Sculpted Hearts

Will he like it?

The question ran through my head as I looked at the finished work…well, almost finished. It still had to be bisqued - that is, fired for the first time. And then after that, we would get to glaze them and they’d be fired again to make the glaze harden into the glasslike covering that it was meant to be.

I brushed a bit of clay dust from the top and decided that I was satisfied. It was something so different that only he and I would know what it meant, and I wasn’t about to explain his life story to the class so they would understand too. The barest minimum; that was how much detail my explanation was going to provide, which was a very strange concept in itself. Especially when it was me, because I usually did my best to give all the details I could in my projects. I couldn’t bring myself to in this, though, because it wasn’t really my story to tell.

I took a deep breath.

Why was I so nervous for this? I wondered suddenly. He was just a boy - just a boy I barely knew and who I shouldn’t really have gotten mixed up with because he was seen as a delinquent…but I couldn’t help it. Was it so bad, really, that I liked the way his blonde hair always fell in the way of his navy eyes? That I thought it incredibly cute when he shook it away so he could see what he was doing?

I shook my head, looking at the project again before putting it back in its hiding spot. Mr. Baker grinned at me from across the room, and I nodded on my way out.

It was the beginning of the lunch hour, and I had come to look over my project and think about what I was going to say before the actual class came around. I’d just decided that I would say what questions it was a combination of, and how I did parts of it. I would leave the rest to their imaginations - or to James in case he decided to tell them. Which I highly doubted.

“There you are!” Mal cried as I slid into the chair across from her. “I thought you’d never get to lunch. What took so long?”

“Looking at my ceramics project really quick,” I shrugged. “Trying to decide what to say about it - what I could say without having to tell his life story to the class.”

“I see. Now who is it…? You still haven’t told me who your mystery partner is! And from the way you talk about him, Freddy, I think I ought to know,” she waggled her eyebrows ridiculously, and I laughed at her.

“You wouldn’t think that way if I told you,” I replied, rolling my right shoulder. I had one of those dull aches that don’t do much of anything but annoy the crap out of you.

“Who is it?” she persisted.

Again, my nervousness returned. I knew that I found James Holloway extremely attractive, but what would Mal think if she realized that this person was the one she apparently thought I was crushing on?

And then I asked myself; am I crushing on him?

Maybe a little.

“You…” I sighed. “You probably won’t like him. But he’s a lot nicer than all the rumors make him out to be.”

“What is he, some sort of delinquent or something?” she snorted. When I didn’t answer, she looked at me sternly and asked, “He is, isn’t he?”

“A lot of people see him that way…?” I supplied questioningly.

“Who is it, Freddy?” she laughed slightly at me, and I knew that she forgave me already for being sort-of friends with a slacker without telling her. I just hoped she’d be understanding when I said who the slacker was.

“James Holloway,” I said softly, catching a glimpse of him all the way across the cafeteria. He sat with his usual group, seeming exceedingly bored and fidgety. Wait - fidgety? James? That was different.

“Skater boy, slacker James?” she asked, almost incredulously. “Blondie?”

I couldn’t help but let out the most unladylike snort that had ever left my lips before saying, “Yes, that one. And for your information, he gets good grades. Even without trying!”

She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning.

“I guess he’s a cutie,” she winked, and I blushed, opening my mouth to come up with some sort of witty rebuttal.

“I - um - no, I…just shut up!” I groaned. My dreams of wittiness disappeared in a whirling miasma of a huge case of the space-case syndrome.

Mal laughed, and dropped the subject, instead asking about my score on our English essay.

As time for Ceramics drew nearer, my nerves came back with a vengeance.