Chaos | A Ninjago High School AU

Chapter 5

*2 weeks later*

Jay's POV

I show up to speech class 5 minutes early like I've been doing for the past two weeks. As always, Nya is in her seat. Her head is bent over her notebook, and she's doodling. She showed me the page she's been working on yesterday. It's a series of different flowers. Apparently, she's going to have me pick me favorite, and she'll draw me a large scale version of it.

Our teacher sits at the front of the room, feet up on his desk. He always ignores us when we're in here, which I don't mind. Less attention isn't a bad thing.

I make my way to my seat, sitting down next to her. As usual, once I set my backpack down, she looks over at me. This time, she also lifts up her notebook. "Which one?"

I scan over the entire page. All of them are so pretty. My eyes settle on a blue flower that's near the bottom right of the page. I point to it.

She smiles. "A bellflower. They're extremely underrated."

"Are they now?" I joke. She nods.

"They signify constancy, affection, and a love that never ends. In addition, they also represent humility and delicacy," she explains to me, circling the bellflower on her paper. Then, she lifts up two colored pencils next to my eyes. "I'm trying to see which one matches."

I look down at her collage of flowers, "Do you draw flowers for all of your partners? I definitely don't mind. I'm just curious."

"Only the ones I like...so only you," she writes a note at the top of her page before closing her notebook.

Surprisingly, most of the speeches in this class are partner speeches. The teacher thinks that it's best to start with someone else to support you if you mess up mid speech. Second semester will focus more on individual speeches. That means Nya and I get to be partners for the rest of the semester.

Nya is really easy to talk to. She's the only person I've really talked to here that isn't an adult. There's something about her that makes me want to talk to her. She seems like she won't judge me, even with how awkward I can be.

"Was your ex staring at you again today?" I ask her even though I already know the answer. Every day, she tells me that she leaves where she sits every day because he won't stop staring at her.

"Sadly."

"And you guys broke up two years ago?" I clarify.

"Yep. I broke up with him, and I've made it clear it's not happening again," she rubs her temples, closing her eyes. She opens them again several seconds later.

"I...I can ask him to stop, if that would help," I offer even though I don't even know who the guy is.

The tension in her face disappears after I ask, a softer look replacing it,"I don't want you to get on his bad side, but thank you. I can handle it myself."

The loud ringing of the bell fills the room, and students rush into the room. Interestingly, Zane and PIXAL enter at different times, which usually doesn't happen.

Once everyone is settled down, we watch a 40 minute video of a professional speaker giving tips on public speaking. I take note of what he says, but most of the tips are on how to make a good public speaker a great public speaker, not how to make a terrible public speaker mediocre.

Once that is done, the teacher takes his time handing out the next assignment. It's a several minute speech on how to do something. He tells us to silently brain storm for the rest of the period, even though this assignment is with a partner.