Willow had never stood out from the crowd, at least not in her own opinion. She’d always considered herself plain, sort of mousey, unfashionable, ordinary, unnoticeable… Not the sort of girl that boys would give a second glance to, if they even looked her way in the first place.

That was… mostly okay, because she found boys hard to talk to anyway. She’d never been the outgoing sort, always been more the nerdy and bookish kind, interested in learning, and reading, and computers, too quiet to really be comfortable when people’s attention was on her.

She did often wish that Xander would notice her more, but that was different. She’d known him forever, and loved him almost as long, he was her best friend, and until Buffy came along, almost her ONLY friend, as well as the only boy she didn’t get tongue-tied talking to. Unfortunately for her, Xander still seemed to think of her as one of the guys who just happened to be vaguely girl-shaped.

She’d never been one to follow the crowd, she did things her own way, liked what she liked, and refused to be a sheep, doing and liking the things the popular girls did in an effort to fit in. She simply didn’t see the point, and anyway, no matter what she did, she’d never be accepted by Cordelia and her cronies. Willow sometimes felt she existed only to give them someone to laugh at and make fun of, but she was used to the way they treated her. You could get used to pretty much anything if it went on for long enough.

Still, it came as a surprise to find she hadn’t been going as unnoticed as she’d believed. Somehow, without even trying, she’d caught the attention of one of the coolest boys in the whole school. He was older than her, incredibly smart, played in a band, and like her, wasn’t a crowd follower. Oz was simply Oz, and he revelled in his Ozness, in a sort of cool, laidback, unflappable way. And he liked her. He liked the girl in the Inuit costume at the cultural exchange dance. The girl every other boy in the entire school looked right past, and now…

Now, somehow, he was her boyfriend. He liked her for who she was, liked her BECAUSE she wasn’t like all the other girls. He made her feel special.


The End