Norah & Daniel

Chapter-27

I was going to start distancing myself from him, slowly, bit by bit, so that it remains unnoticeable and still serves the purpose at the same time.

However, what did not go unnoticeable by Daniel was my choice of seat, by sitting one seat down from stinky-Stan, and he gave me a weird look. I acted as if I didn't even see it.

Again with the acting.

God, I was such a fake person.

Thankfully, the teacher came in allowing me to put my acting skills to rest, but she also came bearing surprise test papers, so that was kind of a bummer.

It took me exactly twenty seven minutes, forty six seconds to finish the test, and once I was done, I was just playing with me pencil, rolling it between my fingers when I heard my name being called in a whisper and then saw something falling on my hair.

 I ran a hand on it to take out the tiny bit of paper and then turned in my seat to shoot Daniel a look.

Really? Paper bits? How old were we? Seven?

But then I remembered that bantering with him wasn't exactly the way to create distance between us so I dropped the subject off and turned back to face the board where the teacher was starting to collect the answer sheets.

I started doodling something on the corner of the paper, erased it and started again and was perfectly occupied with the doing this number of times when I felt a tug at my ponytail. Branding it as probably an accident by Georgina who was sitting behind me, I didn't turn around, just sat up straighter on my seat.

But then I felt again, and this time I didn't need to turn around because the tug was hard enough to turn my face to meet the blue eyes staring at me curiously.

"Is this the way we say hello now?" I asked, my neck still locked in the awkward state.

"No, it's only for special times when someone is ignoring you," he replied, letting go off my ponytail when the teacher sent a sharp gaze in our direction.

"I'm not ignoring you."

Yeah, I am just thinking of better ways of doing that.

"Right," he said, his right eyebrow going just a little higher than the left one and I didn't know why but it felt like such a cute thing. "Anyway, I need to talk with you about something."

Why do people say that? It's like a for sure way of making your poor heart worry about over what could actually be nothing.

"What?"

"Not here," he said with a mix of nervousness, excitement, and anxiety swirling in his eyes. "Come over after school?"

"I can't," the words immediately left my mouth.

"Why not?" His eyes were narrowed, as if assessing something.

"Because I have something to do," I said, looking straight ahead again to not attract any more attention from the teacher.

"Like what?"

"Like...like...I don't know...finding out if Zulu people of Africa believe in marriages or not?"

What the hell was I talking about?

"They do," Daniel answered, without wasting any time. "There. Your work's done. Give me a call whenever you plan on coming."

And then he fell back on his seat, silent.

I probably even wanted to go spend time with him and to know what he wanted to tell me. But I was supposed to adopt the 'maintain distance' policy.