Eight
Eli
M y aunt had grounded me for two weeks. One week for leaving school in the middle of the day, and another week for all the shouting and the mess we created in the bedroom.
Aunt Macy did not care about what the shouting was about or why exactly our bedroom had glass shards scattered all around it.
All she cared about was that we disrupted her sleep because we were ‘acting like hooligans’.
The school went easy on me and decided that since I was such a good student, I didn't deserve after school detention for having one massive fuck up. They could see I was in distress and felt bad for me. That was one good thing that came out of the mess.
I came home to find my phone completely shattered on the ground. I did not know how it happened, as the phone was fine before I stormed out of the house that night. My siblings insisted that it had nothing to do with them.
Speaking of my siblings, they were pretending like nothing had happened and went back to their usual way of only speaking to me when necessary.
We did not acknowledge the fight. That was fine by me because the only way I would have tolerated talking to them would be if they apologized for everything.
Otherwise, I wanted nothing to do with them.
I was studying. I opted to study in my bedroom instead of the living room because my siblings were in the living room.
We had cleaned the room earlier, but not completely because I was still finding tiny glass pieces.
I was fine with potentially sitting on glass shards if it meant a quiet space away from everyone.
"Hey dumbass," my brother called me as he stood in the doorway of our room, staring at me. He continued, "Your weirdo friends are here."
Ricky, Kailey, and Bella entered the room quietly behind him, and their jaws dropped at the sight of me. Easton chuckled slyly and earned a scowl from Bella before he left.
Kailey threw a hand over her mouth, shocked. "Oh my goodness, your eye."
Bella and Kailey sat on the edge of my bed while Ricky leaned against the wall.
"You haven't been answering our calls or texts at all,” Ricky said. “What happened?"
I smiled at the concern my friends had for me. It was a sad smile, but still a smile. "Sorry, my phone is broken."
"What happened?" Ricky repeated, his tone more insistent this time.
His persistence for my answer was well intentioned, but a bit annoying. My eyes focused on my hands as I fidgeted with my fingers while all three of my friends awaited my answer.
"Was it Cortez?" Bella’s eyes narrowed as she asked. "Because we all saw him run after you when you left the gym. Did he catch up to you and do something?"
Javier went searching for me?
I shook my head after I comprehended what Bella had said. "No, I never saw him."
Kailey turned to Bella. "Javier isn't the type to hurt anyone. He may not be the nicest to Eli, but he wouldn't hit him."
"How do you know what type of person Javier is?” Ricky asked his girlfriend, his tone oddly dull with a hint of annoyance.
Considering he gave me a place to stay even with how much of a jerk I constantly was to him, I would say that he was a decent person.
Both Bella and I noticed the odd atmosphere between the couple, but we chose to ignore it. Before Kailey could reply and create an argument, I spoke up. "I just said it wasn't Javier, so drop it.”
The three of them shared a look with each other but stayed silent.
“Look, it was sweet of you guys to come, but I'm grounded. If my aunt catches you, you won't see me again because she'll make me sleep on the cold basement floor," I deadpanned. We didn’t even have a basement.
My friends reluctantly nodded, knowing that them being around would only make things worse for me. Bella sucked in a shaky breath. “But you’ll tell us everything soon, right?”
“Of course.”
Tell them about the night I spent with the guy who I had sworn since freshman year that I hated? Pass.
***
It was an ungodly hour of the morning, a few minutes before class started. I stood and watched as my best friend rummaged through his locker.
"I don't think I'll be able to go," I mumbled.
Ricky threw out an old banana peel and it hit me in the face before falling on the floor. "Sorry. Go where?"
I picked up the peel and dropped it on his head, to which he quickly knocked it off and rolled his eyes at me. He then tossed it back into his filthy locker.
"On the student council trip," I said.
He shut his locker door and looked at me, his face forming into a frown. "What? No, Eli, you have to go."
"You know that I want to, but—"
That was when I heard the sound of something hitting the locker behind me. I jumped and swiftly spun around to see what happened. Much to my dismay, it was Javier leaning against said locker. He had that same stupid smirk on my face that he always wore, and it instantly pissed me off.
“I need a favor,” said my academic rival.
I ignored Javier and turned back to my friend who was stifling a smile, the reason unbeknownst to me. I hoped he would take the hint and walk away, but I knew my wish was not granted when I felt him poke me in the shoulder. With a huge sigh, I swatted his hand away and looked at him with a scowl.
“Why are you touching me?” I gritted through my teeth, my tone low.
He ignored my question and then repeated himself. “I need a favor.”
I glanced at Ricky, thinking that maybe he too was just as annoyed as I was, but he simply shrugged. Stopping myself from rolling my eyes, I gave Javier a sarcastic smile. “I would love to do a favor for my favorite person ever!”
“I know!” Javier exclaimed, his enthusiasm obviously fake and only matching my energy. He cleared his throat. “So, my sister wants to try out for the cheer team next year. She’s never cheered before and our team is competitive, so she needs someone to help her out.”
Ricky busted out into laughter. “And you want Eli to help her? He is the absolute last person you want to teach anyone anything athletic. Do you not remember that time during our freshman year that he passed out after running one lap around the track?”
“That was one time, and I was dehydrated,” I defended myself. I glared at my blabber-mouth best friend for a moment before turning my attention to Javier once again. “He is right, though. What do I know about cheerleading?”
“I’m not asking you to help her yourself, I could teach my sister better than you could,” Javier said cockily.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay then why the hell are we having this conversation?”
“Your sister is on the team, yeah?”
“Yeah, and?” As soon as I said that it clicked. “No. No, Emerson is not going to teach your sister.”
Javier frowned. “Why not?”
“There's, like, twenty other girls on the cheer team, can’t you ask someone else?”
“Gabriela has a liking for your sister for some reason. She’s afraid to ask Emerson herself, but she knows that I know you. She asked me to ask you since we all know that you can’t say no to me.”
Emerson was not the mentor type. She was good at what she did, but she was not good at teaching it to others. Even if she was, I did not want to ask her for any favors. Javier would have a better chance of asking Emerson himself than having me ask her.
“Emerson is going to say no so there's no point in me asking,” I said with a shrug. As I said that, the bell rang, and I felt a wave of relief. I took a step forward, but stopped to say, “By the way, I have no problem saying no to you.”
“Can you quit being so stubborn and ask your sister?” Javier asked, his grip tight on my wrist. “Please?”
I stared at his hand around my wrist, tight and unrelenting. It took a moment, but once he noticed that his hand was still wrapped around my wrist, he let go. I straightened out my shirt awkwardly. “I’ll think about it.”
Javier’s lips curled into a soft smile, a silent thanks before he left to go to his own class. Ricky and I went to ours, and he did not acknowledge Javier’s odd request. He kept giving me weird looks, but I paid them no mind.
The rest of the day went by in a blur. The most entertaining thing that happened was when one of my classmates disrupted class because he thought arguing with the teacher was a smart choice.
They spent a solid five minutes arguing before the teacher got fed up and sent him out of the room.
Even then, he continued arguing until she threatened to call someone to take him out of the classroom, since he would not willingly go.
Now I was in biology class, and we had just finished taking a test. The tests that we took in that class were on the computer, so the moment we clicked the ‘ done ’ button we received our scores.
I sometimes hated it because if I knew that I did not do as well as I hoped, I did not want to see my score immediately.
However, when I knew I aced it, I was happy to see that grade right as I was finished.
I clicked the button and 94.72% popped up on the screen. That wasn’t a bad score, it was an A . It could have been higher, but I was satisfied. I just wanted it to be better than his .
The classroom was silent while everyone was testing.
If our teacher thought for a second that a student was cheating, that kid would instantly get an after-school detention.
However, once everyone was done taking their test we were allowed to talk freely.
The last person, who annoyingly took almost the entire class period, finally completed their test.
The class erupted into chatter. I was checking my grades in all my other classes, it was something I did during class when I had no one to talk to.
I was wondering why my history teacher gave me two points less than I deserved on our last quiz when the empty seat next to me suddenly became occupied.
Javier propped up his elbow on the desk, rested his chin in his hand, and faced me with a smirk on his face. “What did you make?”
“What’d you make?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of the school laptop in front of me.
He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and wiggled a finger. “You can’t do that, I asked first.”
“I asked second.”
I was startled when the laptop was shut right in front of me. I sighed in frustration and then fully faced Javier. “So mature. I got 100% correct, I aced it.”
The smugness on his face faltered. “You did not.”
My face betrayed me, my mouth opening into a wide-toothed smile. His reaction was funnier than I thought it was going to be. “What did you get on the test?”
He bit his bottom lip and quietly said, “93.”
Hearing that made my smile grow larger. I laughed pridefully and he raised an eyebrow at me. “I got a 94, that’s higher than you!”
It wasn’t like I had never gotten a higher grade on a test than Javier.
I had a few times, so that wasn’t the reason I was so happy.
I was excited because it was my first real win since that terrible day of class election.
It was something positive after the humiliation I faced not too long ago.
Javier, much to my surprise, was smiling as well. I couldn’t figure out why that was.
“Why are you happy?” I asked him, still feeling the joy radiating through me. “I’m the one with the bragging rights.”
Javier hesitated before speaking. “It’s cute.”
My cheeky smile morphed into a confused grin. “What’s cute?”
“You right now,” he said, his voice so soft that I almost didn’t catch it.
I blushed at his words, even though I couldn’t believe what he said and was convinced that I had misheard him.
My rival sat up straight and laughed breathlessly. “It’s cute that you think this’ll ever happen again. You getting a higher grade than me, I mean.”
The butterflies in my stomach were brutally murdered.
My smile completely went away, and my shoulders slumped. Not knowing how else to respond, I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”