"Okay, quadratic formula. The opposite of b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four times a times c divided by two," I murmured out loud to myself as I stared at my algebra book. I carefully read problem thirteen and began to plug in numbers. "..which equals four root two," I concluded once I completed the problem. I flipped to the back of the book to check if my answer was right. "Or nine…"

Letting out a frustrated sigh, I rested my chin in the palm of my left hand. Math had never been my best subject. I would rather fight a monster than do my algebra homework.

I reread my work, trying to figure out where I went wrong. But after only a few seconds, I began to gaze around my room absentmindedly. My eyes traveled over Kim's rather messy side of the room (she had gotten home from school and immediately started to empty out her drawers in a desperate attempt to find a perfect outfit for a date she was going on with Tommy and never cleaned up), then over my calendar (I read it over quickly and remembered that I had a dentist's appointment the next afternoon), and finally over to mine and Kim's bulletin board, on which we kept all of our pictures and other mementos.

I smiled when my eyes spotted a picture of me and Rocky kissing on my living room couch. Kim, the sneaky little bitch, had taken it from the staircase a couple days ago. Neither Rocky nor I had noticed until Kim put it up on the board.

My mind wandered off to Rocky-land. I had always had a crush on him, ever since we were seven and he first moved next door to me. I thought everything about him was adorable - the twinkle he would get in his eyes when he was goofing off, the way he poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue when he was thinking seriously about something, his ability to eat endless amounts of food. But I had never told him how I felt. I wasn't really afraid of him rejecting me, although that possibility had always lingered in my mind. But it was mostly because Rocky was never really the kind of guy I imagined as my boyfriend. He was a great best friend, but I couldn't picture myself going on dates with him or kissing him or doing 'couple' stuff with him.

But when he told me he loved me at the Youth Center after we beat Ivan Ooze, all those things changed in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, I couldn't imagine being with anybody else except Rocky.

I remember how I felt that night perfectly. When Rocky had told me I meant the world to him and that he had been so afraid of losing me on Phaedos, my heart melted. Being so close to him, I had always sort of anticipated that I had meant the world to him - as a good friend. But when I realized I meant the world to him because he was in love with me, I was completely breathless.

It's just like that list in Kim's book. (Well, it's actually Jason's. He was the one who had bought it, but he left it with Kim before he went to Switzerland.) "You mean the world to someone."

It's a wonderful feeling, knowing that I'm one person's entire world. It makes me feel so alive, so happy, so confident that I can handle anything. When I think about how much Rocky loves me, I feel like nothing can bring me down.

But at the same time, I feel pretty scared, too. Knowing that somebody loves me that much makes me so afraid to make a mistake, afraid to do something that will change the way he feels about me in an instant. Rocky put me on a pretty high pedestal, and I'm so afraid to do something that will make me fall off and hit rock bottom. I'm not sure that Rocky would ever look down on me, even if I did do something to make him disappointed in me, but still. I put even more effort into everything I do now to ensure that he won't get mad at me. I don't know if I would be able to bear it if Rocky was angry with me. He never became angry with me before, but now that we're a couple, a lot of things have changed, and that could change, too.

Taking a deep breath and clearing my head, I looked back down at my algebra homework with a groan. But then I remembered that Rocky was an excellent math student.

Keeping that in mind, I decided that I could become great at solving the quadratic formula if I kept trying and went back to work.