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“Tom,” I replied.
“I switched my schedule to eat lunch with you. You can at least give me this.”
With a dramatic sigh, I agreed. “Fine. Neither of us has had a first kiss. I’m sure it won’t be much of a challenge for you to get a girlfriend this year,” I grumbled as girls kept walking past and whispering about Aiden. It didn’t shock me that he was so unaware of the attention these girls were giving him. Aiden had never had much attention from the opposite sex up until now, so he probably assumed they were talking about someone else.
My sweet, naïve, idiot of a best friend.
Soon enough, girls would be lining up to kiss him.
“We also have to pick out our Halloween costume,” I said. “Last year was sad because we couldn’t do themed costumes together. And since this is our last year, we must go all out. I was thinking a badass duo or—”
“Hey there, Hailee. I haven’t seen you all day!” a voice said, cutting into the conversation. I looked up to see Carlton walking our way, and the happiness on Aiden’s face evaporated and shifted to confusion as Carlton walked up to our lunch table.
Carlton wore his thick-framed lime-green glasses, vibrant orange Adidas jumpsuit, and red Converse. He was also rocking a cheap gold chain that he probably got from a Run DMC costume. For lack of a better word, he was weird. Not that weird was a bad thing. I was weird, too, in my own ways.
He was the oddball who did extremely embarrassing things in front of people just for attention. He had a strange desire to be liked by the popular kids, but he was so out there that any popular person was simply using him to get a laugh. They didn’t respect him at all. He dressed ridiculously every day and would tell terrible jokes as if he was a sixty-year-old dad. People would laugh, but he never realized they were laughing at him, not with him.
Surprisingly, when Aiden was away, Carlton made me laugh at his stupid jokes. If it wasn’t for him and his weirdness, last year would’ve been that much lonelier for me. Unlike others, I laughed with Carlton, not at him.
I sat straight. “Carlton. Hey. I thought you had a different lunch period?” I said, feeling the tension in the space, or maybe it was just my anxiety-ridden mind. Wait, no. Aiden was shooting daggers toward Carlton.
“I did, but I wanted to switch lunch periods to be able to eat with you.” He looked toward Aiden. “Even though it seems you already have a lunch buddy.”
“Oh no. There’s room for all of us,” I said, patting the spot to my left. “Right, Aiden?”
Aiden didn’t say a word. His brows were arched in a perplexed way.
I kicked him under the table, and he snapped out of it, clearing his throat. “Yeah, totally. Sit,” he muttered, still a bit baffled.
Carlton didn’t even pick up on Aiden’s confusion. He sat and began talking nonstop about whatever came to mind. After his random ramblings that didn’t really connect, he looked over at the notebook.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Aiden shut our bucket list and shoved it into his backpack. “Nothing.”
“We were trying to decide on our Halloween costumes for this year,” I said to Carlton.
“Oh! Sweet! We should totally do a triplet costume or something.”
Aiden shook his head. “It’s a Hailee and me thing.”
“It was a Hailee and me thing last year. I was Superman, and she was Wonder Woman.”
Aiden shot me a stunned look before he leaned over to whisper to me. “You dressed up with him last year? Why didn’t you tell me you dressed up with him last year? Since when are you and Carlton friendly-friendly?”
“It just so happened we showed up that way. We didn’t plan it. And we’re friendly-friendly since last year when my best friend left me alone with the wolves,” I whispered back. “Play nice.”
“Your wish is my command,” Aiden stated, still baffled but going along with it.
Before the conversation could expand, Cara, the homecoming queen for three years running, came bouncing over to our table. She’d been Aiden’s ultimate crush for the past seven years. She slid onto the bench right beside Aiden and flipped her hair over her shoulders. Then she batted her long eyelashes at my best friend.
“Hi, Aiden,” she sang as if her interaction with him was the most normal thing in the world. It should be noted that Cara, Aiden, and I have been in the same classes since kindergarten, and Cara Simmons had never made it a point to converse with either of us. She was always too good to talk to people outside her friend group—at least that was how it read to me.
Aiden must’ve felt the same oddity from the situation because his eyebrow cocked up high, and his voice stayed low. “Uh, hi?” he said in a questioning tone. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. It’s so good to be back in school, isn’t it? Speaking of school, we missed you last year,” she said.
I’m sorry, we?
