Vanilla

Twenty Seven

"Hey."

I looked up and Leroy was back with a second cup of strawberry-and-honey-infused chamomile tea. This, he swapped with my now-empty one. "Oh! I was just going to pay for the meal too."

"You staying till the end?" He asked and I nodded, removing my laptop from its padded sleeve and also handing him a ten dollar note. He pushed it back my way. "It's the refill."

I frowned, unable to make any sense of his words. "Yes but this is for earlier on."

"None of them are on the menu, dumbass," he laughed, taking my empty cup. "Don't leave without me."

Leroy had once again succeeded at leaving my jaw in a perpetually lazy state, and as hard as I tried to stare after the idiot's back and will him to somehow witness my glare of death, the growing crowd before the counter was making this rather difficult. After a futile attempt, I decided to redirect my attention to the several essay assignments I had to be writing.

The prompts had been sent to us by our student outlook accounts, and after several minutes of trying to remember the password I was given, I was finally able to log in and glance through my inbox.

STAND-IN CLASS REP

Mr. V. J. White,

It has come to my attention that registration for the school's annual festival before thanksgiving holidays requires the name of a class representative, which we unfortunately have not made a decision on. This is included among the notable changes made by the festival committee following the funding of 14 new non-profit organizations and increased coverage by several media outlets.

As such, I will be placing your name and contact details under the list of representatives. Miss Xu has unfortunately expressed her dissent from being appointed as class representative as has been discussed in homeroom yesterday morning. I understand that this will be done without an official voting or a general approval from the class and thus the words 'stand-in' before your title.

I will be speaking to you more about this very soon.

Regards,

Chef Palmer

Among newsletters, internship opportunities, and mass notices sent out by instructors, I'd noticed a personal email sent by 1B's homeroom teacher and found myself reading the entire thing twice to ensure its authenticity.

I'd naturally began to find this all very confusing and not to mention, troubling by the time I processed the implications of Chef Palmer's decision and having done so without permission from the class. At once, I crafted a response—pointing out the inevitable problems that would come with me being appointed as class representative, stand-in or not. Having done all that politely, I added that while I saw no great issue with her providing my name just so that our class could register for the annual food market, I expressed hope that she would find someone else as a replacement as soon as possible.

Finished, the sudden urge to catch a glimpse of Leroy at work (since, well, I'd always been seated on the second floor instead of the first) became increasingly hard to ignore. Whether this was the beginning of my official entry into a certain idiot's fan club, I couldn't help but feel the slightest disappointment that this was perhaps the very reason every other student would have chosen the seats on the first floor over the one above; just so they could steal that glance every now and then.