A/N

hai...

sorry if the last chapter was a bit boring...

I hope you like this one.

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{Jeremy's POV}

I waved nervously at my father as I got out of the car. I gulped and pulled my backpack strap further onto my shoulder and headed into the school. I walked through a set of large double doors and into the office to pick up my schedule. I got the piece of paper from the secretary, who said something about the other students getting their schedules at the end of the previous school year. I thanked her and walked out into the hallway, looking at the paper and trying to figure out where my first class was.

{Mike's POV}

I shut the door of my locker and turned around to see none other than Jeremy Fitzgerald standing in the middle of the hall, looking lost. I walked over to him and spoke. "Hey, Jeremy! Looking for something?"

He looked up from the paper in his hands and directed his eyes to me. "Oh, hey Mike. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out where room 124 is."

"124? Is that where you have you first class?"

"Um... Yeah. Math with Mrs. Stork?"

"Oh, yeah! That's where I'm going, too! First hour math with the Bird!"

Jeremy laughed at the nickname that the students had given her, before speaking again. "Want to compare schedules?"

"Sure! So, we both have first period together... I don't think that Scott and Fritz have that one... Second period... I have a study hall, becuase I'm NOT doing chorus..."

"Oh, um... I did. I'm in chorus." His cheeks took on the slightest pink tint.

"Oh, cool. I think Fritz did too."

"Oh, okay. So, what's your schedule?" Starting with third period, I guess."

I ran through my schedule,and Jeremy checked his against it as I did. "Science, Language Arts, Lunch, Social Studies, P.E., Computers, and Band."

"Hey, mine's the same!" He paused for a moment. "So, I guess except for second period, we have all our classes together?"

"Yup." I looked at my watch. "Well, we should probably start heading to class." I turned and started walking down the hall.

"Oh, okay!" Jeremy followed me, and we entered the classroom for math and sat down right before the bell rang. The Bird walked into the classroom a few minutes after the bell rang, and we all quieted down as she began to speak.

"Hello class! Most of you probably all know me, since I also teach a lot of freshman level math, but if I'm correct, there is a student here who is new to the school!" She looked at Jeremy and motioned towards him. "Would you like to say a few things about yourself?"

Jeremy nodded a bit and stood up. "H-hi, my name is Jeremy Fitzgerald. I moved to Ardent a few weeks ago... I used to live in Alexandria. My family moved here because of my dad's job." He looked at the Bird, as if asking if that was enough, and she nodded, so he sat back down.

The Bird continued. "Thank you, Jeremy. I hope you enjoy Ardent." Damn her, trying to seem nice. She was a bitch, and everyone knew it. Especially me. Everything she said pissed me off. "Alright. Today we will be getting our seating charts, and the rest of the class period will be a sort of study hall. Tomorrow we will get our textbooks, and we will start lessons the day after that, on Wednesday."

The class groaned. Nobody wanted a seating chart or to learn. The Bird was one of three teachers who forced a specific seating arrangement, the other two being Mr. Paige, the chorus teacher (because the seating there was how they would be arranged for the concert), and Mr. Harding, the band director (because it's band, and that makes sense). She read off the seats one row at a time. I was at the very back of the room, and Jeremy was placed directly to my right. We spent the rest of the class talking, and while we did, Jeremy was drawing something in his notebook.

The next few classes were about the same, until we got to language arts. We chose seats at the back of the room, and noticed that there were slips of paper on each desk.

Fritz picked his up. "The hell?"

Scott answered him. "I don't know. I guess we'll have to wait until Mrs. Smith comes in to explain it."

Jeremy just shrugged and sat down.

I chose the seat next to him and did the same.

Mrs. Smith walked through the door of the classroom right before the bell rang and addressed the class. "Good morning, everyone! Today, we're going to be using those little papers on your desk to start an activity that will help us get to know each other a bit better." The hell does she mean by that? She continued, ignoring the confused looks on many of the students' faces. "Go ahead and put your name on there, and then stop until I'm done explaining." She waited until it looked like everyone had finished, and then spoke again. "You're going to write four things about yourself on that paper, but only three of them can be true, and of them has to be a lie." Oh, okay. This. We all wrote out facts, and then waited until Mrs. Smith said anything again. "Once you're finished, please pass those up to the front of your row. W'll be going over these tomorrow. I'll pass them back out, and you'll read your four things, and the class has to guess which one is false." She explained this as the paper slips were passed to the front of the room. The rest of the class was the same as the others had been, so the four of us just goofed around until lunch.

~/~

We walked into the cafeteria and got in line to get our food. We sat down at a table, and Fritz was across from me, with Scott sitting to his right. Jeremy sat to the left of me. We ate and started talking about the school.

Fritz started. "So, Jeremy, what do you think of our school?"

Jeremy swallowed and answered him. "It's pretty nice."

Scott was the next to ask him anything. "Who's your favorite teacher?"

"I don't really know yet, I haven't met them all. Mrs. Stork seemed kind of nice, but I think she was trying to make me think she's not a bitch."

"She is." The three of us said at the same time, and then I continued alone. "She's awful."

Jeremy laughed at us speaking at the same time. "So, what's so bad about her?"

I answered him. "She's... well... a bitch. There's not really a better way to say it. She gives out shit tons of homework, she goes through the lessons way too fast, and she gets all pissy when people ask questions, as if they're supposed to know it already. Every word that comes out of her mouth pisses me the hell off."

Fritz and Scott just nodded in agreement, and then Jeremy spoke. "Wow, it sounds like you guys really don't like her."

"We don't" We spoke together again.

He nodded in acknowledgement, and continued. "I'll give her a chance, but it sounds like she won't do a very good job of making me like her.

"She won't." Wow, why do we keep doing that?

Jeremy nodded again and went back to eating. We spent the rest of the lunch hour talking, and I noticed that for some reason, I cared more about what Jeremy said than I did what Fritz or Scott said. I didn't know why, but I listened more intently to him than I did them. I also noticed green flecks in his blue eyes that I'd never paid attention to before. He looks kind of cu- wait, what? Where is this coming from? Oh, well. I brushed away the thought and went back to listening to Scott and Fritz, adding to the conversation every so often. Jeremy didn't say much; he mostly listened. As we all talked, I caught myself thinking about Jeremy a few more times. Why couldn't I get him out of my head?

Weird.

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A/N

oooooh, is Mike starting to have a crush on Jeremy?

Yes.

The answer is yes.

He just doesn't know it.

.

.

Thanks for reading!