"He's been acting a bit off recently." Hayley murmured, breaking the silence that had fallen between her and Ariel, they had a free period together that lesson so it was just the two of them at a table in the otherwise empty library. They had textbooks open in front of them, slowly working on English essays but not getting very far, they never did end up doing much work during their frees.
"Who?" Ariel asked, turning to her friend
"Matt." she answered simply. Matt was Hayley's boyfriend of almost eight months, they were really just a casual thing. They liked each other, so they thought they'd just run with it, no grand romantic gestures or confessions of undying love, more just a Friday night in with pizza and a good movie.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it, you trust him right?"
"Yeah, of course I trust him."
"There you go then, if there's something up I'm sure he'll tell you in his own time.
"I guess." Ariel watched her as she bit her lip slightly; blue eyes glazed over and trained on something in the distance, obviously deep in thought; one hand in resting on the table and the fingers of the other twirling through her red hair. She knew there was still something bothering the girl, but she also knew that if she wanted to talk about it she would, and evidently she didn't want to talk about it.

"Life Skills next, we get the replies to our letters!" Ariel smiled, with more enthusiasm than the subject deserved to change the subject and pull Hayley from her thoughts
"I hope this Jack guy's nice, I don't want to have to talk to a jerk until the end of the year"
"His name practically rhymes, he has to be nice" Ariel teased and got a small laugh "I'm just counting on Alex being more interesting than I am or we're going to have some seriously boring letters. I have no idea what to even write about" she continued more seriously
"If this guy's an idiot I'm going to tell him about my fictional antique spoon collection in extreme detail." Hayley declared just as the bell rang and the pair started making their way to their lesson with smiles on their faces.

When they entered the room, everyone's letters were ready and waiting on their desk. As Ariel read hers she smiled at the compliment, it was something she heard a lot, but coming from a complete stranger it seemed more truthful. Alex came across as a nice enough guy; funny and sweet and Ariel set the letter aside to write her response

"Alex,
I do like the name Ariel I just get fed up of being asked if I'm named after the Little Mermaid, which I wasn't, my parents just liked the name. But thank you anyway :)
Are smiley's acceptable in letters? Too late now anyway I guess
That's pretty cool, I've always wanted to learn to play guitar! I do Jazz, Modern and Hip Hop dance and I do some sort of practice pretty much every day; it's hard but it's definitely worth it. I'm 18 in June, you?
Aha, I'm sure you're fine with kids ;) My brother isn't too bad really, he's just six years old and annoying. Laska is a Husky and she's the best dog ever, I know all other dog owners say that but they're all wrong :P
I bet neither of us are really as boring as we like to think we are, do you have any party tricks? And look on the bright side, if this all goes wrong we can still connect over being bad pen-pals together!
Who even writes letters anyway? It's all by email now isn't it? The only letter I've ever written was to Santa and it obviously didn't arrive because he sent me a Barbie instead of a Gameboy.
That's good to know, they're the guys my friends have picked and I didn't want any of them writing to a jerk.
Ariel"

Satisfied with the length of the letter, she put it into, and sealed the envelope. Then, with nothing else to do, she turned to Hayley
"What's Jack like?"
"He's funny" she smiled as she put the finishing touches to her response, after putting her pen down she passed Ariel Jack's letter
"I told him my favourite film was Pirates of The Caribbean and he wrote me that back" she grinned, motioning to the letter with a nod. Slightly confused Ariel began to read it, but it all made sense when when realised the entire thing was written in Pirate English and she let out a laugh
"That's so cool!"
"I know right?" Hayley beamed
"You know Alex knows Jack" Ariel continued and Hayley looked surprised
"Really?"
"Yeah, in fact, he said he's friends with all of our partners." she stated, turning sideways in her chair to include Skye and Anna in their conversation
"That's weird" Skye's eyebrows furrowed slightly
"Yeah, how lucky!" Anna laughed before Skye declared it was fate and they got in a friendly argument over it that lasted the rest of the lesson.
The bell rang and as they left the class placed their letters on Mr Cranes desk and disappeared into the hallway.

The four girls then made their way to lunch, making a stop at Ariel's locker on the way. As she twirled the combination into her lock Ariel told the girls about how Joel had been at her dance practise
"It's because he fancies you" Skye said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world
"There is no way he likes me." Ariel answered quickly, eyes wide at the sheer thought; her reaction made Anna and Skye laugh but Hayley wasn't paying attention
"Hayley? You still with us?" Skye teased but then saw where her attention was focused and frowned
"Did he just completely blank you?" she asked, the four of them staring after Matt's retreating figure before Hayley just looked down at her feet.
"He just smiled a bit and moved on" she mumbled, turning to hit her head against the locker
"Why'd he do that? Are you two fighting?" Anna's eyebrows knit together in concern
"I don't know. Maybe I did something, maybe he's mad at me." Hayley groaned, eyes squeezed shut.
"When did you last talk to him properly?" Ariel questioned, trying almost as hard as Hayley to figure him out as she swung the locker shut and they continued walking
"At Aleya's party," Hayley answered "we spent the whole night together until I came home early with you and he stayed, we had a date planned the next day but he called it off because he said he was too hungover. That was the weekend before last, then all the next week he was acting strange, but not like this. And I was with him last Saturday when he just seemed really," she took a moment to find the right word "reserved and we haven't spoken since apart from the odd few words." she finished.
"Why don't you text him?" Anna thought aloud
"I did but I just got like, one word replies". They spent that lunch trying to solve the mystery that is the brain of a seventeen year old boy. They didn't get very far.