Even before she decided to be a writer, Jisoo had always had an over-active imagination.

She transferred to a new middle school when she was twelve because of bullies at her last school. But she knew that there were bad kids everywhere, which was why it was crucial that make she a good impression on her very first day.

She’d had no friends at her last school. The kids were mean at her last school, even though Jisoo had tried hard to be friends with them. She would try to share her books with them or make up stories for them, but no one was impressed. No one there ever saw her as anything else other than a stupid, air headed farm girl who spent too much time with her head in the clouds, making up stupid stories. Once, they swore her plump face was even shaped like a peach. The children actively withheld their affection from her and mercilessly. They would take her lunch and smash it under their feet right in front of her, or they’d open up a cup of diced peaches and dump it over her head, and they’d call her names: Peach Girl, Kim Peachu. 

She fidgeted with the uniform skirt and adjusted her blouse all morning, and then decided that her hair was too flat and boring. So before climbing into her dad’s truck and driving over for the first day, she ran out into the yard and plucked some flowers to make a daisy chain to wear on her head, never mind that digging around in the yard lodged some dirt under her nails. 

“We have a transfer student today, boys and girls!” the male teacher said enthusiastically as he signaled for the children to take their seats. Jisoo stood just outside the door, waiting to be called inside while she rehearsed her introduction in her head.

Please like me, please like me. Please, please, please let them like me, Jisoo chanted in her head. She reached into her pocket and clutched her lucky purple flower. 

“Jisoo, do you want to come in and introduce yourself?” the teacher asked. Jisoo, heart pounding, stepped into the classroom and put on the brightest smile she could muster.

Everyone’s eyes were on her. So far, none of the kids looked mean. They just looked kind of curious. She was trying hard to control her breathing. She kept smiling.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Kim Jisoo. I’m twelve. I’m…” she tried to remember what she rehearsed. “I am… really happy to meet you all. I… I hope we can be friends.”

The room was quiet, and Jisoo was afraid she’d said something wrong. She looked at all their faces and couldn’t read anyone’s emotions. Her smile started to falter, but then her teacher stepped in. 

“Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself?” he said. “What sorts of things do you like?”

Jisoo, grateful for the gentle prompting, nodded. “I like to read books,” she said.

“Very good,” said her teacher. “What kinds of books do you like?”

“All sorts,” she said. “I read fantasy and adventure books and scary ones. Funny ones and fantasy ones are my favorite. But sometimes I don’t like the way they end, so I just imagine that it goes differently.”

Her teacher looked amused at her answer. “Interesting,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to be a writer someday?”

Jisoo raised her brows. She hadn’t ever really considered that. But now that he mentioned it…

“That would be nice,” she said. 

“So where are you from? Where do you live?”

Jisoo’s face fell. Oh no. She couldn’t tell the kids that she lived on a peach farm. What if they think I’m just some stupid farm girl? What if they get peach cups and dump them over my head? What if they start calling me—

“Wait! Aren’t you that peach girl?” said a boy sitting in the center of the room. Jisoo looked up and stared at him with alarm. How? How did he know? How dare he? The rest of the classroom turned and looked at the boy, too, and they started whispering among themselves. Jisoo started panicking. No. Don’t listen to him, she thought. 

“Kim Peachu!” the boy said. The children started giggling, but the boy looked confused. Jisoo’s heart started pounding. The teacher clapped his hands, demanding the children’s attention. 

“That’s enough,” the teacher said, and then he turned his gaze over to the boy who spoke up. “Jinyoung, what did I say about talking without raising your hand? It’s very rude.”

The boy, Jinyoung, looked sheepishly down at his hands and apologized. After that, the teacher decided that Jisoo had introduced herself well enough and then instructed her to take the empty desk, which happened to be the one in front of the boy, Jinyoung. Jisoo walked toward her empty desk slowly, trying not to look up, thinking that if she did, all she’d see were the boys and girls’ judgmental stares. As she got closer to her desk and saw the boy who called her Kim Peachu, her blood began to boil. He ruined her first impression. 

The lesson started shortly after she took her seat. Jisoo took out her notebook and tried to forget the last ten minutes and just focus on math. But about halfway through the lesson, she heard the boy behind her scooting his seat up and leaning forward.

“Hey!” he whispered in her ear. “You live on the peach farm, right?”

Jisoo tensed in her seat. She tried to ignore him, pretend she didn’t hear. But he didn’t quit. 

“Is the farmer your dad?” he asked. “I’ve been there once!”

Jisoo still ignored him, though she had started clenching her fists. This boy just didn’t know when to stop. He just kept talking and rubbing it in that he knew who she was, knew that was just a stupid country girl. 

“My mom bought two dozen peaches, but half of them went bad and we never got to eat them. But they were good!”

“Stop talking to me!” Jisoo shouted, slamming a fist down on her desk and turning around to give the boy a poisonous glare. He was so startled that he nearly fell off his chair. The children were all staring at her now, equally stunned looks on all their faces. The teacher calmed everyone down and scolded her for shouting in the middle of class.

Great. Day one and she was already getting on the teacher’s bad side. Jisoo gave the boy one more glare before turning back to her notebook. This was all his fault. Now everyone knew where she came from and he made her look stupid in front of the whole class and he made her lose her temper in front of the teacher. She hated him. 

For the next couple of weeks, Jinyoung wouldn’t let up. No matter how many times she yelled at him to stop, he kept leaning forward in his desk and trying to talk to her. Evidently, he hadn’t realized just how much she despised him since his little stunt on the first day of school. Jisoo, meanwhile, tried to ignore him as best as she could and focus on the lessons.

Which were much harder than she realized. At her old school, it was hard to focus on the work, especially when she was constantly watching for kids who might pull on her hair or dump peaches on her head or snatch her work and crumple it up. She was on defense mode all the time, she didn’t even realize that she was falling behind in school. 

She’d stay up in her room agonizing over her homework hours. Literature class and art class were easy enough, but math and science were hard. She wanted so badly to catch up with the other kids and prove to them that she wasn’t stupid or air headed. 

One day, while working on a problem sheet in class, she heard Jinyoung scooting his seat forward again and she bristled. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel like looming over her shoulder, no doubt coming up with his latest sly insult. 

“You have to move the decimal to the right,” he said. “It’s multiplying by tens.”

Jisoo rolled her eyes.

“Leave me alone,” she said. But he didn’t.

“You have to shift the decimal to the left in the coefficient,” he whispered. “It’s scientific notation.”

“I know that! Leave me alone!”

“But you’re doing it wrong,” Jinyoung said. “I can help you if you don’t get it.”

“I get it! I’m not stupid!”

“I didn’t say—”

“Just leave me alone!” Jisoo felt so embarrassed that he’d seen her making mistakes on her problem sheet, but she couldn’t just let the other kids see him helping her. What would they think? They’d know that she couldn’t do scientific notation and then no one would want to be friends with an idiot. Was he only offering to help because he thought she couldn’t do this on her own? 

She’d show him. Jisoo went home that day and sat at her desk and didn’t move until she could do scientific notation like no one’s business. She sat there and tried to come up with a story that would help her remember how to do it. Then, she opened up her textbook and taught herself the next two or three lessons. When the teacher finally got to them in class, she wowed everyone by knowing all the answers and being the first one to finish her problem set. 

After that, a couple of girls approached Jisoo and asked her to help them learn scientific notation, too. Finally, she thought. Friends.

It wasn’t long before Jisoo was starting to build up a reputation as one of the best students in their grade. And she was happy and proud. The only problem was that as she got better, so did Jinyoung. The two of them were constantly battling for the spot at the