“Uh, hey.”
That sounds even worse.
Fucking loooooooooord.
The corners of her lips flicker like she’s trying to make me feel better, which just makes me feel fucking worse.
“Hey.” She says it like it’s a question. “Do I, um, know you?”
Holy fuck. I want to scream at her. I’ve sat at the back of your classroom for three years and you don’t even recognize me as one of your classmates.
I want to sink into the ground and stay there.
“Um, maybe. I don’t know,” I mutter in my fake deep voice. “Fiero Bellucci.”
And then I go and do something so fucking epically embarrassing. I hold out my hand for her to shake.
But before she takes it, something shifts in her expression, like she recognizes my name after all.
Misplaced smugness fills my chest. She knows who I am.
When she glances down at my extended palm and doesn’t touch it, I start to ramble.
“I just—” I swallow, forcing the words out as deep as I can, but they sound croaky—like I’m recovering from a particularly bad case of laryngitis. “I noticed you’ve been… quiet. Lately. I just wanted to check if you’re okay.”
There. I said it. Can I go home now?
Something flickers across her face. At first it looks like shock, like she’s been found out. Then it softens into gratitude, but that’s fleeting, because it’s quickly replaced by something I haven’t seen on her before. It’s venomous. Vindictive. Almost as though she’s been waiting for this moment a long time.
Her eyes narrow to slits. “Is something wrong with your voice?” she asks slowly.
Someone snorts behind me, turning my cheeks an even darker shade of crimson.
I cough into my hand, but I can’t revert to my normal voice now—that would be too humiliating. I’m literally the only boy in class whose voice hasn’t broken yet. I’m already a fucking laughingstock.
Every head in the room is turning—I can feel it.
“I—” My throat closes. “I just wanted to?—”
“God,” she laughs, shaking her head. “Why are you talking like that?”
The room goes deathly quiet except for a couple of spiteful chuckles.
“Like what?” someone calls out.
She leans back in her chair, her eyes still locked on mine.
“Like he’s putting on a voice.” She then mimics me—badly. It’s exaggerated and cruel. “‘Hey… are you okay?’”
Laughter explodes around us, hot and suffocating. My ears ring from the gleefulness of it.
“I’m not—” I try, but it comes out high again. And that just makes it funnier.
“Oh my God, he’s doing it again!” someone shouts.
“Say something else!” another voice joins in.
“Go on, ask her on a date—like she’d ever go withyou.”
