In Real Life ✓

2. The Overly Attached Boyfriend

The craziest thing about meeting the new boy was that I hadn't noticed that my friends were sitting right in front of me, turned around in their seats so far their backs might break. Until our teacher snapped at them for misbehaving.

Jeez... His lesson had barely even started.

Tamara snickered in amusement and Leslie hid behind her curly hair in embarrassment, while Mr. Banner droned on and on about how annoying we were. Right back at you, sir.

"Pray tell, Gilbert," I muttered, my voice hopefully low enough to not get in trouble for it. Because I couldn't resist. "Where did you come from and why did you come here?"

This wasn't exactly an exciting town or an exemplary school... Don't get me wrong; it wasn't bad. It was just nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the abnormally high homosexual population.

He shrugged. "My parents moved me here."

"Your parents..."

"Yeah."

"...are idiots."

He barely held back a laugh. "It can't be that bad, can it? It seems pretty nice here so far."

"Yeah and that's all it will ever be. Pretty nice."

"If you could move anywhere, where would you go?"

"Middle Earth."

He rolled his eyes and said, "Okay, sure, I guess that sounds fun. If you could move anywhere on our earth though, where would you go?"

"The core. I love bathing myself in lava."

This time, I got a chuckle, but then he tried a different approach to get me to tell him about myself, because that's what normal people did when they were meeting for the first time and getting to know each other, but I was Eve. Why would I tell him something about myself? I was just here to observe. When he asked me about our teacher and whether he was a good teacher, I said he was good at making me want to die, so he promised me, "I'll keep you entertained then."

"You're already doing a pretty good job."

It was clearly a dig at him, but he smiled. He actually smiled, like a proper, nice human being.

Whenever Mr. Banner wasn't paying attention, he asked me questions, and each time, I responded with similarly useless answers. At the end of the period, he still knew nothing about me other than that I wanted the school to burn. Not because I didn't want him to know anything, but because it was fun. I mean, having fun was practically my job. If Twitter actually earned me money, that is. I wish it did. I'd be rich.

While Gilbert retreated to the more familiar crowd (boys that talked with boys about boy things that boys did with boys), I made my way over to my own friends, who seemed way more excited than necessary. I had a bad feeling about it.

"Before you say anything, Tamara," I said as she opened her mouth. "Your fly is open."

"Damnit!" She looked down and swore again. "My fly's not even open, Eve."

"It is in another universe, where people wear their pants on their face. Zip, zip, my child, I don't wanna hear it."

I had a pretty good idea what 'it' was.

"Oh, shut up. I was just going to say the new boy is cute."

Exactly, that.

"Yes," Leslie squealed. "Look at him."

I looked over at the boys and caught Gilbert laughing at something someone said, teeth showing, face dipping down, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. I squinted, and to Tamara and Leslie, I shrugged, as if his contagious smile was not contagious at all. "I guess he is."

"You know he was flirting with you, right?"

"Oh, believe me, I was aware."

Leslie sighed. "I wish a cute boy like him would flirt with me. You're lucky, Eve."

Huh. Well. I wouldn't count myself lucky, to be honest. I was still low-key traumatized by Joe's futile attempts at 'dating' me. I mean, the boy had to actually be insane to think blackmailing a girl would be a good way to make her love him, right? He was literally the real life male version of the overly attached girlfriend and I was glad he was out of my life. Of course, I highly doubted every boy I met would do such a thing (I wasn't stupid), but you couldn't really blame me for not being very enthusiastic about it, on top of me generally being uninterested in dating in the first place, being asexual and all. To me, not being sexually attracted to people was a true blessing. My life was much simpler without it.

Besides, I didn't even know Gilbert.

"How is it going with you and Darren, Tamara?" I asked to avoid the subject, and she instantly started beaming. Darren was the boy next door and she had been ogling him for years, but she'd never had the courage to ask him out. Her pining and swooning was getting so excessively annoying that it had started to make appearances in my nightmares.

Only because I had been nagging at her to do something about it, she finally started talking with him. He seemed like a really nice guy. I shipped them. Hard.

"He asked me out!"

"Really?"

She giggled, eyes twinkling, and pressed her bag to her chest with the widest grin. "Yes!"

"Finally!" I exclaimed. "What are you two doing? Dinner date?"

"Probably. He said he'd pick me up this Friday."

Damn, I felt so accomplished. I had actually brought them together! See, I am nice sometimes. Keyword: sometimes.

The moment the intercom turned on, however, my good mood dissipated. The nasal voice of one of our teachers came on to announce that senior students would soon be going on some kind of lame school trip, because it was our last year and we should 'make the best of it!'

Someone hand me a bucket to throw up in.

It better not be one of those bonding trips.

I hated bonding trips.