Don't Tell Him He's In Love With A Genius

:Genius: Chapter Twenty Nine

[Message received: Walking Kaine (1)]

Team fine; second place in girl's league. Philips beat us last game tho

I felt myself pulling a face without really meaning to. Second place was definitely nothing to frown about, but I sense the oncoming gloating from Philips 11. Daniel had been waiting to beat the McCeath Sparrows since we were twelve. The last time they had won our biannual game was the year before he got on the school's team, and I never let him live it down.

It wasn't until I was throwing the pen in my bag and handing it to Anton to carry for me that I realised Asha had a curious tilt to her head.

"What?" I questioned. She flushed, realising she had been caught staring and shrugged.

"Nothing. It's just ... I noticed- you've always got pieces of paper everywhere. It's like there's always someone picking up some doodles you've dropped on the ground. I don't know how you can pretend to be organised." I could feel my brows furrowing in confusion, wondering if I really did have this trait. I mean, we were in a school. Even if I wasn't actually meant to be in this class, I still had things to do.

Had she heard the letter in my pocket, rustling around still? I mentally dismissed it as paranoia, I had walked in on her cleaning up my writing notes more than once. I guessed that was what she was referring to.

I really did have a lot of paper lying about most of the time.

Instead of debating with her, I shrugged my shoulders.

"I fell out of a tree as a child and broke my arm; paper hording is like petty revenge." Instead of getting the joke, her face filled with concern.

"Oh my God are you alright?" Jean, who was waiting for Asha to move so she could get out from behind the closed benches, laughed loudly.

"Hell, Asha, someone's going to sell you glass and call it diamond." Jean proceeded to nudge her out of the way, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

"I can tell glass from diamond." Jean caught my eye over Asha's shoulder and rolled hers. Another metaphor lost.

"I know you can, Asha." I reached out to pat her head in a playfully condescending way, and the image of Anton doing that to me a few days earlier flashed across my mind. My hands clenched automatically, and I went for punching her lightly instead.

I was probably spending too much time with that douchebag. He was beginning to rub off on me.

"C'mon, Dunce. I need to get my books out of your locker." It broke Asha's pout, and we shared another eye roll, this time at Anton's expense, as I turned to face my boyfriend.

"Why do you have books in my locker?" I asked, to cover up the fact that I had actually totally forgotten that I had a locker in this place.

It wasn't like it was necessary, I live like two minutes away in the adjacent building, or ten minutes away, in Austin's house.

"Because you never use it, and it's closer to the science buildings than my locker."

"And you didn't think to ask if you could use it?" I questioned. Asha pulled an equally unamused face.

"How did you get her locker combo?" If I didn't know Anton half as well as I did, and I wasn't looking at him currently, I'd still know he would be smirking at that question.

"Out of all the type of locks in the world, the combination padlock is literally the easiest to break into, and then you know the code for the second-time round." He told us, pride in his voice like he wasn't admitting to having extensive breaking and entering knowledge.