Lotus & Lilac

Chapter One

She couldn't help but feel like someone was watching her as she wrote down her notes from the PowerPoint her socio-economics professor was using to teach his lesson. After finishing the sentence she was writing, Cameron looked up to see none other than Jamy Morgan glancing her way. He was not looking at her but at her paper. What in the world is he doing she thought before moving her notebook to the other side of her desk where Jamy would have a harder time seeing it.

"Is there something I can help you with?" She raised her eyebrow at the blond haired boy seated at the desk next to hers. His eyes left the paper they were previously observing and met hers. Deep sea blue meeting warm chocolate brown. A lazy smirk tugged up one corner of his mouth in a way that made Cameron want to reach out and hit him with her pencil.

"You made a mistake on your paper. It was bothering me." Jamy shrugged easily, as if this was a normal thing to point out, before his gaze traveled up to the front of the classroom. Cameron's attention was momentarily diverted from Jamy as she scoured her paper looking for any mistakes she may have made. Years of having her mother erase her writing if it was not neat enough on her homework gave Cameronan acute awareness of her mistakes. There were absolutely none. Every word was printed in almost typewriter-like handwriting and lined up precisely against the paper's margins. Cameron was even sure that all of her dashes and arrows used to indent the notes were exactly the same size.

"What are you talking about? There's not a single mistake on this page." She stated in a matter-of-fact way while gesturing to her work. Jamy let out a small chuckle under his breath and the smirk he had been wearing became more pronounced. He continued staring at Professor Graves, who was still going through his PowerPoint at the front of the room. Frustrated, Cameron looked over her paper again to make sure she hadn't missed what was making Jamy so cocky. Again she found nothing wrong. "Will you just tell me?" came out as a whispered hiss. Cameron wanted to kick Jamy's knee under his desk but resisted. She was not a violent person. If asked to describe her, Cameron's friends used words like "soft" and "kind" and "non-confrontational". So what was it about the boy in the desk next to her that made her feel selectively homicidal? He rolled his eyes but the smirk he was wearing never left his face. That tiny quirk of his lips was going to drive Cameron crazy.

"You spelled your last name wrong." Jamy nonchalantly pointed out without even taking his eyes away from the professor. Cameron's eyes went wide as she looked toward the top left corner of her paper where she wrote her name and the date every single time she took notes. It was a bad habit from years of having to hand in her notes to her advanced placement teachers in high school. Written clearly in perfect print was S-P-E-L-L and Cam's eyes squinted at it trying to see why Jamy thought it was written incorrectly. It was absolutely correct.

"What kind of drugs are you on, dude?" She inquired after letting out an annoyed sigh. It was not like her to let a comment like that out of her mouth. In fact, engaging in a situation like this at all was not something she ever did. Frustration and slight desperation were building in her chest. She had wasted time on his stupid little comment and now she had missed two slides of information from the PowerPoint.

"I'm not on any drugs. Just say no and all that babe," Jamy moved his pen back and forth between his thumb and index finger making it tap on his own paper where she could see he had not missed the last two slides of notes, "You spelled your last name wrong." That's it Cameron thought venomously. She threw her pencil down on her notebook causing it to bounce up and off her desk. With a deep breath she leaned sideways in her desk to pick her writing utensil up from the ground. Then she faced Jamy with narrowed eyes.

"There is nothing wrong with how I wrote my last name!" She growled through clenched teeth. Jamy's eyes finally drifted from the front of the room to meet with hers once more. The amusement she saw twinkling in his eyes would have taken her breath away if it wasn't currently fueling the fire of hatred in her chest. Seeing that he had finally gotten the reaction out of her that he seemed to love getting, he reached across the small aisle between them and pointed his finger where her type-perfect last name sat.