"From the moment I saw her

I knew this one

was worth the broken heart."

- Atticus

It was lab day in Biology. Mr. Brook was walking around, looking at everyone's progress, so the whole room was silent except for occasional coughing, and Lance making a jerk of himself by scraping his chair loudly against the floor and yelling puns like: "What did one cell say to his sister cell when she stepped on his toe? Ouch, Mitosis!"

A girl sitting in front of us choked with laughter, prompting Mr. Brook to reprimand Lance and me for the noise, even though I hadn't spoken for the last fifteen minutes. I swatted my partner on the arm and hissed, "Dude, what the hell—"

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. "Just go along with it, fam. You'll get the reward once the deed is done."

Yesterday's discussion had totally slipped my mind until I looked to the front where Autumn and Sunny were bent over their work. Then I turned to him again and swore, but he only flashed a smirk full of mischief. He knew we were already in hot water for arriving late to class, and he was determined to take risks further to achieve his plan. While still believing it was likely to fail, I sighed and decided to go along with it. He was my friend. I couldn't let him do stupid things alone. Plus, I wanted to avoid being laughed at again for not trying.

For the next several minutes, we exchanged the most incredibly lame puns imaginable, created unnecessary noise with the lab tools, and pulled other idiotic stunts. Since our experiment was about alcoholic fermentation, Lance poured some solution to the yeast in a test tube and sniffed it, pretending it made him drunk. The acting was bad, so bad, that my chuckles cut through the room. I saw Mr. Brook's eyebrow twitch and I immediately snapped my mouth shut. The protruding nerve on his forehead proved it was the last straw.

However, his menacing look didn't faze me at all, because at one point during the commotion, Autumn turned to look at me. It was the first time in that semester that our eyes met, and I felt like I just bungee-jumped with my heart leaping to my throat. My mind wasn't so quick to think of a proper reaction so I just awkwardly shifted in my seat, mess with my hair, and gave her a bro nod in an attempt to look cool.

Apparently, that attempt failed. 

She frowned and swiveled around to continue her work.

A bro nod, Finn? Really? I swore under my breath.

"That's it!" Mr. Brook roared, and I almost jumped out of my scalp. "You two should split up! Next week, Lyne is assigned to Hunter, and Lee to Moore. I hope this new arrangement will put an end to your misbehavior."

What followed next made me believe that sometimes, stupid ideas work in wondrous ways.

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It was apparent that Autumn Lyne and Sunshine Lee were wildly different—in physique, in personality, most especially in social life—but they were the kind of duo that complemented each other, like two pieces of a puzzle fitting perfectly together.

It struck me odd how these two got along, and it wasn't because of their contrasting backgrounds. I'd had an impression that Sunny disliked Autumn. No, she hadn't been exactly cruel to her, never antagonized her in any way, but I once had heard Sunny agree to a demeaning remark about the redhead. It happened in the seventh grade, and perhaps Sunny had been just being one of those bratty thirteen-year-olds that thought the best way to fit in a cool clique was to hate the same person as the others.

It was clear that she had gotten past that stage, seeing as she was treating Autumn nicely now, and the two seemed to genuinely like working together in class.

I would be lying if I said I was happy with what Lance and I did. It was a selfish move, I would never be proud of telling it to others. Lance didn't seem to have a guilty bone in his body as he broadcasted it to all our friends like he just won a medal. Oscar chuckled and said that we were such grade-A jerks for doing it. I couldn't argue with that.

Sunny was pissed. She had gotten pissed off so many times before, but this just swung the needle from 'chill' to 'intense' on her temper scale. She would let out a silent oath every time she saw Lance, and she would glare as if she was going to beat his ass. It took her two days to mellow down.

Autumn had zero reaction to it, but I could tell she felt the same. I was so sorry, but I didn't apologize for it. Instead (when we officially became lab partners the following week), I apologized for the crayons that I'd broken seven years ago.

I wanted to start over.

I wanted to do things correctly from there on.

I wanted her to see me in a new light.

And to do it, I needed to go back to the first mistake I'd never got to apologize sincerely.

So I said I was sorry, and she accepted it. I asked if we were friends now, and she nodded yes. As a bonus, I asked if there'd be benefits soon, and she laughed heartily—the sound of it left a lasting impression on me. She didn't recognize it as my attempt to drop hints that I liked her.

That didn't matter. What mattered was that I made her laugh. And for the rest of the day, I was walking around with a smile on my face. It felt like I'd taken a step forward again.

And I wouldn't stop doing it until she was mine.

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She reminded me of tranquility.

Being with her made me feel like I was in a dreamlike world where time stood still; where I experienced, with profundity, every single moment in its pure and beautiful simplicity.

She was the rest in a music piece, giving me a few beats to prepare and heightening my anticipation of what came next, but even then, she caught me off guard sometimes.

She reminded me of warmth.

Like the sunlight that streamed through my windows and woke me up from my sleep, bringing in the kind of brightness that made me feel more alive.

I loved being with her, even when we were just sitting next to each other, not talking. She would be scribbling on the back of her notebook, humming Antonio Stradivari's Salut d'amour, and I would be occasionally stealing glances at her, my head full of wonder and concern.

She reminded me of the moon.

The more I observed her, the more I realized how little I knew about her. Like her favorite songs. Her favorite stories. The words that moved her heart. The things she hated. The things she loved. What worries did she carry behind her smiles? What were the things she desired the most?

It's strange how you can love someone even without knowing anything about her.