Page 2 of Only ever you-Ana & Byron (Blindsided #2)

The pungent odour of formaldehyde made a strange mix with the fresh smell of crushed plants.

Pencil shavings littered the tables of the Year Seven biology lab, mingling with the quiet hum of whispers and the occasional squeak of a stool leg on the linoleum floor.

Most students were supposed to be drawing a diagram of the parts of a plant cell, but group work had dissolved, as usual, into distraction.

"Did you see Alfie got moved to half-fly?" muttered Brynn behind his hand.

"Yeah, because Rhys can't pass straight to save his life," snickered Toby, who had never played rugby in his life.

"I tell ya, Morgan said he likes Cadi. Like, likes likes," whispered Gracie "All that red hair, he said"

"Bet he doesn't know Gray's gonna murder him," returned Dora with a huff .

Ana sat straight-backed at her stool, lab coat buttoned, safety goggles pushed up onto her jet curls like a crown.

She wore them on top of her glasses, just to be sure, though it did make it difficult to see things under the lens.

The table was meant to be a 'team station' for identifying cell structures under the microscope, but she'd hijacked the task entirely.

Her biro moved with fierce purpose as she labelled the chloroplast, vacuole, and nucleus with a neat, looping script, lips pursed in concentration.

Next to her, Byron leaned sideways just enough to peer at her worksheet without tipping far enough to get caught.

He was all limbs and freckles, with an unruly mop of wavy brown hair and a polo shirt that looked like it was staging a jailbreak from his pants. His collar was lopsided, and there was already a small hole in his sleeve that he was absentmindedly enlarging with a grubby index finger.

"I see you, Byron," Ana said flatly, eyes still on her work.

"Ain't doin' nowt," he whispered, edging back a centimetre, even as his eyes lingered on her diagram.

"You're replacing my air with your stinky breath. And staring at my vacuole."

"That sounds dead dodgy when you say it," Byron grinned.

Ana shot him a look, dead unimpressed.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, you slug. Do your own work and let me do mine. You didn't even turn your microscope on."

"It were too blurry," he muttered. "Microscopes hate me, I tell ya."

"It is too blurry, not were, you Duffus. And no, microscopes don’t have feelings. You just didn't focus the lens."

"Just show me again, will ya?"

Ana gave him a long-suffering sigh. "This is not hard. Read the sheet. It literally tells you what each part does. "

"I did. Just want to confirm with an expert, don't I?"

"You want to cheat."

"Borrow. Borrow knowledge. It's a team task, innit?"

Ana rolled her eyes. "Teamwork doesn't mean copying my entire diagram and labelling mitochondria as 'green blobby thing that looks like a beetle with its feet in.' Mrs Greenwood is looking at us."

Byron grinned. "Just two answers. Come on. I'll owe you one."

"You already owe me more than you can ever repay from last term," she said, but slid her sheet an inch to the left. "Number three and number seven. No more."

"Absolute legend," he whispered, scrawling the answers with more speed than accuracy. His handwriting looked like it was being chased across the page by angry bees.

"And if you tell anyone," Ana added, not looking up, "I'll tell them about the time you put sodium in the water when Mr. Cunningham specifically told us not to. You're lucky it only burnt your eyebrows off."

"That were one time," he said, looking tragic, but without an ounce of regret. "And they took ages to grow back. I were a victim of my own genius."

Ana glanced at him, unimpressed. "You were a victim of your inability to read the label that said 'Do Not Touch.'"

"I thought it were more of a suggestion."

"One that didn't have a hope in hell," she said. "Like your academic future. And for the last time, ‘it was’ not ‘it were’ "

“Huh?”

Byron laughed quietly at Ana’s expression while Ana tried very hard not to smile.

At the next station, Gray was laughing at something Cadi said, both hunched over the microscope, their heads close .

Ana tilted her head in their direction. "Do you think they even realise?"

Byron followed her gaze. "Nah. But Gray's written 'G .C' in Tipp-Ex on his calculator."

Ana raised an eyebrow. "Subtle. Or maybe for Gray Callahan?"

Byron smirked. "Don't be daft. Anyway, yours says 'AB.'"

"Because my name is Ana Bartolini, you numbskull." Ana flushed and snapped her folder shut. "Two answers. That's all you get."

He scribbled fast, smudging his ink. "You're a right genius, Bartolini. Might have to marry you one day."

"Don’t put yourself out on my account. I will deny everything that happened today," Ana said, ignoring his joke, though the bright flush travelled down her neck now.

At the next table, Gray and Cadi were whispering and pretending to swap notes, but Gray was just red in the face from smiling too much.

Ana gave them both a sideways look. "Honestly. They act like we're all blind."

Byron leaned closer again, whispering, "They're just as clueless as you are about your inner nerd."

Ana smirked, not looking at him. "Keep talking and you'll lose your two answers. And those two front teeth, which won't grow back a second time."

Byron mimed zipping his mouth and smiled down at his sheet.

Later, when Mrs. Greenwood collected the worksheets, Ana watched Byron scribble her initials lightly at the corner of his.

She narrowed her eyes. "Did you just-"

"It's just me sayin' thanks," he said innocently, swinging his bag over one shoulder.

"Two answers, Byron. Doesn't buy you rights."

He shrugged. "Maybe next time, I'll charm ya into three. "

She rolled her eyes.

She didn't answer, but when he walked away, she was still smiling.