Third year at the academy was only two days old and yet everything had changed for Michael.

For the first time ever, his class had been broken up now that they'd all chosen their own subjects and now all the classes from that age group were all mixed together. This came as both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, you were meeting new people that you'd previously only seen in the hallways or outside on the school grounds. There were new friends to be made and some people that you hadn't seen since primary school to reconnect and catch up with.

On the other however, you were no longer guaranteed to be in the same class as your friends. In fact, some students complained that they didn't have a single friend in certain classes. It was a stressful time for everyone, particularly when you considered that you wouldn't know who was in your new classes until you got there on the first day. Thankfully, the school started the New Year before the summer holidays, hoping that it would help ease the students into it.

Michael, Joe and Evelyn had compared their timetables as soon as they'd been given them and had found a mixed bag. Though Mike and Evie were in the same General Science class, Joe was in a separate class. Joe and Mike had P.E together, but Evie was on her own in that class. But when it came to Geography, they were pleased to all be in the same class.Geography may sound like an odd choice for the most exciting subject but there were reasons behind it. For Mike and Evie, they'd decided that since they couldn't study other planets and alien worlds, they would study their own planet, Earth. The geography class promised to help them understand things like atmosphere and geology, as well as what lay beneath the Earth's surface. To them, this would help them understand any studies done on other planets like Mars or Venus.

For Joe, and probably everyone else in the class, it was chosen for a very different reason.

Every year the geography students were taken on a week- long trip to various sites in Europe such as mountains and lakes. It was almost legendary throughout the school. The trip for Mike, Evie and Joe may have been over a year away at this point, but they were about to experience something almost equally as exciting.

They'd met up outside the classroom before any of them went in to ensure that they could all sit at the same table in class. Though most teachers changed the seating plan straight away, others kept it the same. Mrs. Porter had been their teacher through their entire tenure at the school and she had a great relationship with them, so they hoped that this would work in their favour and she would allow them to stay seated together.

They chose a table by the window, ignoring the rain beating against it, with Michael's back to it so that he was facing the door to the classroom. Joe and Evie didn't care who else was in their class but Mike was curious. 

There were a few kids coming in that he recognised, but most were new to him. As an adult, he wouldn't think twice about this amount of strangers but being a month before his fourteenth birthday, he might as well have been discovering an alien race. He'd started to lose interest now that the class was near capacity but suddenly his interest was revived at the speed of light when he saw the next girl to walk into the class. Stacy.

Michael did a double take and rubbed his eyes to see if he had fallen asleep in class and was dreaming but every time he looked again, there she was.

"Joe!" He quietly hissed, nudging his friend and nodding in her direction.

"What?" He yelped back before looking. "Oh for the love of fuck!"

His outburst attracted Evelyn's attention too, encouraging her to look and roll her eyes while letting out an almighty groan as the three of them watched Stacy take a seat at the table in the back corner. Ironically, the table that the trio had occupied during the last school year. They'd chosen to avoid it this time because there was a guy they didn't know already sitting there when they arrived. Mike was now regretting that choice.

It had actually been a while since Michael had thought about Stacy. Not being in any of her classes meant that he was never guaranteed to actually see her. Sometimes he'd go months at a time without a sighting. To him, she was the hot girl version of the Loch Ness Monster.

"Good morning everyone!" Mrs. Porter cried as she entered the class, the last person to do so.Mrs. Porter was everyone's favourite teacher. She was one of those women that if she were their age, the kids could easily see themselves being friends with her. Her classes were always fun and she helped everyone understand what she was teaching them. In fact, Michael and Evie were directly inspired by her when they tried to understand the wider universe.

On the flip side though, she was a teacher that when she got mad, she got really mad. Scary mad.

The large, jolly woman gave the class a brief introduction to what they'd be covering that year and what was expected of them. She then gave them all a simple sheet of paper with a list of questions on different types of weather. It was a very basic project but one that would her gauge everyone's levels of understanding.

"You better all get the rain question right 'cause that's all we seem to have gotten this summer!" Mrs. Porter moaned, gaining a murmur of laughter from her students.

As the class began their worksheets, Michael was busy studying something else.

He couldn't believe that after all this time; he was finally within shouting distance from Stacy Sinclair. Her infamous white jacket was draped over the back of her chair and her hair was hanging in front of her face as she stared at her sheet. How could watching someone think about the weather be so captivating? Literally everyone but him was doing the exact same thing.

Mike couldn't help but stare in wonder at Stacy. He was aware that life outside his line of vision was still going on but it was completely irrelevant to him. To an outsider, it probably looked a little creepy, but to Michael this was a moment to be savoured.

She was so pretty. That much was obvious but until now he hadn't realised just how beautiful she was. It was one thing to catch a passing glimpse of her in the hallways but to actually have her sitting still for him to examine properly was something completely different.

Like everyone else in the world, Stacy appeared to have that sixth sense that you get when you know someone is watching you. She looked up and her attention went straight to Michael. Once he saw her staring back, he quickly dropped his head and finally started working on his paper.

As the sweat ran from the back of his head, all the way down his spine, Mike finally got the courage to look over at Stacy once more, and thankfully she was looking back at her own work again. His watching could continue.

After what was nowhere near enough time, Stacy looked up at him again and their eyes met from across the room once more. Mike was caught off guard and was far too late to look down this time. She'd definitely seen him. Flustered, he looked back up far too quickly.

She was still looking at him!

"Fuck."

He quickly dived into question three on his paper, but not before noticing that Stacy was smiling with a sparkle in her eyes, clearly enjoying the attention. Michael was definitely blushing and there was nothing he could do about it.

Michael wished for nothing more than at the end of the class, Stacy would stop him as they were leaving, tell him that she saw him looking at her and she really thought he was cute and that she wanted to go on a date. From there, love would blossom and they'd be forever known as high school sweethearts who never broke up.

But Aberdeen wasn't fantasy land so Michael knew exactly how this was going to pan out.

She wasn't going to say anything because, as he'd been told by his dad, the boy always has to make the first move. So it would all be up to him to talk to her first and tell her how he felt and there was no way he was going to do that.

Michael often knew what he should say or do in certain situations, but not once did he ever act on them. The truth was, he was terrified all the time and he had no idea why. Of course the worst case scenario was never really that bad, but as a teenager everything in life was turned up by a thousand.

He wanted nothing more than to tell the bullies to go and fuck themselves, tell Stacy that she was the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth and tell his teachers that he didn't want to do god damn General Science. But Michael wasn't going to do that now or ever. He knew what he was. Everything he ever hoped to have in life was just a dream.

So as amazing as it was being able to stare at Stacy for an hour every two days, it was probably going to get real depressing, real fast.

"What did you get for number eight?" Evelyn asked, bringing him out of his trance.

"What? Oh! Um, I didn't do that one yet."

"You haven't done any!" Evie cried, looking at his work sheet. "What's wrong?" She asked, before it clicked in her head and she looked over at Stacy and rolled her eyes again.

Clearly she was bored of fantasyland too.

Later that week, geography class resumed and this time, Mrs. Porter spent more time just talking to the class, about anything and everything. She had made a new seating plan this time but unfortunately Mike wasn't at Stacy's table, and his view would now only consist of the back of her head.

"I thought you were cool, Mrs. Porter," He'd groaned.

The teacher went around the class asking her new students a bit about themselves while she chose to tell the rest of the class her memories about the students she'd had already. It was supposed to open up the students a bit and get them socialising with their new tablemates. For Evie, she'd mentioned how studious she was. She spoke of Joe's ever changing hair style and for Mike; it was about how he'd always asked about volcanoes. Not exactly a turn on for Stacy, he was sure.

"Now . . . Hi Stacy," Mrs. Porter said with an evil grin. There was a rumbling of laughter around the class. She'd obviously had Stacy in her class before and there was clearly some story to it. Why couldn't he be as cool as this? Fucking volcanoes.

"Hi Mrs. Porter," She winced back, dreading whatever was coming.

"It's nice to see you behaving yourself for once! Better than when I saw you after school all those times last year kissing boys!"

"You're killing me Mrs. Porter, fucking hell, Mike whispered."

"Mrs. Porter, please!" Stacy cried, putting her head in her hands.

At least they had this horror in common, right?

"Yes, I saw you! I know what you kids are like but don't let it get in the way of your work. Geography cures all!" She was so obviously joking and everyone in the class was laughing but Michael didn't find this funny at all. He couldn't blame her though, why shouldn't she explore young love? He would if he could. It was like life had put a knife in his gut since birth and Mrs. Porter was accidentally twisting it in further.

Maybe he could confide in his teacher of his feelings? She was cool, maybe she could help somehow?

Hell, who was he kidding? He didn't have the balls to do that either. He was destined to look at Stacy from afar forever and spend his whole life wondering what if.

If any further confirmation was needed that this was never going to happen, it was when Stacy finally did speak to him directly for the first and only time in the classroom.

Mrs. Porter had run out of copies of a particular textbook that she needed for this particular lesson so she had ordered more. When they arrived, she tasked Stacy with handing them out to the unfortunate souls who'd had to share with the person next to them.

Arriving at Michael's seat, she asked in her soft, angelic voice "Do you need a book?"

"No thank you, I'm good," He replied politely.

Of course, he was anything but good.

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Super curious to see what people think of this chapter. Its a really personal one to me as a lot of what Mike is feeling are feelings I most definitely had at his age. This practically reads like a journal for me. School was tough, man.

On another side of this chapter, I always wanted to do a chapter where the character literally just sits and stares at someone for the whole chapter, and all the things that can run through their head. I like to challenge myself you see, and with this story I feel like I'm getting a lot of freedom to try new things. Hopefully it wasn't boring and sucky.

Anyway, now that all that depressing stuff is out of the way, lets get back to the present!