Hello

The bell at Mountain View Middle School didn’t just ring; it shrieked. It was a violent, metallic sound that signaled the end of summer and the beginning of what Ryland Grace liked to call "The Great Chaos."

Ryland was currently standing on a swivel chair in Room 104, trying to tape a scale model of the Saturn V rocket to the ceiling tiles. His lab coat was slightly smudged with dry-erase marker, and his pockets were bulging with rolls of Scotch tape, a laser pointer, and three different types of fidget spinners.

"Come on, physics, work with me," Ryland muttered, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. "Structural integrity is a suggestion, not a law, right? No, wait, it’s definitely a law. Newton would be very disappointed in this tape."

He was so engrossed in the trajectory of his cardboard rocket that he didn’t hear the door creak open. He didn't notice the shadow falling across the linoleum floor until a low, gravelly voice vibrated through the air.

"You’re going to break your neck."

Ryland flinched, his foot slipping on the cushioned seat of the chair. He let out a very undignified squeak, his arms windmilling as he fought for balance. He managed to stay upright, but the Saturn V took a nose-dive, clattering onto his desk.

Ryland spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. Standing in the doorway was a man who looked like he had been misplaced by the universe. He was tall, built with a rugged, lean density that suggested he had spent a lot of time in cramped spaces. He wore a plain black button-down with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms that looked like they were made of corded iron. His hair was short, dark, and slightly messy, and his eyes—cold, grey, and incredibly sharp—were fixed on Ryland with an expression of mild concern and profound exhaustion.

"Oh! Hello! Hi there!" Ryland hopped off the chair, landing with a thud. He immediately started smoothing out his lab coat, his hands moving with a restless energy. "You must be the new guy! The lit teacher! I’m Ryland. Ryland Grace. Science, obviously. I mean, the posters usually give it away, or the smell of vinegar and baking soda that never quite leaves the carpet."

The man didn't move. He just stared at Ryland, his gaze lingering on the way Ryland’s hands fluttered as he spoke. "Simon," the man said. His voice was deep, sounding like stones grinding together at the bottom of a well.

"Simon! Great name. Biblical, but also very classic. Did you know that the name Simon means 'he has heard'? Which is ironic because I’m usually the one doing all the talking and people have to do the hearing part. I have ADHD, you see, so my brain is basically a browser with forty tabs open and I don't know where the music is coming from." Ryland laughed, a bright, nervous sound. He realized he was rambling and forced himself to stop, clutching his hands together. "So, literature! Big fans of words, are we?"

Simon stepped into the room. He moved with a strange, deliberate caution, as if he were constantly checking the perimeter of a very small cage. He looked at the fallen rocket on the desk. "It’s a bit small for the moon," he remarked.

"It’s 1:110 scale!" Ryland corrected instantly, his eyes lighting up. "If I made it full scale, we’d be standing in the middle of a three-hundred-and-sixty-three-foot pillar of fire and liquid oxygen, and the principal would probably give me a very stern talking-to about fire codes."

Simon’s lips didn't quite form a smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched. It was the first sign of life in an otherwise stony face. "Right. Fire codes. Important."

"Anyway," Ryland said, pivoting to his desk to grab a stack of syllabi. "Welcome to the trenches. The kids are... well, they're thirteen. It’s a hormonal disaster zone. If you need anything—extra staples, a map to the good coffee machine, or just someone to explain why the seventh graders are currently obsessed with that one specific TikTok dance—I’m your guy."

Simon nodded slowly. He looked around the room, taking in the periodic table, the jars of preserved specimens, and the "Hang in There" kitty poster that Ryland had modified to look like it was wearing an astronaut helmet.

"I’ve seen worse," Simon said quietly.

"Worse than middle schoolers?" Ryland tilted his head, his brow furrowing. "I don't know. They can be pretty vicious. Last year, a girl told me my tie looked like 'something a depressed clown would wear to a funeral.' It took me a week to recover."

Simon looked at Ryland’s tie—a bright blue silk number covered in tiny yellow stars. "I like the stars," Simon said. It was blunt, almost an accidental admission.

Ryland felt a strange, warm flutter in his chest. It wasn't the kind of flutter people talked about in romance novels—he’d never really understood those—but it was a pleasant sense of validation. "Thanks! Me too. They’re... they’re constant, you know? No matter how messy things get down here, the stars are just doing their thing."

Simon held his gaze for a second too long, a flicker of something dark and unreadable passing through his grey eyes. Then, he blinked and looked away. "I should get to my room. Boxes to unpack."

"Right! Of course. See you at lunch? Or at the mandatory faculty meeting where we all pretend to listen to the new attendance software tutorial?"

"See you, Grace," Simon said, turning on his heel.

Ryland watched him go, noting the way Simon kept his shoulders pulled in, taking up as little space as possible. "Interesting guy," Ryland whispered to the Saturn V. "A bit of a fixer-upper, socially speaking. But he liked the tie!"

***

Two weeks into the semester, the gossip began.

Middle schoolers were essentially biological recording devices with no filters. They noticed everything. They noticed that Mr. Grace, who usually spent his lunch breaks eating a ham sandwich while reading academic journals in the lab, was now frequently seen sitting across from the "scary" new lit teacher in the cafeteria.

"Look at them," whispered Chloe, a seventh grader with a penchant for drama, as she poked at her tater tots. "Mr. Grace is literally vibrating. He’s talking so fast I think his head might pop off."

"And Mr. Simon is just... staring," added her friend, Leo. "He looks like he’s trying to decide if he should eat Mr. Grace or fight him. My brother says he has tattoos under his shirt. Like, prison tattoos."

"No way," Chloe gasped. "He’s too quiet. He’s probably a secret agent. Or a hitman. And Mr. Grace is his bubbly sidekick who provides the tech support."

Across the cafeteria, oblivious to the eyes of two hundred pre-teens, Ryland was mid-sentence.

"—and that’s why the concept of 'up' in space is completely subjective! You could be standing on your head and it wouldn't matter because gravity isn't pulling you toward a floor. It’s liberating, really. Simon, are you even eating that apple? You’ve been holding it for ten minutes."

Simon blinked, coming out of a trance. He looked down at the apple in his hand as if he’d never seen fruit before. "I was listening."

"You were staring at the wall," Ryland pointed out gently. "Are you okay? You get this... look sometimes. Like you’re trapped in a submarine and the oxygen is running low."

Simon stiffened. He set the apple down on the plastic tray with a controlled click. "Just thinking about the curriculum. *The Old Man and the Sea*. It’s a lot of blood for thirteen-year-olds."

"Oh, they love blood," Ryland waved a hand dismissively. "The gorier, the better. You should see them during the frog dissection. Half of them faint, but the other half want to know if they can take the eyeballs home."

Simon let out a short, dry huff of a laugh. It was a rare sound, like a rusty hinge finally moving. "I can imagine."

"You know," Ryland said, leaning in, his voice dropping an octave. "The kids are talking about you. They think you’re a man of mystery. A 'brooding enigma,' I think I heard one of them say. Which is very poetic for a kid who still uses 'skibidi' in every sentence."

Simon’s expression darkened slightly. He picked up a napkin and began shredding it into perfect, uniform strips. "I don't care what they think."

"I know you don't. But you’re good at this, Simon. I walked by your room yesterday. You were reading Poe out loud. The whole class was silent. Not 'I’m-on-my-phone' silent, but 'I’m-actually-scared-and-invested' silent. That’s a superpower."

Simon looked up, his grey eyes searching Ryland’s face. Ryland didn't look away. He didn't have the social grace to know when a gaze was too intense; he just looked because he liked what he saw—a man who was trying very hard to be okay.

"You’re a strange man, Grace," Simon said, but there was no malice in it.

"I prefer 'eclectic,'" Ryland chirped.

***

The turning point happened on a rainy Tuesday in October.

The school’s power had flickered and died during a thunderstorm, plunging the windowless hallways into a murky, oppressive grey. The emergency lights kicked on, casting a sickly red glow over everything.

Ryland was in the middle of explaining the Doppler effect when the lights went out. He’d managed to keep his class calm with a few glow-sticks he kept in his "Emergency Fun Kit," but as he dismissed them at the end of the period, he noticed Simon’s door was closed. Usually, Simon kept it propped open to let the air circulate.

Ryland knocked. No answer.

"Simon? It’s Ryland. The power’s out, which means the coffee machine is dead. I’m thinking of starting a small, controlled fire in a beaker to boil some water. Want in?"

Still no answer.

Ryland frowned. He pushed the door open slowly. The lit room was dark, the heavy curtains drawn against the rain. Simon wasn't at his desk. He was slumped against the far wall, sitting on the floor in the narrow gap between a bookshelf and the radiator. His breathing was harsh, jagged, and his eyes were wide, fixed on the door with a terrifying intensity.

"Simon!" Ryland dropped his bag and hurried over, crouching down. He didn't touch him—something told him that would be a very bad idea. "Hey, hey. It’s just me. It’s Ryland. Just a power outage. No big deal."

Simon’s hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists. "Too small," he rasped. The word sounded like it was being dragged over broken glass. "The light... the red light. It’s like the sub. It’s like the hole."

Ryland didn't know what "the sub" or "the hole" meant, but he recognized a panic attack when he saw one. His own brain often felt like it was spinning out of control, though usually in the opposite direction.

"Okay," Ryland said, his voice becoming the calm, steady tone he used when a lab experiment went wrong. "Okay, Simon. Listen to me. You’re not in a hole. You’re in Mountain View Middle School. Room 202. The floor is linoleum. It’s cold and probably hasn't been waxed since 1994. Can you feel the floor?"

Simon’s chest heaved. He nodded once, a jerky movement.

"Good. That’s good. Now, look at me. Don't look at the red lights. Look at my tie." Ryland grabbed the end of his tie—today it was covered in cartoon dinosaurs wearing lab coats. "Focus on the Stegosaurus. He’s wearing safety goggles. See him? He’s very responsible."

Simon’s gaze flickered to the tie. He stared at the tiny green dinosaur for a long time. Slowly, agonizingly, his breathing began to level out. The rigidity left his shoulders, and he slumped back against the wall, looking utterly spent.

"Sorry," Simon whispered, closing his eyes. "Dammit. I’m sorry."

"Don't be," Ryland said, sitting down on the floor next to him. He made sure to leave a good foot of space between them. "I once had a meltdown because the school changed the brand of dry-erase markers and the new ones made a squeaking sound that felt like it was peeling my brain. We all have our things."

They sat in silence for a while, the sound of the rain drumming against the roof the only noise in the room.

"I was in a bad place," Simon said after a long time. He didn't offer more, and Ryland didn't ask. "For a long time. Small spaces... they do things to you."

"I get it," Ryland said. "Not the prison part—or whatever part you’re talking about—but the feeling of the world closing in. Sometimes the stars are the only thing that feel big enough, you know? That’s why I love them. You can't trap a star."

Simon turned his head to look at him. The red emergency light softened the harsh lines of his face. "You’re a good man, Ryland Grace."

Ryland felt that warmth again, stronger this time. He didn't know what to do with it, so he just smiled. "I’m a nerd with a dinosaur tie, Simon. But I’m glad you’re here."

***

By November, the students had moved from "secret agent" theories to "star-crossed lovers."

"They’re definitely dating," Leo whispered as he watched Ryland hand Simon a Tupperware container in the hallway. "Look, Mr. Grace made him cookies. They’re shaped like little planets."

"And Mr. Simon actually took them!" Chloe added, clutching her notebook. "He didn't even scowl. He just... looked at the Saturn one and tucked it into his pocket like it was a diamond."

Inside the science lab, Ryland was buzzing around a van de Graaff generator. "So, if you touch this, your hair will stand up! It’s a classic. The kids will love it. You should try it, Simon. Your hair is short, but I bet we can get some lift."

Simon stood by the door, leaning against the frame. He looked more relaxed than he had two months ago. The shadows under his eyes were lighter. "I think I’ll pass on the electrocution today, Grace."

"Suit yourself! More static for me." Ryland turned the machine on, his own hair immediately beginning to fluff out like a dandelion. He looked ridiculous, and he knew it, but he didn't care.

Simon watched him, a genuine, soft smile finally breaking through his stony exterior. He didn't understand Ryland’s obsession with science, or his endless energy, or the way he seemed to perceive the world in a thousand colors at once. And he certainly didn't understand the strange, quiet ache in his own chest whenever Ryland laughed.

Simon had never been in love. He’d spent his life surviving, first on the streets, then in a cell, then in a place even darker. Love was a luxury for people who weren't looking over their shoulders.

But as he watched Ryland explain the movement of electrons to an empty room just to practice his lecture, Simon felt a tectonic shift in his own soul. He didn't want to be anywhere else.

"Hey, Simon?" Ryland asked, turning off the generator. His hair stayed up in a wild halo.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to go to the planetarium this weekend? They’re doing a show on black holes. It’s narrated by a guy who sounds like he’s eating gravel, so you’ll probably find it very soothing."

Simon felt a huff of laughter escape him. "A date, Grace?"

Ryland paused. He blinked, his brain processing the word. He thought about the movies he’d seen, the books he’d read. He thought about the way he felt when he was with Simon—safe, seen, and not at all pressured to be anything other than his loud, rambling self. He didn't feel the 'spark' people talked about in a physical way, but he felt a profound sense of *rightness*.

"Yeah," Ryland said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "I think... I think I’d like that. If you would."

Simon nodded, his eyes fixed on Ryland with an intensity that wasn't scary anymore. It was grounding. "I’d like that very much."

Outside in the hallway, a group of eighth graders erupted into muffled squeals.

"I KNEW IT!" Leo hissed, punching the air. "Ten bucks, Chloe! Pay up!"

Ryland and Simon looked at the door, then back at each other.

"Should we tell them we can hear them?" Ryland asked.

Simon stepped closer, finally crossing the distance. He reached out, his rough hand hovering for a second before gently smoothing down a stray lock of Ryland’s static-charged hair. "Let them talk," he said. "I’ve got everything I need right here."