trigger warnings : mental illness, child neglect
unedited
word count : 1011

William Donovan wasn't sure what to expect to happen during his Chemistry class. It started off how it normally would. But once Mrs. Tate announced the partners for an assignment that would be worth thirty-percent of their final grade, and was due at the end of the month everything would change.

William Donovan sat at his usual desk, which was besides his best friend Valerie Parker, tapping his pencil against the desk. He stared at the board completely zoned out until Valerie discreetly jabbed him in the ribs using her elbow. Which caught his attention, he turned and scrowled at Parker before facing the front and paying attention.

"I will now be giving you guys an assignment, which will be thirty-percent of your final grade in this class." Mrs. Tate stated, which caused a lot of students to sit up straight and pay more attention, including William.

 "The assignment will involve an in class experiment you are to do together, along with two separate reaction handouts, I will be providing those as well, and two separate essays based on our chemistry class. The essay can be based on any part of our units we have done in Chemistry so far. You will be allowed to help each other with the essay and handout. But, I want them to be different and for you to not copy each other on them." Mrs. Tate strictly said.

"This will be due on May thirty first, as today is April twenty-eight, you have a little over a month to complete this. The experiment will be done next class which is on Monday, May first. Now on to the partners-" Mrs. Tate began to list partners which William decided was not important due to Val and him always being partners.

But when he zoned back in, his original thoughts were incorrect. "Stephanie Brown and Kennith Blake, Valerie Parker and Mykiah Peterson, William Donovan and Tim Drake."

William froze, he didn't expect to be paired with someone else. He was internally panicking. Nobody was as patient with him as Valerie and Mrs. Tate was. William had ADHD and wasn't the best at paying attention, even if he enjoyed the subject. He had medication but it made him tired and not as creative which he hated.

His parents, Marcus and Mallory, thought he took his medication and was finally "normal". However, that wasn't the case. It didn't help that he also suffered from social anxiety, he did take medication for that though.

He snapped back into reality as the bell rang and Mrs. Tate stopped talking. The bell signified the school day was over. His last class was Chemistry.

"That's all for today kids, have a good weekend!." Mrs. Tate yelled as students were noisily exiting her classroom. William slowly stood up and gathered his things, Valerie quickly told him she would text him later as she rushed out of the room to go where Mykiah Peterson was waiting.

Once William gathered his things, he walked to his locker, opened it up and started to gather all of his belongings he wanted to take home for the weekend. It startled him when someone tapped him on his shoulders. He turned towards the person behind him, and realized it was none other than Tim Drake.

"Hey sorry to startle you, I just wanted to know when you wanted to talk about the assignment?" Tim Drake anxiously asked.

"Uh, whenever it works for you?" William asked nervously.

"I could give you my number and we can go over the details this weekend?" Tim questioned.

"Yeah sure, hang on a second." William said before handing Tim his phone and had him add his number to William's contacts. "Thank you, sorry to cut this short but, I have practice I need to go to." William quickly said before rushing to the locker room only hearing Tim's faint yell of goodbye.

Practice lasted till 6:30pm whereas school officially ended at 3:00pm. William never liked Football. He only played it to make his father proud even though that never worked. William walked home from practice, the walk home was only twenty minutes making it 6:50-7:00 pm by the time he got home depending on traffic. Today there was some traffic so he got home at exactly seven o'clock.

When he opened the door he immediately heard shouts from his parents. He knew they had issues but they never tried to fix them. He walked upstairs and into his room. He debated on going to Val's but then realized he's been going to her place a lot so he probably shouldn't go there. Instead he decided to text his chemistry partner Tim Drake.

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Unknown number

hey, this is Tim, right?

Tim?

Yes, is this William?

William?

yeah, so I was thinking maybe we go to the library or
one of our houses to work on the assignment after school?

Tim Drake

Yeah that works! maybe your house or mine?
libraries can get a bit crowded sometimes

William :)

either one works for me :)

Tim Drake

alright good to know, i'll see you monday

William :)

Alright, see you monday

_

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Tim Drake hadn't expected his Chemistry partner, William Donovan, to text him that evening. He expected it to be sometime on the weekend, most likely Sunday, not that Friday evening. He was surprised yet very happy he had William's number.

Stephanie was sitting on TIm's bed with him when he got the text. Stephanie was also surprised that William also messaged but she was happy for him. Tim couldn't wait for Monday to come. He wanted to get to know Donovan better.

However, Tim didn't know that William felt the same way. Will laid in his bed staring at his ceiling wishing for Monday to come already. He sat up to grab his headphones from his nightstand and plugged them into his phone. He started playing music from his phone, the first song to come on was 'Sweater Weather' by The Neighbourhood. It was one of William's favourite songs. 

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Chapter one is now published, chapter two will most likely be posted later this month.
Thank you for reading this chapter!
Have a good day/night! :)