Chapter One. #2
She’s popular, a nationally ranked soccer player with abs of gold and calves for days, her dark brown skin seems to glisten any time she sweats, and her curly hair always looks perfect. If only her personality was as beautiful as her looks.
She and her friends have always been secretly cruel, bullying people quietly enough to keep it hidden from the adults, but public enough that everyone knows not to mess with them.
I’ve personally only talked to her on a few occasions and none of them were pleasant.
I’m not bitter about it, but I also wouldn’t have minded if she fell down a storm drain and never resurfaced.
Anyways, when they’re together, I'm blocked, and he’s forbidden to speak to me.
In the beginning of their relationship, it didn’t matter.
He would always find a way around it to see me in private for a quick chat to reassure me we were okay.
After a month, the chats fizzled but he would still sneak away and give me a high five in between classes or stop by the computer lab to say hi when he could.
That stopped abruptly once Tree found out.
Currently, they’re broken up again, but I figure they’ll be back together before graduation. So, I’m just enjoying the time we have together in the meantime. Even though the thought of losing him again twists my stomach in knots.
“Hurry!” Ben yells, patting the seat next to him, pulling me out of my daze.
“Good thing I got here when I did. I see it was a close call,” I chuckle, trailing my gaze across the barren area of the classroom.
“You didn’t see it, Char! She was circling me like a shark. It was only a matter of time.”
As soon as I sit, he pats me on the back, hard, knocking me forward in my seat before turning around to his computer. I smack him on the back of the head lightly in retaliation.
Yeah, I don’t think if you had a crush on someone, you’d pat their back. He definitely doesn’t see me that way…
Mrs. Coxe rushes into class with her lab coat hanging halfway off her arms, revealing a shiny blue pant suit and purple high heels, and tosses it on the chair.
When she doesn’t have her lab coat on, she’s always dressed to the nines, sporting high heels and a colorful business suit.
I admire her style, but I don’t know if I could ever pull something like that off.
My style can only be described as “tomboy”, rotating between jeans and a t-shirt or sweatshirt year-round.
I can’t even remember the last time I wore a dress.
Mrs. Coxe drops her phone in her hurry, accidentally yeeting half the papers off her desk when attempting to catch it from falling to the floor.
The chaotic woman is always running late.
In her defense, she’s spread pretty thin due to how many subjects she teaches here.
Computer class, chemistry, and calculus.
Not to mention helping run the research laboratory at Wyvern.
“Hello, hello, hello, class. How is everyone this morning? Sorry I was a little late. You know how it goes. Please take out your textbooks and run through the exercises in Chapters 10-15. If you have any questions, let me know!” she says, rounding up the last of the papers from the floor and sitting at her desk to organize the mess she made.
Since we’re seniors, and this is a fluff course we all took to earn an easy credit, we usually work through the exercises independently while she works on items for other classes.
Typically, I finish them within forty-five minutes, leaving me another thirty to do whatever I want.
Lately, I use my extra time to peruse forensic articles, scour college sites or check on my outstanding college applications.
Benjamin, on the other hand, always chooses to distract and mess with me the whole time.
Much less productive, but that’s okay. It’s helped pull me from the loud thoughts parading through my brain telling me I’m a failure and not getting into college anywhere.
He buries his nose in the textbook and his black hair settles on his face, barely covering his brown eyes.
He has the same haircut most of the popular guys have around here—a skin taper fade.
It’s shaved from the neck up to mid-way on the sides, with long hair on the top that he either gels back or leaves relaxed where it can be played with.
It’s a popular haircut choice because the guys think it makes them appear “sexy” when they play with their own hair. Plus, the girls in this school seem to love it, which doesn’t help the facade. All it does for me is trigger eye rolls.
I catch Ben watching me from his peripherals.
He reaches his left hand out, the silver rings on it shining in the fluorescent lighting, and gently nudges my head toward my own textbook.
He always wears a silver ring on his index finger with a cross cut out of it, and two plain silver rings on his middle finger and pinky that are linked by a chain.
A tingling warmth returns to my cheeks and my stomach leaps into my chest at his hand in my hair.
I’m going to miss that once he’s away at college.
The corners of my lips fight turning up as I wander over the page, not absorbing any real information as I attempt to focus on anything other than his touch.