Triple Dog Dare You

Chapter 2

I open the large brown door that separates me from my hell. Physics. I think I was crazy to take this course. What compelled me to choose Physics? Oh right, my ambitions. I want to be a doctor.

When I take a seat at my desk that’s near the back of the room, my friend, Juliet isn’t there yet. However the guy who directly across the aisle way from me is and from the look on his face, he’s heard my news already. He looks disappointed when he sees me and also upset. To be perfectly honest, there might have been an almost thing between us about a month back. I had started to give up hope that he would ever ask me out, so I started talking with Jacob to try and move on. Nothing every happened between us, but it might have and judging by Jacob’s expression, he was hoping that something might have happened.

“Hey, Jacob,” I say. I look across the aisle to give him a smile.

“Hi, Mady,” He says back. He barely looks me in the eye and then immediately goes back to looking at his binder.

“Hey, Jonathon,” He looks up and says to the guy sitting in the desk in front of him. “Did we have any homework?”

I sigh and turn open my textbook to page 192, as written on the blackboard. A couple of minutes later, Juliet comes in the room. She waves happily at me. Her backpack weighs so much and she’s so tiny that she leans forward when she walks.

“Hey Mady,” She says. She sets her backpack down on the orange chair. She unzips her backpack and pulls out her purple binder.

“We didn’t have any homework right?” Juliet looks at me.

“Nope, we were homework free last night,” I say. “Hey, do you know if Jacob is all right?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Juliet says. She sits down in her desk and opens her binder to a majorly highlighted page and starts reading.

I sit there thinking for a few minutes debating whether or not I should do what I’m thinking. Finally I decide that he needs to be confronted, so I stand up and walk up to Jacob’s desk.

“Hey, Jacob, can I talk to you?” I ask.

“I’m busy,” He says without looking up.

“I know, but it’s really important and it’s only going to take a few minutes,” I say. “I promise.”

Jacob looks up at my hopeful face and sighs. “Fine, I’ll talk to you.”

“Thank you so much,” I smile at him. He follows me to the back of the room where there are a bunch of computers.

“So what’s up?” Jacob asks. He stands at about six feet tall and I’m only about five foot five, so I have to look up pretty high to talk to him.

“Well, I’m sure you heard that I’m dating someone else,” I reply. “So I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He asks.

“Well because it sort of seemed like there was something going on between us for a while, and then we sort of cooled off for a bit and then I started dating somebody else,” I say.

“Well I suppose I just don’t want to talk about it, Mady,” Jacob says. “I mean I’m going to need some time to have my ego recover from the fact that you would rather date him instead of me. I’m also going to have to get over the fact that I was fully prepared to come to school today to ask you out. Then my friend texts me and tells me that you have already decided to date somebody else. So no, Mady, I’m not okay and it’s because of you that I’m not. If you liked somebody else, then you should have just told me.”

Jacob turns around and quickly walks (or rather stalks) over to his desk and sits down. I stand frozen in my spot for a few minutes before I finally return to my desk.

“Are you okay?” Juliet is looking at my with a concerned look on her face.

“No, I’m not okay,” I say. “I was so excited about getting asked out and then Jacob totally rained on my parade.”

“Mady you’re an awesome girl, so naturally Jacob would have been upset to discover that you were off the market. And getting a boyfriend is a big deal and you shouldn’t let anybody make you feel bad about it. As long as you’re happy with your decision then it’s no one else’s business,” Juliet smiles at me and returns back to her work.

I blink back the tears that I feel are about to come to the surface. Even though Jacob and I are not a couple and probably never will be, I still value his friendship immensely because after the ninth grade when I had a crush on him but he liked my friend, we stopped talking for almost a year, during which I developed a crush on my now boyfriend. I really hope we can get past this because I don’t know what I would do without him as a friend.