SEVENTEEN | ON HOLD

18

"Dude was talkin mad shit on his live last night. You ain't see?" Jay got out his phone.

"Live?! That nigga got viewers?" I asked, looking at everyone.

"He has like 50k followers and fifteen percent is the school," Amani says.

"Aight, cool," I say, ready to drop the conversation. "So what y'all finna do for spring break?"

"No bullshit, I'm thinkin about flying to Atlanta wit my family," Jay tells us.

"Ace," I felt Davanee pull on my jacket.

I looked at her. "What?"

"Did you process what they just told us? The whole school knows now..." she says to me in a quiet yet frustrated tone.

"So? It's not like we can do anything to change it now," I tell her, shrugging.

"He got a point, Nee," Nina comments.

Nee simply smacked her lips and cussed under her breath.

"Aye Nina, you tryna help me wit sumn after school?" Jay asked.

"Yeah, what?"

"Do it matter?"

I tuned they ugly asses out and gave my attention to Davanee who looked to be deep in thought.

"You ok?" I ask her.

"People are gonna look at me weird now," she says.

"Nah, people finna be lookin at us weird now," I corrected. "It don't even matter, the news finna blow over in about a week."

She lets out a sigh before I seen her face start to morph into the face she made before she cried. Before the first tear could make it past her cheek, I buried her head into my chest.

"Aye," I said softly so she could hear. "There's mad people here ... you want them to see that chu a crybaby?"

I hear her sniffle. "I'm not even showing yet."

"Stop cryin," I rubbed her back.

"Hey, Ace," I shifted my head up to see Jennifer.

Why she here right now?

"Wassup," I say.

Davanee pulled away from me, putting her head down on the table.

"Can we go somewhere to talk?" Jennifer asked me.

"Oop-" i heard Armani comment.

"Uh...talk wit him about what, sis?" Nina butted in with a weird look on her face.

"Umm, I-"

"Nina, stay outta people business," Jay told her.

"Aight, let's go and talk," I got up, looking at Davanee who still had her head laid on the table. I followed her to an empty lunch table.

"What chu wanna talk about?" I asked her.

"Comme vous pouvez l'entendre, mon français s'est un peu amélioré," she chuckled at the end of her sentence.
[As you can hear, my French has improved a bit]

"Low key," I said dryly.

"...really? I thought it sounded weird," she laughed showing all teeth.

"Yeah."

She smile disappeared. "...uh...Ace, is it true?"

"Is what true?" I played dumb.

"I heard a bunch of people talking about it outside at the outdoor cafeteria and they were pretty loud about it."