She was walking down the hall when she saw him.  She didn't know who he was, had never seen him before, but she immediately felt like she'd known him all her life.

It wasn't that he was attractive, though he was, with his dark brown hair and piercing green eyes. It was the way he treated the people around him like everyone was important to him. No matter how they were stereotyped, whether they be popular or a band geek or even a goth, he makes them feel like they matter to him. She picked all these things in the first few hours after she'd seen him. 

She was surprised when she saw him in almost all her classes that day, introduced over and over again as the new student from Rhode Island. She was even more surprised when she saw him on her bus at the end of the day. He got off just two stops before her, so he probably lived walking distance from her house, although she didn't know why this occurred to her at the time. She supposed she was probably just curious, not yet noticing that it wasn't just curiosity and familiarity she felt when she saw him.

She noticed until a week later when she found herself sitting next to him on the bus. She felt a fluttering in her stomach, realizing then her growing crush on him, and instantly became awkward. She stuttered a greeting as he looked at her with slight recognition from seeing her in class and on the bus. They hadn't officially met, despite almost always being in the same place at school. He held out his hand to shake hers, and she took it with her own as he asked her name. 

"Maya," she answers, quickly asking his in return, although she already knew it by now from when he was introduced as the new kid. "Thomas," he says, as she knew he would. 

Soon they are conversing like they were old friends. "Hey Maya...," he says, suddenly hesitating, but then deciding to go on. " Do you think we could hang out later today? I don't have a lot of homework and was thinking of going to the movies around five. What do you say?"

"Of course," she answers like it should never have been a question in the first place. And to her, it really shouldn't have been. Why would she pass up the opportunity to hang out with such a sweet, kind person whom she happened to have a crush on? "It's a date," she states, then realizes what she just said, face turning red as a tomato. But his face breaks out into a grin, and he nods confirmation. 

"If this is really a date though," he says, in a teasing tone, " I'm paying." 

"Like I would let you," she answers, and leans her head on his shoulder, thinking about how happy she would be with this boy, the new kid from Rhode Island.