The Beautiful Ones

7- I Am Not A Third Wheel

“Okay, what about you?” I asked her.

She pointed to a girl that was sitting near the blonde boy. We nodded at each other and then walked over to the two, when they saw us approaching their faces turned into ones of shock.

“Partners?” I asked the blonde boy nonchalantly.

“Oh, um, yeah, sure.” He muttered in shock.

“How about you, do you have a partner?” Zoey asked the girl nicely.

“No.” The girl squeaked, looking like she was about to pee herself.

“We don’t bite.” Zoey laughed, sitting in the desk beside the scared girl as I sat down in the seat in front of the blonde boy, turning it around to face him.

“I’m Alice.” I chirped. It’s a great ice breaker.

“Yeah, I know.” The blonde boy chuckled.

I sighed heavily. “That was my way of asking you what your name is.”

“Oh.” He said quickly. “Jason.”

“Okay, cool. So, Hamlet.”

“We don’t really have to talk about it.” Jason told me. “You probably didn’t even read it.”

“Excuse me?” I asked with raised eyebrows.

“Well, did you?”

“You have to read Hamlet to pass junior year English.” I told him dryly. Was he stupid or something?

“Well, yeah but I just figured that…” He trailed off.

“You just figured that I buy my grades?” I asked with raised eyebrows. His face reddened and he looked almost as afraid as Zoey’s partner. “Well, I don’t.”

“Okay.” He appeased. “Sorry.”

“Whatever.” I muttered. I didn’t like this kid already, even though he’s just like everybody here, they all just assume things about us that just aren’t true. Just because we have money doesn’t mean we buy our way through life. “So, Hamlet,”

Forty five minutes later, Jason was looking at me with widened eyes and a dropped jaw.

“What?” I frowned.

“Oh, nothing.” He blinked as if he just realized that he was gaping at me. “You’re just really smart.”

“Not really, but I’ll take the compliment. Thanks, I guess.” I muttered, seeing that was about to ring, so I pushed my pencil into my bag and stood up, turning the table back around.

The girl that Zoey was working with didn’t seem scared anymore as they said their goodbyes just as the bell rang. I stood with Zoey  at the back of the class and waited for everyone else to file out of the room before going out ourselves so that we weren’t in the clutter of people fighting their way out the door.

“How’d it go?” Zoey asked me.

“Well, I started talking about the philosophy behind the story and he looked at me like I was a monkey doing the Macarena.” I mumbled.

Zoey laughed as we walked down the hallway towards calculus. “You can’t just start discussing relativism and existentialism with these people, they think you’re as dumb as you look and it just freaks them out.”

“I look dumb?”

“Blonde, you look blonde.” She chuckled.

“Oh, please.” I mumbled. “We all know that blondes have more fun.”