A Perfect Circle

05 | disaster

Ms. Zhang wasn't in the room yet, so I logged onto Facebook. My eyes (accidentally) flitted to Ren's screen for a split second, and he was on, too. It was rude to look at other people's screens, so I focused on my own. For school computers, Lakewood's weren't all that bad – we had flat screen monitors and the loading times weren't completely awful.

I had an inbox, so opened it. It was just Max saying hey.

He'd been talking to me a lot lately. Like, a lot a lot. We chatted on Facebook during the day and at night, and he'd started sitting near me in homeroom whenever he had the chance. It was kinda weird, honestly. I wasn't conceited enough to think that he suddenly had a thing for me. Last time I checked, he liked Jenny. So maybe he wanted to use my friendship to get closer to her, because as of right now, Jenny wasn't Max's biggest fan.

"So," Ren said, "you've been talking to Max a lot, huh."

I scowled at him, but his eyes were dead on his screen.

"Yeah," I said. "Wouldn't you know?"

"Oddly enough, he hasn't mentioned it. I've only noticed by lurking your screen."

"Oh."

He said nothing. My curiosity was piqued, so I leaned my elbow over the back of my chair and faced him.

"Are things weird between you two?"

Ren's eyes sliced at me before they were back on his screen. He scrolled idly down his newsfeed as he spoke. "Why would they be weird?"

"Well... you know who Max likes, right?"

"He likes Jenny. He's liked her since the eighth grade."

A little twinge of jealousy touched my heart. "Oh. But Jenny likes you."

"Uh-huh."

"Doesn't that, like... create tension?"

"Nope. Guys aren't like girls. A chick could never get in the way of mine and Max's friendship."

I looked back at the blinking notification from Max on my screen. If what Ren said was true, I envied their friendship.

Ms. Zhang was a relatively young Asian woman with long, shiny black hair and glasses. She walked into the room and shut the door before asking everyone to quiet down. Most of the students were good – save a few idiots who liked to make noise – so the room settled quickly.

"All right everyone, well, I might as well present this to you now so you have some time to prepare."

She shuffled the overhead projector in front of the chalkboard, then pulled down the screen. She turned on the machine to show a page of instructions and a couple of graphics.

"This is our project for the semester. You're going to partner up, and together, will create your own little yearbooks." She clasped her hands together and smiled. "Well, half-year books, because they're due at the end of the semester."

A lump formed in my throat. Shit – I hated partnered projects, and the only person I knew in the class was—

Ren poked my thigh. "Dibs."

I scowled at him. "No way, Ren."

"Oh c'mon," he whispered. "Don't make me work with some rando. Jenny won't even let you be my partner for a class project? Who is she, Hitler?"

"You should be starting on the project next Monday," Ms. Zhang explained. "I want each page to be about each week of your lives. So it's like a little documentation project. You'll be required to take your own photos – we have cameras you can rent – and create your own graphic pages for the yearbook. Some of your pages might even make it to the real yearbook!"