She looks up, but doesn’t smile. “Hey.”
“I’m glad we have class together! How exciting?”
“Yeah…I guess,” she replies, looking back down at her phone.
I furrow my brows in confusion. “Is everything okay?”
She looks back up at me; her expression is pretty flat, and then she takes a deep, annoyed breath. “Yeah, just not in the mood this morning.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
She rolls her eyes. “Not everything is about you. The world doesn’t revolve around Lydia.”
Her tone takes me aback. It’s not just rude, but a little mean.
“Okay? Well, if there’s something wrong…you know you can always talk to me, right?”
“Sure.”
I don’t know what else to say, so I take my bag and walk over to another desk across the room, confused and kind of hurt now.
The first three periods go by pretty quickly, especially when I just keep my head down, focus on my work, and don’t talk to anyone. I’m happy when the bell rings, and it’s finally lunch period, so I can see Eli again.
We both grab our food and go sit down at a table together with a bunch of the other football players. He pulls me close to him as we settle in, and I can feel the eyes on me. This is the part I hate…being under a microscope by the popular kids.
A bunch of the guys also have their girlfriends sitting with them and they’re all talking and laughing together. I try to jump into some of their conversations casually, but after getting completely ignored and stared at like the outcast, I just give up. Eli doesn’t notice at first, busy talking to John, but when I whisper to him, telling him how uncomfortable I am, he takes me in his arms, tucks his head into my neck, and whispers, “Don’t pay attention to them. They just don’t know how to be as cool as you and are jealous.”
I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s it.”
He gives me his attention for the rest of lunch, and I appreciate the way he always tries to reassure me. I tell him about how weird Katie was this morning, and he just tells me that’s why he doesn’t like girls like her, that they don’t actually care about me. I brush him off, telling him there’s probably something going on I just don’t know about. I don’t want her to be mad at me or anything, and he tells me I shouldn’t care so much ifsheobviously doesn’t. I let it go because he doesn’t like her anyway; of course, he’d rather I just not care, but she’s my friend, I do care.
The rest of the day goes by just as fast as it started, and I’m thankful to not have anything else bad happen before the day is over. After the last bell rings, I head out to the field and sit down in the bleachers, pulling out some of my homework and my phone. I see the guys come out, and Eli instantly finds me, waving and winking at me, making me blush. I try to focus on getting some work done, but I keep looking up, watching Eli practice, and smiling back at him when he smiles at me.
This time, when I look up, I happen to see him standing there with his helmet in his hand, glaring over at the bottom of the stands. From this far away, I can’t completely read his face, but he looks mad…or annoyed? I’m not sure. I follow his gaze and see Katie, Harper, and John standing together at the bottom of the bleachers. I don’t even think about it when I put my books down and quickly walk down to them. I haven’t seen Harper yet today, and I’ve already forgotten about Katie’s bad mood this morning, so I go to greet them. Harper gives me an excited hug when she sees me, and then we all just fall into normal conversation. Harper tells me about a back-to-school party some kid is having at their house, and that we should all go. I tell her that might actually be fun. I haven’t gone to a single party all summer, so I’ll text Simone and tell her and Tyler to come, too. John says that hewas already planning on going, and he’ll get Eli to go too. Then he tells us he should probably get to practice; he’s already running late, and will have to do a couple of laps because of it. We laugh and tell him to go. He gives all three of us a side hug and tells us he’ll see us at the party tomorrow night if he doesn’t see us again before then. Once he’s gone, I start talking to the girls. Katie seems to be in a better mood, so I don’t bring back up this morning, but not long after, they both say they’re heading home and tell me bye.
I head back up to my spot on the bleachers and pull out my phone to call Simone like I promised to, telling her about my day, and now to tell her about this party tomorrow.
“Good morning!” she answers.
“It’s 4 PM, Simone.”
“Details! Tell me about your day!”
I shake my head. “It was…okay. I mean, normal, I guess. Lunch was fun. I got purposefully ignored by all the girls sitting at the table with us.”
“Ew, sad, mean girls,”she says, rolling her eyes.
“Oh, and Katie was super weird this morning in first period.”
“Weird how?”she asks.
“I was excited to see her in my class, and when I walked over and talked to her, she kinda just blew me off and was mean, but when Ijusttalked to her, she seemed back to normal, so I don’t know what was wrong.”
“Hmm,” she says, pondering. “Maybe I’ll text her and check in, see if there’s something going on.”
“Yeah, that would be good, maybe she’ll tell you, cause she didn’t seem to want to tell me. Oh! There’s a party tomorrow night, a back-to-school party. You know, just an excuse for kids to get together and drink, but I actually wouldn’t mind going if you wanted to.”
“One hundred percent,I want to go! We haven’t been to a party in months.”
