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M I S T Y ~~ Chapter 21: Cheaters Never Win

After school when I was walking with Rick through the hall Mrs. Strauss pulled us aside. "Hey, we need to talk."

Uh-oh. "Did I do something?" I asked.

"One of you did," she answered. She held up our two identical physics study guides. "Explanation, please? I told you explicitly this study guide is individual work."

"That. Right," I said slowly. "We, uh..." I trailed off.

"It's a funny story actually," said Rick.

"Well I'd like to hear it. Or both of you guys would get zeroes."

Shoot. "We worked on it together," I fibbed.

"Well this work looks more like yours than Rick's," Mrs. Strauss said.

"Actually, it is Misty's," said Rick. "I copied it. I took her study guide answers and copied them."

"Really," said Mrs. Strauss.

"Yeah. Sorry. It isn't Misty's fault," said Rick.

I couldn't believe it.

"OK, well I'm glad to hear the truth, but you'll have to get a zero on this one," said the teacher. "But you can still pass if you ace your final."

"Got it," replied Rick.

"What'd you do that for?" I asked Rick once we were dismissed from Mrs. Strauss and were out of earshot.

He shrugged. "I couldn't let Miss oh-so-perfect tarnish her grade."

"So what'll you do when you fail?"

"I'll work my ass off for the class."

"Wow. Improvement," I nodded.

So my relationship with Rick did seem to be on the right track right then and there. But for some reason, it wasn't. It actually wasn't "picture perfect" like couples in romance movies.

The next day, I found Rick at his locker after grabbing my notebook and binder from my locker.

"Hi Rick," I said.

"Hey," he said, pulling out his books. Boy, his locker was messy, with crumpled papers sticking out everywhere and school supplies scattered around.

"Your locker's messy," I pointed out.

"Like I care." Whoa.

"OK..."

He moved away from me. "I don't care about having a messy locker, so thanks for having that been pointed out, you neat freak."

"I'm sorry, I..."

"Yeah, you're always sorry. Whatever." He sounded annoyed, his voice icy hard. Then he walked off, leaving me there stunned in a bad way. I didn't understand at all why he was the way he was. Did I do something?

I wrote him a note in class, asking, Are you mad at me?

He wrote back, No.

That was good. But he was still acting cold around me.

The following days, he was acting pretty indifferent, and only slightly acknowledged me. He was still being nice to me, but for instance, one morning, he hardly looked at me in class. Then, he would just walk past me at my locker without stopping to talk to me. And he started acting like he was not into me anymore. It actually kind of hurt. And I was scared he was no longer interested in me, and that he'd dump me for another girl. I was starting to grow extremely worried.

I went up to him at tutorial time a few days later to ask him about it. He was shoving his books from his locker into his backpack. I sort of really needed an answer, and I intended to figure out what was going on.