Several days have passed. Days stretched into weeks. Weeks stretched into months...

So far, nothing really special happened. It was exactly the same routine every single day of school. It didn't even feel like it was days, but it felt like it's just one day and was repeated over and over again.

Dang it, what had I been expecting? A sudden mysterious disappearance? The school would turn out to be haunted? That might have been terrifying yes, but at least it would have been exciting in some way.

Frustrated, I put the stack of papers in my hands harshly on the desk.

Ms. York noticed my sudden wierd outburst. "What's wrong, dear?"

My cheeks turned a little pink. I usually don't act like that in front of people. I might have even forgotten she was there.

"Oh, nothing," I murmured as I tried to rearrange the stack I had just messed up.

Ms. York moved her chair to be more closer to mine. "Yes, there is," she said softly placing her hand on my shoulder. "You're not usually like this. Otherwise I wouldn't have chosen you to be my teaching assistant, huh?"

I smiled. "Oops then. Looks like I have failed you."

Ms. York had made me her teaching assistant about a week before. I'd go to her office and we'd arrange papers, calculate grades and sometimes chat a little if we finished early. She had a big mind and was privileged with boundless wisdom. Exactly my favourite type of person to listen to. Overtime, I had kind of managed to create a bond between us, something that I never do with a teacher. But Ms. York was special.

"It's alright. You have a second chance. But disappoint me again, Ms Campbell and I shall banish thee from the land." Ms York said as she dramatically adjusted the collar of her dress. "And by 'land' I mean office."

That was probably why I liked her so much. Because she didn't act like a teacher.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure thee is proud as heck." I said winking at her and giving her a thumbs up.

"Awesome! Now get back to arranging essays will you?" She said.

"Fine! Whatever thee say."

Ms. York smiled, rolling her eyes at me and went back to revising stuff.

I was arranging papers of English Creative Writing alphabetically. I cought a glimpse of mine and a proud smile crept on my face. I had spent a whole night writing that story specifically and it was the best I've ever written so far.

"Bree!"

I instantly put the paper down.
"Stop falling in love with your writing and focus! We don't have all day!" Ms. York said looking at me over her glasses.

"Sorry!" I cleared my throat and went back to arranging the papers, ignoring my absolute wonderful story about the apocalypse.

"Perhaps I should have banished you after all," Ms. York mumbled under her breath.

I was done with all the names that started with the letter B and moved on to the next letter. Immediately, a certain paper caught my eye.

It had messy handwriting. The spaces between the words were unequal and there were a lot of crossed-out words. I found myself squinting at the name.

I knew the boy. Funny. Extrovert. Kinda short. Has a twin sister. Looks at me quite frequently....

That last fact I had discovered recently.

Ever since I had um...well, eavesdropped on the Bailey twins when they were having a little chat -and I'm not proud of that- and I had noticed that Conner Bailey was so nice and caring towards his sister and how that sweet behaviour had a... positive impact on me, I had decided I should keep a distance.

I guess I was scared. I worried that admiration might turn into something else...

It was definitely never going to happen but just to be safe and to put an end all of this nonsense, I decided I should forget about him and not make a big deal out of it. You know when you meet a nice stranger on the street that helps you carry your groceries to your car? You're flattered and grateful at that moment but that's it. You totally forget about them the next day.

That was exactly my case with Conner Bailey.

Now, normally if someone was nice to me at school, I'd try to be friends with them. Not in this case though. The thought of being friends with Conner Bailey felt dangerous. And I knew exactly why.

So yeah, I avoided him.

He kind of made it a tiny bit difficult for me though. Here are a few examples:

1)The cafeteria was always swarmed with all kinds of people, it was crowded as heck. Despite that, if we both happen to be there, he fixes his blue eyes on me.

2)Whenever he makes jokes in class-which is pretty much all the time- he always checks to see if I laughed along with everyone.

3) His red hair would be looking like a tornado and he would be totally fine with it until I enter the class. His hands then immediately shoot up to try to fix it.

And so on.

I couldn't exactly tell how his actions affected me. I both hated and liked them. Which was strange because I'm not an indecisive person.

Why I hated them? It was because I was trying to forget about him. So of course catching him occasionally glancing at me didn't help that matter.

Why I liked them? That was the mysterious irrational total disaster: I didn't know.

I didn't know why I liked catching Conner Bailey staring at me. And that's exactly why I needed to stay away from him. It was because how unfamiliar he made me feel with myself.

And now here I was, completely lost in thought while holding Conner Bailey's story in my hand. Dang it.

I glanced at Ms York. She was caught up in writing down grades. She was so focused on it because she was always scared to get the numbers wrong. So in that moment I knew that if I got up and did the Floss dance, she wouldn't notice a thing.

Not that I would do that. Never in a million years. But you get the point.

I glanced back at the paper with the messy handwriting in my hands. My curiosity got the best of me. Ms. York wouldn't know if I read it. Besides, it's just one story! It's not like I'm gonna read all of his work. Please, I'm not a stalker. One story won't hurt.

Should I read it though? Probably not. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes.

I took a deep breath as I looked at the top of the page. I smirked.

"The Walking Fish"

What a fancy title.

~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~

Before I knew it, I had read all of Conner's stories that he had written so far...oops?

Everytime I went to arrange papers with Ms. York, I would secretly search for his paper and silently read it. Which was sometimes impossible because he occasionally slipped some jokes in between the lines of each one. So I would have to pretend I was coughing to cover my laugh.

I gotta say though, the boy was indeed talented. He had the imagination of someone who's lived in a fairy-tale world or something.

And even though the writing had tons of mistakes, either garmatically or in terms of spelling, his choice of words and ways of describing scenes and dialogues were clever in an endearing kind of way. He described eccentric characters, colorful worlds and wild adventures all too easily.

What I liked most about his stories, was that I could almost see Conner in all of them. There was always a character or two in each story who talked and joked like him.

Not that I liked how Conner talked or joked by the way.... Okay fine. I kind of did.

Over time, Conner grew on me that the idea of pretending he was not there almost seemed impossible. I liked his jokes. And I was sick of pretending they weren't funny just so he wouldn't see me laugh at them. I had finally decided to let myself laugh just like everybody else. Even if he did see me- which he definitely did. And surprisingly, I was okay with that.

It was almost like I wanted him to know I liked his humor. Did I though?

Oh here it is again. That stupid feeling of not understanding myself. God.

~ ~~~ ~

I was making my way to the school library. It was where I usually went to have some peace of mind. There were these cool books there about space and black holes and all that. It was a topic that was really interesting to me lately and I was eager to know all about it. (Possibly for writing a Sci-fi story in the future. Who knows?)

As usual, there weren't many kids there. Exactly why I liked that place. Just as I was about to go to the Science Section I almost- almost crashed into someone.

"Whoa!" The person exclaimed.

He was taken by surprise too that he dropped all the many heavy books in his hands.

I found myself standing face-to-face with Conner Bailey. He had grown about an inch since the last time I did crash into him months ago.

"Oh, Hi, Bree!" He said casually as he put one hand on his hip and extended his other arm to lean on a nearby chair. But of course- since this is Conner- he mistook the place of the chair to be nearer but it was actually farther than he had expected.

He almost fell but quickly recovered and stood up straight again, adjusting his blue T-shirt like nothing happened. I tried not to smile.

"I didn't see ya there!" He said crossing his arms, a big nervous lopsided grin on his freckly face.

"Hey, Conner," I said. "What are you doing here?"

He hesitantly and quickly glanced at the books on the floor. Almost as if he didn't want me to notice them.

"Uh... reading?" He said.

"Oh, right." I felt stupid. "What I meant was that I never saw you here in the library before." I said as I bent down to help collect all the fallen books.

He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his messy hair. "Oh, yeah." He bent down to gather the books too. "I don't know. I guess I just decided I wanna be, you know, more intellectual and more informative and more knowledgeable and more-"

"Okay I get it," I said chukling.

He looked up at me, those big bright blue eyes looking straight in mine.

A millisecond later, he broke eye contact, turning a bright shade of red. Even though I was used to this, it still made my heartbeat accelerate every time.

"Gee, sorry." He cleared his throat as he fixed his gaze back on the books on the floor. "You just have this cool smile."

And before I could react, his eyes widened in horror as the realization of what he just said hit him.

"No! I mean, it's okay! Not really that cool. It's just not too shabby! I'm not saying your smile is not cool though! It is, but not in that way-"

"Conner,"

"Yeah?"

"It's alright."

"Your smile?"

"What? No, I meant the situation. You don't have to explain anything."

Whoa, this boy!

"Right," he gulped. His face kept getting redder. Was I really responsible for all that rambling and blushing? The thought made my face burn a little.

I decided to just focus on the books to avoid further awkwardness. That was when I noticed that all the books shared the same genre. Fantasy. And particularly Fairy Tales. I never knew that the one time Conner went to visit the library would be so he could read fairy tales. These many fairy tales. Hmm...

After we finally put them all on top of each other, Conner carried them all again in his arms, almost dropping the book on the top. I stepped forward and carfully put in back in place.

I realized I was standing a little too close to him. I could see every detail on his face. His blue irises had dark rings around them, making the blue color stand out even more. Gosh, eveytime I looked at those eyes it was like I was seeing them for the first time.

I immediately flash-backed to the first time we met. When he had helped me up after I had fallen down. How he was smiling at me without even knowing what my name was. That wide brilliant lopsided smile-

I suddenly snapped back to reality. I was still standing so close to him. He didn't back away- which I'm glad he didn't because that would have be super embarrassing to me.

I urged myself to move and took two steps back. "There you go!" I said gesturing to the books he was carying.

"Man, books are heavy," He groaned. struggling to keep his balance. The books were stacked up so high they almost covered half of his face. Which reminded me of a question I wanted to ask him since he showed up here in the library.

"Where are you going with all these books anyway?"

"He looked to his left and gestured with his eyebrows to a girl with strawberry blonde hair sitting by herself on the floor in the middle of an aisle and completely engorssed in a book she was reading. It was Alex Bailey. Conner's twin sister. I had seen her come here quite often but we never really talked to each other before.

"Just going to sit with my sister." He shrugged and almost dropped the books again while doing so. I shook my head and he smiled sheepishly.

"Alright then, I'm gonna go now before these things fall all over me and murder me," Conner said then slowly smirked before adding, "Looks like words can really hurt afer all."

I rolled my eyes while smiling. Of course he made a pun. Would have questioned his identity if he didn't.

"You sure you don't need a hand?" I asked, eyeing the tower of books in his arms worriedly.

"Nah, I'll be fine. See you around!" He said, his cheeks turning pink again.

I watched as he made his way towards Alex, put the book down and sat cross-legged next to her. She didn't seem to notice him.

Was I imagining it, or was Alex actually hugging the book? I walked closer to check out what was happening.

"If hugging this book doesn't work, then try one of these," Conner said to her, his usual sarcastic self coming back to life again like he was never nervous in his entire life. Like he wasn't stumbling over his words and rambling just a moment ago.

Alex was startled and dropped the book in her hands but calmed down once she saw it was her brother. "You scared me!" She said.

"You're lucky I know you," Conner said with the biggest smirk I had ever seen on him. "Otherwise I would have reported you to the school psychologist."

I turned around and walked away. I'm not invading their privacy again. I walked to the Science Section, grabbed that book I had been reading the day before about black holes and sat down on an empty table to read. But I couldn't really focus on anything. I glanced in front of me and I could see the Bailey twins on the other side of the library. They were laughing and seemed to be really enjoying their time. Moments ago though, Alex seemed to be really upset and down. Now she was throwing her head back with laughter.

I smiled as I realized what was the reason.

Conner.

This was the second time now that I had seen Alex's mood change because of Conner. And not only Alex, Conner's friends also seemed to be really attached to him. What exactly did that boy do? He wasn't just funny... he had this strange aura of happiness and positivity around him. Literally everyone around him smiled. I had been smiling when he was talking to me earlier too.

I wondered what it was like to be close to Conner Bailey. To be his friend. I wondered if he would lift up my mood like that if I was ever upset too. Funny, I'm talking like I know him well. We interacted very scarcely. The thing is, even though I feel like I don't know anything about him I also feel like I do at the same time. His personality was reflected visibly in his stories.

The best and also worst thing, was that I wanted to know more about him. The thought made me excited but creeped out at the same time. Ugh, that indecision again! What is wrong with me? Here I was, sitting in front of a book about black holes but unable to focus on it because of the black hole that was forming in my mind. I let out a sigh.

It's because of him. I reminded myself. He makes my brain malfunction. He puts me into that miserable state of confusion. And that was why I had wanted to stay from him. I didn't do that though. I couldn't. It's like he has a gravitational force of his own. The pull towards him is very strong almost like it has something to do with...with... magic.

Ha. Silly thought. Magic doesn't exist...

Suddenly a loud beep sounded as an announcement was made over the loud speaker.

"Conner Bailey, please report to the principle's office. Conner Bailey, please report to the principle's office."

Conner's blue eyes widened as he looked at the speaker then back to his sister.

I however, tried to supress a smile. I knew what this was about. I had eventually talked to Ms. York about Conner's stories-she wasn't glad I read another student's work- and how I thought they were fascinating and needed recognition. That's why I had suggested she showed them to Mrs. Peters, our principal, so she would know how much of talaned students there were at her school. Ms. York told me she was gonna send them to Mrs. Peters anyway because she thought Conner's stories were plagiarized. Like, honestly? These stories looked very original and unique to me.

This announcement must have been about this. Which means Mrs. Peters must have liked Conner's stories! Which for some reason made me smile like an idiot!

But I knew it in my heart, that Conner's stories needed to be read by more people. They were that good.

I watched as he nervously walked out of the library. I found myself staring at him as he walked out.

Every single brain cell in my brain urged me to stop this madness. To end this little funny thing that's been going on. To keep on avoiding Conner. And as much as I knew this was the right thing to do and also the thing I should do, I didn't want to do it. I ignored what my brain was telling me because I didn't like what it was telling me.

I wanted to investigate. To dive deeper into his mystery. To know about his story. The actual one, and not just the ones he wrote down from his imagination. There was something extraordinary about him. I could literally feel it.

So as much of a logical person that I was, I was also stubborn. If wanted to do something, I would do it. Even if my own brain didn't agree with me.

I decided that my little adventure with Conner Bailey wasn't about to end like I had thought. It was about to start.

And I was hella down for it.