The Geek Revolution ✓

44 | ditch

I realise halfway to my destination that I subconsciously took the route to Haywood Park. Maybe it's because I have some of my best memories in the town there. Benjamin took us boat-racing there in the summer. Delaney's wry, jaded laughter coats the playground in the winter. The walk to the park is as long as usual, but not anywhere as sweaty and unpleasant as it was in summer.

By the time I am crunching over the frosty grass, I'm actually quite toasty. The willows by the lake look less green, but the bare branches hugged by a light dusting of snow are still elegant in their own muted way. But all my musings on the beauty of the trees disappear when I step around them, onto the little jetty that stretches over the water.

Derek is here.

He sits at the end of the jetty, legs dangling towards the frozen lake, a cream-coloured scarf wrapped around his neck. The leather jacket he wears is lined with fleece, which I can see peeking up over the collar. With his back facing me and earphones plugged in, it doesn't seem like he can hear my footsteps.

Derek still doesn't move as I approach him slowly, leaning carefully over his shoulder to see what he's looking at. His phone rests low in his lap and he is completely oblivious to anything but the movements on his screen.

Glimpses of violin bows soaring and dipping in unison, and the gleam of swaying flutes catch my attention. Tapping steadily on his denim-clad knee, Derek's index finger keeps time with the conductor's baton.

He's watching an orchestra? How unexpected. For a few seconds, I let him watch the video. Then I swing my legs over jetty, sitting with a two feet distance between us.

When he first caught me in his periphery, Derek lazily turned his head, in no rush at all, as if he expected just another casual bystander. Maybe an elderly man on his morning stroll. But when his eyes lock on mine, the unguarded, relaxed demeanour freezes. He immediately pockets his phone and slips his earphones out.

"Don't stop on my account," I smirk coolly. A part of me is still pissed at him for so callously exposing my grief. It felt like he ripped off a bandage from a wound that hasn't healed properly, taking with it scabs and clots and rendering me raw to the world all over again. "What are they playing?"

The faint flush that appears on Derek's cheeks gives me a heady rush of victory. Finally, some indication that he's not just an emotionless, ruthless tormentor. He coughs, bowing his head slightly. Too late. I already saw that he's embarrassed, but at least I choose not to make a point of it — unlike he would, preying on any weakness.

Eventually, under my watchful gaze, he realises too that it's a lost cause trying to deny what he was doing. "In The Hall of the Mountain King, from—"

"Peer Gynt?" I arch a cheeky brow. "I didn't know you liked that sort of music."

Well, that's not entirely true. I knew very early on that Derek was a total band geek in middle school — going off what Drew told me — and a prodigiously talented one, at that. I still haven't forgotten the way he tuned Ashley's guitar string by ear.

"What sort of music?" he huffs.

"Classical." I assumed, like all the other Monarchs, he grew out of that phase when he started high school, ditched their friends and joined Brittany. Discarded with the rest of him, left behind to freeze. "I figured you'd be more of a rap fan."

Derek rolls his dark eyes, a faint expression of amusement flickering across his proud features. "If we're going by stereotypes, I see you as the type to get an aneurysm if they ever ditched school."

I laugh sardonically. "If we're going by stereotypes, I'd say you'd be the one to beat up classical music-loving band geeks. Not be one."