Chapter Text
The sun shone down on the overgrown lawn as Leah was sat by the math classroom, doodling in her sketchbook. Her concentration was purely focused on drawing the left hand of one her favorite anime characters. Bits of purple hair were falling into her face as she scrunched up her eyes, trying to make clear what she was doing. Why did hands have to be so hard to draw? She thought, before giving up on drawing and put down her sketchbook. She sighed as she looked at her watch. Still three hours of school left.
Despite telling herself otherwise, she decided to go and see her friends, Mia and Sophia. Perhaps they could distract her from her impending doom from her upcoming exams. It had been a while since she had talked to Mia, who was probably getting suspicious about what she was doing the whole time. Not that Leah was doing anything like that. The last thing she needed was a boy to mess up her life. She was perfectly capable of looking after herself.
After a few minutes of walking, she had arrived at the library to see her whole group sitting there, including Mia for the first time. She gave a bright smile in their directions, with a tiny feeling of another presence nearby.
"Hey guys! What's up?" She asked, while being tackled in a hug by an angry-looking Mia.
"Where have you been?! Do you know how worried I was? I haven't seen you in forever," she replied, half yelling half smiling. Leah gave a sheepish smile, before noticing the other presence she had felt earlier and her jaw dropped. In front of her stood a tall boy, about 5'8 and way taller than Amelia. His jet black, raven hair fell in front of his dark brown orbs with glasses perched on his nose. She stared into his eyes for what felt like eternity as she felt herself getting slipped from reality as time flew by. In her opinion, he looked kinda like an anime character from her favourite show. What with the way he held himself, his exotic accent and the warm feeling in his eyes. Suddenly, it hit her like a tennis racket and she realised she knew this boy. The very boy who had bullied her when she had first come here from China. It all came crashing down from there. She could remember his words as though it were yesterday, when he had called her a communist and kept accusing her of having covid. Since then, she had never been the same and she never will be. What was this boy's name again? Matthew? Mason? Whatever it was, she was not about to forgive him this easily.
Despite her anger at this boy for what he had done, she still could not help thinking he was kind of hot. What are you thinking Leah? She reminded herself, ridding herself of such thoughts. Never would she fall in love with Max, or whatever his stupid name was.
Michael (she changed his name again) must have sensed the awkward moment between them, because he turned to Amelia, who was watching with an amused smile on her face. Leah also turned to her, an accusing glare on her face. They both asked their question at the same time while pointing at each other.
"Why's he here?"
"Who is she?"
Amelia, who was the main leader of the group despite only having been in the school since year nine, introduced the two to each other.
"Matt, this is Leah," she told him, pointing at Leah, who was standing there with her arms crossed and looking expectantly. So that was his name, she thought. Not that it mattered. She had almost no interest in being friends with a rotten bully like him. The only drawback was that he maybe, sort of, looked a little cute.
"Leah, this is Matt," she told her, making Matt immediately realise who she was. To her surprise, he didn't call her names like he used to. Strange, she thought. She turned to Mia, who was looking at the scene with a shocked expression on her face. This made Leah feel confused but she let it slide. Even though Matthew looked cute, he was also giving major red flags and fitted a lot of gay stereotypes, therefore not her type.
As Leah and Mia went into the library, and Matt walked off to talk to his other (male) friends, Amelia turned to Sophia, who was busy eating from a packet of chips and wasn't paying attention to anything.
"Do you know what's happening?" Sophia, being the clueless one, just shrugged to show she didn't understand what was happening. Amelia sighed inwardly, knowing she would have to explain the whole thing to her.
"It's love, Soph. I feel it's the start of something new."