“I will never want to go out with you, dance with you, or even kiss you.” I let her get out an exaggerated sigh and a huff of annoyance before I spoke again. “You done? Because I will tell you right now, what you have going on here, willnevermake any guy ever want to date you.”
“Screw you!” she screamed at me. We had caught the attention of a few more students who had made their way out of the classrooms to see what was going on. The two-minute warning bell went off, signaling the next period would start soon.
I decided to take my pride with me and turn away from Caden, walking away from the disaster she had created around us and prying eyes.
“What am I, not good enough for the governor’s son?”
I stopped in my tracks right outside my literature class and turned around to see the arrogance sitting on Caden’s face. I loved how right she thought she was, but she was all wrong.
“No, Caden. It’s not that you aren’t good enough for the governor’s son. It’s that you aren’t good enough for me.” There were a few whispers and ohs heard through the hall at the diss I threw at Caden. “There’s only one person who will ever be good enough for me.”
“Who?” she spat out and raised an eyebrow at me, like I couldn’t possibly be hiding some girl away in my heart, but she had no idea that that girl wasn’t hidden, but that she had my whole entire heart and the world was about to hear it.
“My peaches.”
-----
Erica
I looked up from the computer in the school library. It was my weekly indulgence when it came to reading, which I wasn’t much for, but once I found out that Chase had been writing poetry and stories, I had to read them.
When he had left years ago, I had no idea how to stay in touch or even if he would want to. I mean, I had been pretty rude to him and completely ignored him, but something inside of me wanted to check in on him every now and again. I found his MySpace profile one day last year, and while it was private, which, what else would I expect from the governor’s son, he had a link to a LiveJournal and I immediately got sucked into his words.
I was all about the numbers, especially with the focus on getting the mathlete team to nationals again this year, since they bombed it last year when I wasn’t able to make it. The stomach flu was no joke, but the joke had been on me because someone had accidentally forgotten a decimal and we lost by one point to a team from Texas.
But back to Chase’s writing.
It was something out of a romance novel and with each new piece he put out and I soaked in, I couldn’t help but think that these words could be for me. They poured out love and affection and memories of something distant but something also so present in his life. But I knew that couldn’t be true. We were sixteen now and to expect him to have stayed single all these years would be a joke. He was a hot guy who could have any girl he wanted. He wasn’t the nerdy girl who stayed in her corner and no guy ever spoke to, except for one.
I watched as that only guy walked through the doors of the library and headed straight toward me. Mark was on the mathletes team with me and happened to be a year older than me. He had the whole hot nerd with glasses thing going on that had every girl in school swooning. Well, except me. To me, Mark was a friend who was there to work out math problems with me. I had never tried to see him in a different light, because every time I looked at him, my mind always wandered back to Chase. I looked back down at the screen at the profile pic Chase had uploaded recently. He was in jeans, no shirt and his hair soaked, with a basketball under his arm. He was laughing at whomever was taking the photo and I wished he were laughing at me.
Yeah, no other guy could compare to Chase. That nine-year-old boy still held my heart in an iron fist that would probably never let go.
“Hey.” Mark sat down in the chair next to me, but didn’t boot up the computer in front of him. He clearly wasn’t here to actually use the library, but to see me. I sat up in my seat, feeling an unease in my stomach. Mark and I never really saw each other outside of mathletes and I typically stayed home most nights. Since Madison and I had a falling out last year, because she wanted to go to Eden’s sweet sixteen party and I didn’t, I hadn’t had many friends. I typically kept to myself and continued to work toward graduating.
I still held the option of graduating early, but thought better of it. I wanted to enjoy this as much as I possibly could, because in reality, who wanted to grow up that fast? Bills? A real job? No, thanks, not just yet.
“Hey, Mark.” I smiled at him, but didn’t turn in my seat as I closed out the multiple windows I had opened. I didn’t want anyone else to read what Chase had been writing, but even with trying not to get anyone at school to know about it, he definitely had followers. His poetry always had a lot of likes and comments on them about how great his words were.
I had thought a few times about leaving a comment, but in order to do so, you had to create an account. I just wasn’t that brave.
“You’re all up in the cloud today.” Mark chuckled at me and I looked over at him.
“Sorry.” I said the word softly and pulled up my bag from the ground. The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and that the next class would start in ten minutes.
“Can I walk you to class?” he asked, but refused to look me in the eye. I watched as his eyes darted around me. This wasn’t like him.
“Sure.” I shrugged my shoulder and got up from my chair, leading the way to my pre-calculus class. There were only a total of five of us in the class, as it was an elective, but one the school decided it could afford after I had gotten us to nationals. They wanted to invest what they could to make sure we were prepared to win this year. “What’s going on?”
I tried to start a conversation, not sure why he was walking me to class, since he never did.
“Nothing much, just thought we could talk.”
“About what?” I questioned, walking side by side down the long hallway, facing forward. There were other students around, but no one paid attention to me, just to Mark as a few people high fived him.
“I wanted to ask you something.” Mark stopped me between two doors, just a few down from my class, by grabbing my elbow. I quickly removed my arm from his grasp, not liking others touching me. It wasn’t something I was a fan of and had never had to worry about it, apparently not until now.
I stood there watching him, waiting for him to say something, but he kept staring at me, finally making eye contact with me.
