Huntington Avenue | ✓ [PV REWRITE]

Part I: Chapter 13

August deadpanned out of nowhere at the same time as Mason, "It's not a virus."

"Okay, okay, good grief," Harper defended himself teasingly.

"I guess I'll just keep trying to figure out how all of my work continues to disappear," Zach stated almost amusedly. "But for now, I need to make sure I'm not late to my seventh block class."

Harper's brown eyes widened in the realization of which he sadly had more work to do. "Oh, crap, there's another block," he groaned in disgust.

"I thought you liked PE, though," Mason countered in a quizzical fashion.

The blond shrugged. "I like playing volleyball, but not PE itself. They need to play more volleyball in that class instead of the other boring sports. Of course, not all are boring, but still."

Zach was intrigued by Harper's choice in sports. "You play volleyball?"

"Yeah, actually," Harper replied with a wide smile. "The three of us go down to the beach sometimes on the weekends to play together. Well—August is usually just the spectator with his nose in that notebook of his, but it's still fun."

Zach was halfway expecting August to say something, but he remained quiet instead. Rather than letting the silence swallow him up, he chose to break it. "That sounds like fun!" Zach beamed to match Harper's positive attitude. "Do you think maybe sometime I could come with?"

"Yeah, of course!" Harper confirmed. He checked the time on his phone and his voice instantly became rushed. "Ah, crap-! Class starts in one minute, we've gotta run."

"Oops-" Mason dragged out the word.

After bidding each other a quick farewell, the four of them scattered into multiple directions—Zach towards the opposite direction he was facing, Harper towards the gymnasium, and Mason racing off with August on his heels. It was clear that none of them would be receiving a detention for tardiness any time soon.

The past ten days had been quite a bit of confusion for Zach. He had no clue what was going on in regards to his notes and studies. Each school day, Zach had asked Kelsey to check if any of his notes were saved from the previous day and each time, his document was blank. He tried everything—making a new document, checking his version history, and anything else he was able to think of, but it was to no avail.

Little did he know, Lyla was the mastermind behind the notes situation. After each school day, she logged into Zach's Google account on her own laptop, copied the notes into a Word document, and deleted them off of his document. Lyla was waiting for the right time to blame Kelsey for his dilemma, but after a lot of consideration, maybe her plans should have been changed. She knew how much trust Zach was putting in Kelsey, and she was a kind soul of which he could count on.

Lyla was well aware of how much in depth her plan to drive the two of them apart was and there was no room for failure if she chose a different way to execute it. So far, her plan had backfired, bringing the two together to study more often than not. Lyla needed a change of plans if her idea was going to work.

The last block of the school day passed by in almost a blur. It was the end of the day for all students at Oceanview High, and most to all of them were itching to get out of the building known as school and go home to do whatever they pleased. Zach was one of the majority. Currently, his top priority was going home and simply resting so he would not explode from the stress upon his shoulders.

Zach certainly was not expecting the small tap on his shoulder as he was walking towards the double doors to freedom. He whirled around to come face to face with Kelsey, who was following behind him in quickened footsteps.