Unbroken

He was one of the tallest boys at school. He usually dressed in a lot of black and he had a piercing under his bottom lip. He was one of those students that got in trouble a lot by "disrupting" the class or getting into fights. Sometimes when he was in the hallways, he could get really loud by shouting something random that someone in another hallway could possibly hear. The teachers knew him by one name.

James Sullivan.

I saw James around a lot since Freshman year when my mother and I moved to Huntington Beach all the way from Chicago. I had always felt intimidated by him. It wasn't because he towered over me. It wasn't the way he looked or the fact that he got in trouble a lot; honestly, I didn't know what it was. Despite that, every time I past him in the hallways or shared the same classes with him at Huntington Beach High School, I've always gave him a brief glance just to see if I could figure out why I felt so intimidated by him.

I've never got my answer. So he remained a mystery to me.

---

"Andy!" Someone shouted and shook me awake.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the person who woke me up. "What's going on?" My voice sounded groggy and my cheek felt numb. I lifted my head off my desk and remembered I was in math class.

"You fell asleep while we were taking notes." My best friend, Nina, said to me.

I looked up at her face and green eyes. "Why did you wake me up? I was having a good dream."

"The bell rang." She flipped her dark brown hair her shoulder. "C'mon, we need to get to English early so I can mess with Matt."

Nina has been messing with Matthew Sanders ever since Senior year started. She jokes with him, pokes him, and asks him funny questions. Everyday, it's different. Knowing her, it's just something to attempt to make him pissed at her, even though she's never successful. It's really funny to watch tiny, five-foot-two Nina do these things to a guy who's really buff and a million times stronger than her. I thought it was because she liked him, even though she never admitted it (in a serious tone).

I yawned and took all my belongings before I walked with her out the classroom and down the halls. Nina started talking to me about lending me her notes from math, but I was only half-listening. I was trying to concentrate on staying awake the whole walk to English. By the time we reached the classroom, I wasn't really tired anymore. Mostly because I was looking forward to Nina torturing Matt.

I was taking my seat near the back with Nina when I saw Matt walk through the door. I thought he was really good looking. He packed on some muscle, had hazel eyes, usually wore his hair in a short buzz cut, had a piercing in the corner of his lip, and he had cute dimples. He was also really nice and never took Nina's torturing seriously (much to her displeasure), but I knew he thought it was somewhat ridiculous of the questions she asks him. He'd laugh and say no...most of the time.

Nina saw him walk in and smirked. She unzipped her purse and whispered, "Watch this." She reached in and took out a long pink scarf with a glitter pattern all over it. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and walked over to him as he sat down a couple seats over from me. I sat there and watched.

"Hey, Matty!" Nina greeted him with huge smile.

Matt looked at her. "Oh, no," he said, awaiting his daily torture.

"Do you like my scarf?" She asked in a teasing tone, tossing it over her shoulder. "Don't you wish you had one just like this? It's all pink and sparkly. Do you want me to lend it to you so you can be pink and sparkly, too?" She waved the end of the scarf in his face.

"Fuck no," he answered, starting to laugh.

Nina gasped dramatically. "How could you not want to be pink and sparkly? I think pink would look amazing on you!"

Matt just gave her the 'are-you-fucking-kidding-me' kind of look. "Uh, no offense, but I don't think pink is my color."

"Aw...come on!" She smiled brightly at his expression. "You have to give pink a chance! It's such an underrated color! What would you do if I gave you this scarf?"

"Um...I'd thank you for the thought and never wear it."

Her jaw dropped. "How dare you hate my gifts! If you got me something, I'd definitely wear it."

Ms. Dyal, our English teacher, walked up to them. "Matthew, is Nina messing with you?"

Matt looked up at her and smiled, shaking his head back and forth. "No, she isn't."

I was enjoying that way too much. My body was shaking with laughter and I had to cover my mouth so I wouldn't be so loud. The tardy bell started ringing, so everyone had to take their seats. Nina returned to her seat in the desk in front of me with a satisfied smile on her face. She obviously had fun doing that to Matt.

"Okay, class," Ms. Dyal announced. "Today, I am introducing your last project of the semester."

A chorus of groans erupted in the classroom.

Ms. Dyal sighed. "Oh, it's not as hard as the last one. It's about what we've been learning the last couple of weeks." She turned around to get something off her desk.

Just as she turned around, James Sullivan ran through the open door and nearly dived into his desk. It was on the other side of the room, closest to the door. Ms. Dyal assigned him that seat because she didn't trust him to be close to Matt, who's his best friend. When he used to sit next to Matt, they were the loudest out of the whole class and they never got anything done. However, moving him to the desk that was closest to the door wasn't the smartest decision she had ever made, considering he could easily sneak in late, like he just did.

When she turned back around with a stack of papers in her hands, she looked directly at James with an expression mixed with anger and confusion. "James Sullivan, did you just come in tardy?"

"No, Ms. Dyal." James lied, giving her a very serious look. "I've been here the whole time."

She glared at him. "Really? Can you tell me what I just announced to the class?"

"Honestly, I wasn't paying attention at all." He smiled confidently, making a few people laugh. One of them, of course, was Matt.

She rolled her eyes at him, already irritated by him, but let the subject drop. She passed out the papers to us and continued with her announcement. "So, since this project is due next Friday, I'm going to be assigning each of you partners."

"Oh shit," I whispered to myself. That meant she wasn't going to let people who are close friends, like Nina and I, be partners. She thinks that people who are too familiar with each other don't get anything done. Which isn't always true, but there's no arguing with a teacher.

By the time I got the paper that Ms. Dyal had handed out, she had already started listing the names of who was partnered up aloud. I looked down at the paper. There was a list of subjects of what we were learning in class already, which were different beliefs in different time periods. Transcendentalism, Puritans, and Revolutionary; those subjects of which we could claim as our own. Right under that was a list of ways we could present it to the class.

Presentations, I thought. How fun.

"Nina Shearon and Matthew Sanders," Ms. Dyal announced.

That caught my attention. I looked at Nina's and Matt's expressions. Matt looked at Nina with a horrified expression while she smiled innocently back at him.

"We're going to have lots of fun together, Matty." Nina winked at him and he shrunk deeper into his seat. He didn't dislike Nina, but I knew he could deal without her messing with him everyday of his life. But then, he had no choice.

"James Sullivan," Ms. Dyal paused as she turned to look at him. "You're going to partner up with Andrea Trice."

I just stared at the teacher as those words escaped her lips. Was she seriously setting me up with the one person who I was very intimidated by? I opened my mouth to protest, but closed it quickly because I knew there was no way I was getting out of this. I turned my head to look at James, who was already staring at me. He had a friendly smile on his face, but for some reason, that made me sink deeper in my seat like Matt did.

Who knows? I thought, fighting the obvious fear I was starting to feel. Maybe this will be a good thing.