class. I packed up too and sighed. Mr. Jeffery always left five minutes of class left to rattle a few unlucky kids. That bastard. He knew how much everyone hated that stupid compliment game.