I had to rewrite this Zayadora stuff two times before this time. I feel like it's fairly good, but you guys tell me what you think :D I tried to write a legit Zay, like I think I did in Sick Days, as well as weaving in ending Zanessa and putting something substantial behind Zayadora. I love how I wrote how he loves her, and since I think Riarkle is massively end game, I really want Zayadora to happen, since I've kinda shipped it since before they'd met (long story).

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters.

ENJOY!

The cork board was an invention of pure genius, and he thought it was complicated before High School started. There were different colored tacks for each of his friends. Dark blue for Lucas. Orange for Farkle. Red for Maya. Purple, of course, for Riley. Black for him. White for a girl he'd only heard about, Isadora. Pink for Vanessa.

Pink for Vanessa...

That had been the start of what had been a roller coaster of a summer. No one ever talked about it, when they were thrust into the wild world of high school. He dropped so many hints though to try to get one person to ask him about Vanessa. Lucas knew the whole thing but never brought it up even though he just wanted to talk about it sometimes.

"Why are things never about Zay?" He grumbled, wrapping string around the thumb tack Rucas Vs. Lucaya love triangle.

Vanessa hadn't s much as crushed him as completely let him down. What a fitting color pink was, since she was all cotton candy, pretty and sweet sounding, but gone in a minute leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth. A the camp fire when she looked at him he thought she was looking at him like he was her everything. When he went back to Texas he realized that she had looked at him like he was the latest thing she was interested in. And after a few days of hand holding and her not getting any of his jokes, he figured out that she didn't even look at him like that anymore.

She was boring and checked out other guys while they were out together.

"Vanessa? You're stunning but... I realized that's all you are." He ended that relationship, his heart weighed down with disappointment and his phone bill weighed down by the long distance calls he made to Lucas after the break up. The lingering visit to Texas was awkward but the flight back to New York only got him riled up. He was angry that girls like Vanessa existed. More than that he was mad that he had to be the one to fall for them. He threw open the door to his house.

"Isaiah?"His mom called.

"Hello!" He yelled. Mad that he had such a bad pick of girls.

He slammed his bedroom door. Mad that he thought she'd actually loved him.

He kicked off his shoes and threw down his suit case. Mad that no one fought over him like Riley and Maya fought for Lucas.

He heard his mother's anxious footsteps as she came to check on him. His hand trembled on the plastic container and he scattered pink thumb tacks on the carpet. Mad that no one would ever actually love him.

Angrily he grabbed his baseball bat and decided to go practice, which he'd never done before. His mom opened the door and shrieked.

"Zay! Isaiah Babineaux! Don't move." He took a step forward.

"Baby you'll hurt your feet. Your feet Isaiah. You're a dancer you do not want to do this." He didn't care, hadn't cared, until she said that. He was a dancer. Had been since young in Texas. That had been the start of people laughing at him.

That had been the start of him trying to make people laugh at him, so he could feel safer knowing that at least her controlled the laughter. But he didn't, not really. He was still making fun of himself. He just felt like he had power like that. And then Lucas made him feel even more powerful by protecting him. Making him feel like he couldn't be touched. But the words still hit no matter what Lucas did to the people who hit him with the hard truth. It didn't make things better when Lucas got kicked out of school. He'd failed that grade to hang back so he'd be in the same grade as Lucas. It wasn't hard to do, since his grades were usually a train wreck.

He bent down and picked up tacks. There were better ways to let out anger.

Sometime that summer the anger dissipated. He'd been using the batting cages to hit out his anger, growing better and better, maybe not Lucas good but not the normal Zay terrible. Between that and hanging with his friends he'd practice Chassé en tournants and Emboîtés alone in his bedroom. The tacks stayed where they were, and his little black tack sat alone stuck in one corner of the cork board watching his friends be in love.

Then one day he met the girl they called Smackle. Isadora Smackle. He loved that name. Isadora. You could dance to that name. And he'd seen Farkle wasn't a name to tap dance to. It had to be ballet. He did a basic, tired pirouette. Yes, her name had to be danced to, her name was in itself a ballet, or at least the orchestra accompanying it. He rarely did so but had to wipe the smile off his face. Not his dance to Relevé through. His little tack sat right where it belonged in the corner, unloved and dusty, and he reinforced the strong thread that he tied around Farkle and Smackle.

But that girl made him laugh. He liked girls who made him laugh more than he liked girls who laughed at his jokes. She was odd and funny and he liked that there always seemed to be more about her below the substance no matter how much he learned about her. She had quirks and flirted in a kind of off-key way that he found endearing. She'd clearly fallen for Farkle but flirted at Lucas, and one day after High School started said that they were a quadrilateral.

He knew math. Geometry wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be based on what he knew from algebra. He knew what kind of quadrilateral they were. A trapezoid with four different sides. Two of them were equal, Farkle and Smackle, and then the two bases weren't equal at all. He was the little puny small one. He might be there, but he had no chance. That should have been okay.

But when he tied string around the new little quadrilateral they'd formed he couldn't help feel uneasy.

He went out and bought more tacks.

He only needed one to represent Smackle, but he bought about a dozen. The little white one didn't do her justice, since when he'd purchased them that's all he knew about her. Caucasian, female. He searched through shelves of thumb tacks and found pretty ones with flowers on them. It fit her. He bought a package.

Isadora Smackle. An Orchestra to do rond de jambes for. He danced for the mirror, and the cork board, and the imaginary Isadora he'd conjured up in his mind.

Isadora Smackle. A little odd ball that made him laugh.

Isadora Smackle. A beautiful flower.

Isadora Smackle. The reason he wasn't mad any more.

He performed for the mirror as Pas de Chat. He bowed smugly.

He was a fire cracker on the baseball field now. JV wasn't so bad, he got to play with Lucas and that's the main reason he'd tried out.

He was a dancer whose feet were precious and to be protected.

He was a little lonely black tack, suddenly part of a quadrilateral.

Look at that Zay, he thought, Look who you've become. When did it get where people didn't define you? He didn't know, but he liked it. He did a Sus-sous. The mirror smiled at him. Her pretty flower tack seemed to sparkle.

He imagined taking her hand and asking her if she was a balletomane, a ballet enthusiast. He considered twirling her and telling her her name sounded like an orchestra. He envisioned a conversation where he wasn't putting on airs or trying to be funny, just being himself.

She was no Vanessa. That's what he liked about her.

But he'd tried too hard with Vanessa. If he'd gotten any piece of wisdom from her it was that there was a right amount of try, and a right time to try. It wouldn't be fair to Farkle to try to sweep Smackle off her feet while she was dating someone else.

He supposed as long as he had an orchestra like herself in his life, he didn't really need to dance with a beautiful girl in his arms. It was nice to just listen and laugh. To be noticed being himself. To occasionally not have to just joke around.

And sometimes he stole glances, and sure, it meant something. But she'd said it himself, they were a quadrilateral. He didn't need to steal the spotlight, but it was nice to remind himself he was part of the show.

In time they'd figure everything out, but they weren't kings yet. Stick together. Don't worry about Break up Monday or love geometry. Just stick together, do your best, take a bow, and see who's with who when the curtain closed.

Yeah...

He could do that.

He was Isaiah Babineaux. A dancer. A patriot. A little black tack. Himself.