"WHAT! NO PLEASE CAN I CHANGE!" Traci turned to me and stared me down I stared right back at her.

"Girls I have JUST told you. No switching partners. You'll just have to make it work!" He both gave us this menacing smile and continued the lesson. 

"So you will  have to go to each others houses and work on a life-size painting of each other.  would be preferred but any style will do try not to go too 'Abstracty' because you are painting people not the weird birthday card you get from your grandma on your birthday and end up chucking out after a week." He really thought he was SO hilarious. 2 maybe 3 people laughed out of about 30 kids.

 "Okay turn and move your desks around so they're up against each other." A lot of of screeches from desk moving against the coarse floors later and I was sitting right in front of the popular girl in the whole school. Not looking forward to this. 

"Uhh hi. I guess." She sounded nervous for some reason. "It's um Kylea r-right?" I nodded reassuringly and waited for her to say something else. 

No. Just a long awkward silence. So I decided to say something.

"Uhh um you're Traci yeah?" She nodded hesitantly. "Uh so as you know I'm Kylea you can just call me Ky though." 

"Uh yeah cool, Ky. Um you can call me Max my real name is Maxine but everyone calls me Traci." I gave her a thumbs up.

"So uhh Max got anything you're working on in art at all?" There's only so much you can say in art with someone you barely know. But it didn't look like she minded she reached into her bag almost immediately as I asked her.

Max slid a small sheet of paper across our desks until it met my fingertips, I picked it up and saw an amazing little drawing of a girl. She gave it a whole character profile and everything on the side of the picture was her signature and the name... m-my name? She drew this amazing picture and named the girl Kylea Calico. 

"It has my name on it."

"Oh uh y-yeah I guess you were kinda the inspo for her so why not name her after you." We shared an awkward giggle and quickly looked away. 

"Kids make sure you exchange addresses!" We heard Mr. Micheal yell across the classroom. All 30 kids yelled back a very unenthusiastic 'Okay' I grabbed a random piece of scrap paper and an old some-how chewed up pencil. I quickly wrote my address down and Max did the same. We both handed the paper to each other. But when I looked there was numbers down the bottom.

"Oh what's the numbers for?" Max chuckled.

"It's my phone number silly!" I sorta froze up in embarrassment. How could I be so stupid of coarse it's her number god Ky get yourself together. I quickly jotted down my number and passed it to her.

"Uhh see you-" 

"Tonight?"

"Um okay sure why not see you tonight Max." The bell rang and we all exited the class and I was relieved. But for some reason I had the erge to call her. I talked to her 5 minutes ago but I kinda wanted to talk more.

Max's drawing 👆🫰