cigarette ends | ✎

iv.

"Anything about you."

"Hm." He crossed his arms over his chest again, and again, I ignored it. "I've gotten nothing but straight A's the entire time I've been at Princeton."

"Oh?" I interjected, raising a brow. "How about biology?"

A smirk. "Oh, I can play this game all day, Laurent."

"Can you? Because you can't even seem to focus for one hour in stats."

"I hope you haven't forgotten that last chemistry test," he sneered.

"Better than what you got in English - which, as a reminder, I got an 100 on. Made you so jealous that you had to shred my essay, huh?"

"Shred your what, now?" Aurora interjected, wiping her mouth with a napkin before staring at me dumbfoundedly.

I imitated Augustus' infuriating position of my arms crossed over my chest. "Go ahead," I told him. "Tell him the story of how you ruined my English paper."

"There's nothing to tell." A muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Fine, I'll do it myself. Just like everything else." I glared at him.

"Don't act so innocent, Laurent. I hope you didn't forget that one time you fucked your organic chemistry teacher just to get an A on your final."

Rohan and Callum gaped at me.

"I did not fuck him, Casen. He hit on me." I stared daggers at him, wishing that looks could kill.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he replied, grinning.

"Wipe that dumbass grin off your face. You know the truth. I would never do that."

"You know what-"

Callum interrupted me. "Is that all you're eating?"

I glanced down at the small portion I'd gotten - just some fruits. "I ate a lot this morning," I replied. I tried to ignore Augustus' piercing gaze. "And plus, we don't want to interrupt Casen before he tells us his riveting story of how he tore up my essay in rage."

"What's up with the last name basis?" Rohan points his fork between Augustus and I. "Do y'all hate each other that much?"

"Yes," we replied in unison, before glaring at one another.

"You know what... how about you tell us about yourself, Callum," Lacey said, in an attempt to change the subject.

He awkwardly cleared his throat. "Sure. Um, I read a lot, in my free time."

I felt my eyes light up. "You do? What kinds of books?"

"Fantasy, mystery..." He smirked. "All kinds."

"I love mystery," Rohan pitched in. "Agatha Christie is a personal favorite."

We ended up all chatting about ourselves. Rohan and Callum continued to talk about books and exchanged mystery authors, while Lacey talked about how she plays a lot of instruments in her free time, along with reading a ton of true crime, and Aurora mentioned that she liked to box. She said that it helped her relieve anger and sometimes stress, which made me consider the idea of the sport.

It would surely relieve some anger if I taped a picture of Augustus' face to a punching bag and hit it over and over again.

Once lunch wrapped up, we began our solo math competitions.The questions came easily to me and I was surprised by how much I remembered from algebra and geometry.

It felt like no time had passed before we were put into our duo groups for the next part of the competition.

"Hi, M&M."