Standing for Weirdo

Chapter 3

Physics should be outlawed, along with medieval torture and kid mistreatment.

I mean, I get that we need engineers and people to man NASA and whatever, but, the rest of us? Why did we have to suffer through those long, long hours of droning lectures, square roots and derivatives?

I closed my blank notebook and surreptitiously stretched one shoulder. I hadn't suffered much, just a two-hour long nap that I needed like breathing air, but still. The complaint was a matter of principles.

Picking up my things, I headed to the lockers to get a change of books and ran straight into Stella. She stood waiting right outside my class, looking winded after having raced from her own end of the building to intercept me. She glowed with triumph when she saw me and I stifled a groan.

"So," she started, not willing to let me get through, "why did you turn him down?"

"I didn't!"

"You did! That's why you ended up going home on foot!"

I blinked. I hadn't seen it like that. I had turned down the ride, but him?

"I needed to clear my head, and I didn't want to get into a car." The excuse sounded feeble, even to my own ears.

"If you needed a clear mind, you should have wiped yours blank while making out with him."

I hadn't even thought about a chaste kiss when I had left Alex the previous night, much less about making out with him. In retrospect, I had been pretty stupid. A picture of Alex could be pinned under Merriam-Webster's definition of handsome.

Only problem, he was my smoking-hot friend. Period.

Stella saw my lost-puppy look. With a sigh, she grabbed my elbow and steered us to our lockers. I dropped my stuff and then we moved arm in arm toward Lit class.

"You don't have to like him just because everyone else does," she said, breaking the silence. "I just thought you did and kind of left you two alone..."

"Hey, you did what any best friend should. I do like him, too." I needed to hear that aloud. Maybe then my thick brain would remember it when the next opportunity arose. Maybe then if I said it often enough, loud enough, I'd manage to think of him that way.

She glanced at me sideways and a small, knowing smile quirked up a corner of her lips. She didn't buy my claim any more than I did.

"If you did, you'd have jumped his bones when you got the chance. But never mind," she added when we arrived and a couple of other girls paid a bit too much attention to us. "Let's go face our doom now and leave all the dirty gossip for later. The light at the end of the tunnel!"

I had to laugh at her sudden melodrama. She was such a drama queen. But the thing was, she always knew what to say and I sank down in the chair by her side.

"It's not doom; it's just Hawthorne."

"Same difference." She waved her hand airily and I tried to hold back my chuckles when Mr. Hedford started his lecture.

I wanted to pay attention, but Stella shoved a pink notebook under my nose after giving my elbow a sharp nudge. I thought we were too old to pass notes around, but that never stopped me from replying to whatever messages I got.

There's going to be a party this weekend at Ashley's. You are coming, right? it read in bright pink ink.

The word are was underlined twice, and Stella had nearly pierced through the page in her insistence.

I wrote back, yes, and then bit my lip and scratched it out.

Can't, I scribbled and passed the notebook back across to her.