High Life | ✔️

35

EVERYONE IN SCHOOL knew something that I didn't.

I'd missed two days of classes, and I'd returned to students staring and whispering in my wake. Always in my wake, never in places I can see. They knew something I didn't know, be it menstrual blood on my skirt, spider on my head, or something much more sinister. I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to hear what they knew. 

But the Lord giveth Jaxon's honest mouth after the Lord taketh my financial troubles away. 

When Jaxon spotted me, he slid between the timber doors of classroom 513, and, well, myself. Brown eyes narrowed, as if trying to peer into my fucked up mind, my private sanctuary.

"Is it true?" He asked.

We were too close, too much PDA for two friends. People were staring, they had to be. We were in an open corridor with students rushing to respective classes. I withheld speech in hopes that he would elaborate, Jaxon wore an expectant expression in hopes that I would corroborate. 

I don't know how long we stood like that, but when an unnamed student squeezed past us to enter the classroom, I took it as my cue to respond.

"I don't actually know what's happening." 

Jaxon's expression was unwavering. "The rumors about you being the richest kid in school."

"Me? The richest kid? Certifiably fake." I said as I slid into the Calculus classroom, acting normal despite the increase in heart pace. I wasn't sure why my body was doing this to me. This situation wasn't calling for fight, nor flight. 

Jaxon trailed me. "What about the bribery one?"

"The what?" I paused dramatically in my tracks. Too dramatically, I belatedly realized. I forced my legs to keep moving, to the beat of Albert Einstein's words, 'Life is like a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving'.

But Jaxon, the new student body president, had long legs and an even more persistent thirst for answers. "Explain."

"There's nothing to explain. Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, accepted by idiots."

"Ziad Abdelnour?"

"Ziad who the hell?"

"The person you just quoted," Jaxon said impatiently. "Never mind that, just promise me you'll tell me the full story later."

"There is no full story, Jaxon Ortega." I said nonchalantly as I flipped my Calculus textbook open. 

He hummed. "At least tell me how the rumors started."

"For someone so smart, you sure love rumors," I said under my breath. 

Jaxon frowned. "There are two logical fallacies in your statement. First you tried to ad hominem me by attacking my thirst for knowledge. Then you non causa pro causa'd me by assuming a causal relationship between the two things you said."

Too bad Ms. Elliot entered the classroom, I would've responded with something snarky. We both knew I would.

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The whispers wouldn't die down. I had half a mind to start something controversial and fake, just to displace the current one circulating. Perhaps a fake pregnancy, or better still, a student-teacher relationship. 

Because whether or not the bitchy sparrows of Richmond Park Academy realized, I would get expelled if the rumors become known to the higher authorities.