Mid-March, after a heavy rain, the rare sunny skies unfolded over Sea City.
As soon as the warning bell rang, Albert Taylor rushed back to Class two with the freshly gathered news in an excited flurry, "Breaking news, breaking news, we’ve got a new transfer student in our class, a girl, and she’s the super pretty type."
The mont he spoke, the already clamorous classroom buzzed with even more excitent.
Students began talking all at once, trying to outdo each other.
"Really? That’s not another one of your pranks, is it, Joe?"
Albert Taylor, the class’s sports representative, was famously nosy and gossipy; there wasn’t a piece of small talk or rumor in the whole grade that he wasn’t aware of.
At his most exaggerated, he even knew which toilet the grade supervisor used after suffering a stomach upset that day.
Because of his sturdy build and wiry muscles, the classmates had given him the nickna "Joe."
Joe Taylor, faced with skepticism, was neither upset nor rowdy, just chuckling, "For real, for real, I just saw her while I was squatting outside the office. She just transferred today. Our head teacher is chatting with her as we speak. I bet she’s going to be in our class."
"Did you get a good look at her face, and you’re calling her pretty?"
"I swear, with a figure and presence like that, she’s definitely a beauty, no doubt about it."
"She’s transferring now, in senior year? Could there be so problem with her?"
"Are you dumb? If she had issues, would she be in Class two?" Their grade had a total of twelve classes, and Class two was the crè de la crè, a sort of rocket class.
Not to ntion the grade supervisor, even the principal took personal interest and inquired about the weekly progress of Class two. So, soone transferring into Class two now would definitely not have poor grades.
"Well that’s not necessarily true, who says only students with good grades can get into Class two?"
The girl who spoke was Emily Jones, the class’s study representative. Having spoken, she glanced, whether intentionally or not, at the single seat next to the trash can at the back of the room.
The class had an odd number of students, and with everyone else paired up, there was one person left over.
A girl next to her lowered her voice and asked, "Are you talking about Arnold Simmons?"
"Who else could it be?" Emily retorted scornfully.
In Class two, Arnold Simmons was like an outlier, gloomy and indifferent, carrying himself with an air of defiance, living ghost-like even within the liveliest of crowds.
When Arnold first started school, many had taken notice of him, thanks largely to his good looks - striking enough to be considered campus crush material. His brief self-introduction had attracted quite a few gazes from the girls.
Emily was among them.
She ca from a well-to-do family and had good grades. Although not stunningly beautiful, she knew how to dress up; with makeup, she was a delicate beauty - not quite a campus belle, but a class belle would do.
Thinking her circumstances were not bad either, Emily boldly declared her feelings for Arnold during the sports et.
The bashful expression of a girl in the throes of springti is captivating in its own right.
Everyone present was egging her on, eagerly watching the drama unfold.
But Arnold didn’t show any extra emotion, simply picked up his school jacket from the ground, and left.
As if the entire farce had nothing to do with him.
Emily burst into tears then and there, both angry and embarrassed, pushing away the girls who ca to comfort her and ran off, missing even the night study session.
It was after that incident that many unsavory rumors began circulating about him at school.
There were whispers about him coming from a poor family, the stories about him being a street thug, skipping classes, getting into fights, and whatnot.
So even said that it was a case of "spurned love turns to hate" for Emily – what couldn’t be obtained had to be "destroyed"; the more she loved at first, the more she detested now.
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