silence

ten

Athena

"My brothers need you to come over tonight for dinner. Apparently you guys need their 'approval' to keep being friends with me," I state with an aggressive eye roll.

"Yeah, I'm free, text me your address Aena," Archer calls out from his locker across the hall from mine, using my old nickname.

"Same here babe," adds Jasiel walking towards me and slinging his arm over my shoulder. I go to remove it but if my brothers are going to meet them tonight, they'll see this anyways, what's the point in hiding it now?

"I'm good to come too," Raeden looks up from his phone, "should I bring my guitar?"

Archer and Jasiel give him a look that says 'are you serious?' and he playfully backs up with his hands in front of him. January woke up with a really bad flu today and Florence texted me to say she wasn't coming because she had a test she wanted to skip.

The bell interrupts our chat and we head off to homeroom separately. My first two periods go quickly, biology with Raeden is calm, and same goes for my psychology class that I take alone. Dance is next up and I walk into the class with my gear on.

"Alright, shall we start?" Asks the dance teacher, "I'm going to begin by pairing up the girls with their partners for this semester. Get to know each other and introduce yourselves please."

I look around to see the boys standing on the opposite side of the classroom. There's an equal amount of girls and boys so each girl will be paired with a boy. The teacher begins tapping girls shoulders and stating names, the boys then walking over to them. She gets to me and eyes the boys on the other side of the room, stopping her previous rhythm to think. She looks at me calculatingly, making me anxious.

"Ahren."

I look at her questioningly before a boy comes walking in my direction. He had gorgeous curly brown hair tossled on top of his head and pretty green eyes. With a shape jawline and a toned body, he stands directly in front of me looking down. I feel slightly intimidated by his probably 6'3" stature over my 5'6" one. He stares down at me as the teacher finishes her pairing and reminds us to get to know each other.

"Do you have a name?" He asks rudely.

"Athena Reign De'Angelis."

"Ahren Eros Reyes. Can you dance well?" He taunts challengingly. If he's going to be so rude we're definitely going to have a fucking problem.

"Yeah, I'd say so, you?" I entertain his questions.

"Mhmm, you might have to work to keep up with me, Miss De'Angelis,"

"Actually the male has to keep up with the female when dancing. You follow what I do," I counteract his statement. He grabs ahold of my waist and looks my in the eyes mischievously. Before I know it, I'm thrown directly into the air. Shocked from his actions, I don't think about having to land, the second before I hit the ground, Ahren catches me with my left leg bent and my right leg straight behind it, my torso is angled downwards, just about to touch the ground.

When I realise I'm not going to face plant into the vinyl flooring, I place my arms down near my head and kick out of his hold, bending over my back in a front walkover. Standing up and turning around to look at his smug face, our teacher catches our attention.

"Wow! Looks like we've got quite the pair here," she exclaims, gazing directly at us. "Class, your task for the next 35 minutes is to get used to partner work. Girls I want pointe shoes on, you'll be creating a short duet with your partner to Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Prince and the Sugarplum Fairy' from the Nutcracker. Pick a part of the music and choreograph something to wow us. You'll be stitching it with the other pairs at the end."