1 the first one

opella woke up to a beautiful sunny day. high school is the best, she thought. she really is having the time of her life.

she was very unlike the other kids who enjoyed high school. those kids liked to go out to places to eat, or go shopping, or hang out at the mall and watch movies. her ideal day involved learning something new at school and then coming home and studying it in more detail. she was the quintessential nerd.

although she did have a varied group of friends, her favorite ones were the kids around her house with whom she'd play all evening whenever there weren't any exams.

she'd always been the nerd in that she loved to study. but she never really cared about exams the way other kids did. she'd study things she found most interesting and leave it at that.

now that she was hitting puberty, her hormones were all over the place and she had quite a few crushes on boys, fantasy and real.

one of her best friends was a boy called ayid.

but she never liked ayid in that way. ayid was a really good boy and extremely intelligent. they had deep and meaningful conversations and she used to help him out with biology and he helped her with physics and organic chemistry. they even used to discuss the crushes they had.

one day, opella was feeling particularly low because of something her mother had said about her wasting too much time and not studying enough. in truth, apart from playing for a little bit everyday, all she did was study. she knew her exams were close, and she needed to score high enough in the national test to secure herself a safe spot in one of the public colleges. the private ones were too expensive. she couldn't afford them. and if you didn't score well, your only option is private colleges.

so she had a lot of pressure on her, and her mother wasn't helping at all. ayid noticed how his friend wasn't as bubbly as she usually is.

'hey, opella, what is it? you've barely spoken at all today. tell me what's happened'

opella told him what was going on, and ayid stayed with her all day and comforted her and got her mind off of it. that's the first time she noticed he really cared about her. she didn't know why, but it scared her. she really liked how much he cared. but he could see right through her, as if she could never pretend with him. it made her feel naked. she didn't think she could ever handle that. her mind was confused. she distanced herself from him.

for the next few weeks, she avoided him. they had only known each other for a year or so, ayid didn't know what to think. he gave her the space she needed. little did they know what fate had in store for the two of them...