He always had that da** pencil behind his ear, like some fantasy math professor. Perched in between that small angle where his hair curled and his elf-like ears tipped off, that pencil antagonized me for weeks. I kept hoping it would slip from its place and land on the floor, so I could reach down and pick it up for him. But it didn’t. So I sat in that algebra class for two weeks, staring diagonally from two rows behind and a column away, until that particular Monday. It was raining something horrible, gushing out from the roof in waterfalls and protesting on the windows, as if the raindrops were dying to get inside. I was just sitting there, my eyes fixed on the way his fingers gripped his pencil so tightly, yet carefully. Suddenly, I felt a pair of eyes on me. He was staring.