He walks down the hallway of the school with his lime green bubble jacket zipped all the way up to his neck and his Air Jordan Superman edition Retro 1’s on his feet. Apart from his $300 graphing calculator, these shoes are his most prized possession. He has his arms crossed over his chest holding a Calculus book snug against his body. For some reason, he has not yet grasped the “walk on the right side of the hallway” principle so he walks in the middle of the hallway and consequently, gets bumped and knocked every which way. Even though he squeaks “Hey man watch out dude!” nobody hears him and he continues to get knocked around. It goes like this until he reaches his Calculus class. There are mostly seniors in his class but yet, he is a sophomore. Although technically, he’s supposed to be in ninth grade, he skipped the grade because the curriculum was far too easy for him.

Most people that know Harold wonder how he turned out so goofy. His dad is a retired, high ranking, Navy SEAL and his mom is an amazing runway model for Louis Vuitton. So, many people can’t help wondering how a goon like Harold could be in existence. But yet, there he was, strutting down the hallway in all of his nerdiness. Harold walks into the classroom and sits down in his assigned seat. Every male human being in the class is desperately jealous of him. He has the privilege to sit next to the most beautiful, popular, supernatural senior in the whole school. If you were to ask anyone in the school what the definition of perfect is, everyone would agree that this girl, Tammie Lynn, is just that. She has bright blue eyes with dark brown hair and a flawless pearly white smile. She could very well be an earthly form of an angel and yet, somehow, Harold finds her nearly invisible. When people ask him why the only time he talks to her is to ask her to look over his impeccable homework for wrong answers, he just smiles and says that he finds attractive women to get in the way of his focus on math.

Harold thoroughly enjoys his Calculus class because the man teaching it is just as big of a geezer as Harold and thus, the two get along incredibly well and often can be found making cheesy math jokes in the middle of class. Today, while everyone is checking the homework on the board, Harold and Mr. Johnson kick the joke war off by the teacher saying, “What did Al Gore play on his guitar? An Algorithm!” Both hooligans immediately start cracking up while the whole class rolls their eyes. It goes like this all class period until finally, the long awaited bell rings.

Harold has study hall now and starts to walk towards the cafeteria. One of his best friends, Sherrell, is also in his study hall and sees him in the hallway so she motions him towards her and they walk together. Sherrell is extremely attractive and Harold has had a giant crush on her since they were both in middle school. She has hazel eyes and blonde hair and everytime she smiles, people can’t help but think she’s beautiful. She’s not the type of obnoxious beautiful that makes a person popular but the type where people admire how understatedly gorgeous and effortlessly good looking she is. One of the features that make her stand out as an amazing person to be around is her laugh. Every time she laughs, people can’t help but feel better and smile because her laugh is infectious and when she laughs, she smiles, and that is a beautiful thing. She is also very smart as she skipped ninth grade as well. However, she is in a fairly normal class, Algebra 2. Harold finds that they can talk incredibly well as friends which is all Sherrell thinks of them as but yet, he can’t seem to find the words to say anything to her that’s more than friendly. Sherrell knows that he has a huge crush on her because even though Harold hasn’t done anything, all of his friends have told her about it. She is almost intrigued by this. On one hand, she has no idea what she would say if Harold told her he liked her. But on the other hand, she finds his shyness kind of sweet.


As they walk in the hallway, they talk about many things. One of Harold? favorite things about Sherrell is how she always has something interesting to say. Today she? talking about how her mother accidentally burnt the noodles she was making last night so they had to go out to eat at T.G.I. Friday’s. Harold is fascinated just like he normally is around her. They soon arrive at study hall and they take their seats together with their other ,friend, Johnny. Johnny is a stereotypical nerd with his pocket protector, large glasses, goofy shoes, and long hair with a middle part. Even though other people disagree, Johnny has his own special sense of fashion. While he’s in tenth grade just like Harold, he still thinks it’s cool to wear Crocs, especially the fuzzy purple ones he’s wearing today. Johnny thinks he? the ¨definition of cool with ultimate street cred.¨ He is super tight with Harold and knows everything about him. After a few minutes of working on their homework, Johnny pulls Harold aside and they sit down at a separate table and start talking. He leans over and quietly says ¨Dude you have a huge crush on Sherrell, I can help you get her.¨ Harold looks at him in disbelief and asks him how. Johnny responds ¨Yo man, I? Johnny Dynamite, I? a natural ladies man and that means I can help you to get attractive women such as Sherrell.” Harold again gives him a dubious look and asks “But how on earth could you do that?” to which Johnny responds “It won’t be me doing it, I can only offer you advice. But you will be the one talking to her. Alls ya gotta do is ask her out and have her say yes then you can show her that you like her more than a friend.” Even though Johnny is a major goober, Harold still sees this as good advice so he starts to put a plan in place.


When Harold hears this advice, he realizes that Johnny’s right. He thinks to himself I do need to make a move if I want to be more than friends with Sherrell. So he starts to devise a plan on how to do this. It has to be something simple, yet meaningful. Then it comes to him. His thought process starts and while illogical, it just might work. Harold continues to ponder as he and Johnny walk back to the table and sit down with Sherrell. By the time the study hall ends he has the perfect plan. He pulls Johnny aside and he tells her of the plan, “I will ask her if she wants to borrow my calculator before she goes to algebra 2. If she says yes then that means she must have a huge crush on me because why else would she want to use MY calculator? Her algebra teacher will be very happy because Sherrell will be the most efficient number computer in the class and thus, he will be very proud. Sherrell will be happy because she has the best calculator in the whole world to use for a solid 48 minutes and it’s all because of yours truly. So, bottom line is, if she says yes to using my calculator, everyone will be extremely happy and she will have her best, most productive math period of the year. Also, if she enjoys my calculator enough, she just might say yes to a date!” Johnny doesn’t say much for a few minutes, he just stands there, silent and thinking about it. After a few minutes, Johnny looks at Harold and speaks some wise words, “Bro, that is a brilliant idea!”

So, the plan is put in action and over the next few days Harold puts more thought into the details of the plan and formulates exactly what he’s going to say. The more Harold thinks about the prospect of Sherrell using his calculator, the more he stays scheming about making the plan a reality, and the more he wants her to use his Limited Edition TI NSPIRE 575.

Finally, one crisp, cool Monday morning, Harold decides that today is the day. He dresses in some nice clothes that he had gotten over the weekend. He wears a navy blue Polo shirt, some nice khakis, and some brand new shoes, a pair of black, blue, and white Space Jam Jordan 11’s. He feels especially spiffy today, befitting of his ambitiously thought out plan. Whenever he walks into school today, he blasts his music on his lime green Beats Studios that he got specifically to match his jacket. Today, he’s trying to get pumped up so he’s listening to “One Mic” by Nas. This song helps him to focus and think about his plan and how he will follow through with it. Sherrell usually gets to school about 15 minutes before the bell rings so Harold has to work with that window of time because she has Algrebra 2 first period.
Harold stands by Sherrell’s locker until she arrives. When she walks over to her locker she has a slightly confused face because normally, Harold doesn’t do something like this. Harold senses this slight confusion and fills the silence by saying, “Good morning, Sherrell, fancy seeing you here”. She gives him an even more confused look so Harold decides to cut to the chase and blurts out, “So, uh, I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time and I was wondering if maybe you’d be interested in using my calculator during your math class today. I thought it would make you faster at answering the math problems”. Harold took a deep breath as he anticipated Sherrell’s response. His stomach was full of butterflies, some scared of what the answer would be and some who were excited to see if his plan would work. Sherrell looks up at Harold and replies, “Oh Harold, I thought you’d never ask! I’ve been hoping all year you would do this!” and gives him a big hug. Harold can’t help but blush and let out a sigh of relief. This was the start of his new “more than friends” relationship with Sherrell. As they were walking down the hallway, both holding the calculator in their hands, he felt truly happy and accomplished.