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"That was a joke," I said.
"Right." She nodded. "So which of these poems has an iambic pentameter?"
I squinted down the paper. I couldn't even remember what that meant right now. "Is it time for a break?"
She frowned at me. "We've only been going for half an hour." She hadn’t ever been annoyed with me, but she was now.
Evidently, me being a jerk to her the other day really pissed her off. Fair enough, that was the point, to put her at arm’s length.
I just didn't realise how hard it would be to have her act so cold towards me.
It was my fault. I made my bed, I'd sleep in it. Alone.
It was for the best. She was way too good for a guy like me. Smart, cute, sexy, pretty, ambitious. If there was such a thing as a perfect woman, it would be Rebecca Anderson.
I realised she was looking at me expectantly.
"Sorry. What?" I tried to smile, but it probably looked like a grimace.
She sighed with frustration out her nose. "Iambic pentameter," she said again. I suspected she said it several times, but I wasn’t listening.
I closed my eyes and thought back to class. "That's the one where every second syllable is stressed, right?"
I opened one eye to see her nod. I scanned the page in front of me, muttering the words as I went.
"C," I said firmly.
"Are you sure?" She asked.
"Well, I was." I frowned at the page. I went over each line in my mind, then nodded. "Yes, it's C." I arched an eyebrow at her in question.
"If this was a real test, I'd make you wait for a few weeks before you get your answer," she said.
"This isn't a real test, and you're not evil," I said lightly.
"Are you sure about that?" she asked. "I might be a super villain and you just haven't noticed."
"I know you're not a super villain," I said. "For one thing you don't go muhahahahah and rub your hands together. For another, a villain wouldn't help me with my English test. You would…" I thought for a moment. "You'd teach me everythingwrong, and make sure I failed. And I know you haven't done that. In addition, you're the least evil person I know."
My flattery was rewarded with a faint smile.
"Thank you. I try not to be evil too often," she said.
I smiled and wished she'd do the same. I had absolutely no right to wish for something like that. In fact, I should be glad she was still talking to me at all.
However, her standoffish attitude wasn't all bad. It helped to reinforce the fact that I shouldn't be with her, or with anyone. What was the point of getting attached to anyone, when all they did was leave? Any day now, my mother would leave. My friends would leave for university, or jobs. Bec would leave. We would all be scattered like ashes.
Love meant getting hurt. Even if Bec and I started anything romantic, she'd soon see we're not suited to each other. Just because we had a whole bunch of things in common, and I badly want to fuck her, didn't mean she wasn't so far out of my league, we weren't even on the same planet.
I fought the exhaustion and managed to ask, "How often is a reasonable amount of times to be evil? Say—weekly? Or monthly if you prefer?"
She rolled her eyes at me. "I thinkneveris probably an appropriate amount of times. Did you enjoy learning about Hitler a little bit too much?"
"Who?" I had forgotten I lied to her about that. "Oh. Yeah, he was probably a bit too excessively evil."
"Only a little bit?" she asked.
I raised a finger in the air. "You're right. He was alottoo excessively evil. Do you think he liked poetry?"
