Best Friends... Or More?

Chapter 2 : Passing Notes

We pull into the parking lot at school and everyone piles out. I walk with Mally to her locker because it's her first year of middle school. I hug her goodbye and then walk to my locker. Colt and Clay share a hallway and Dyl being a senior gets his own hallway. And I, as a junior, have my locker downstairs.
At my locker is my best friend, Tilly. "Laura!!!" She squeals, "I haven't seen you in forever! Can you believe we're juniors??"
I laugh, "Tilly, we just saw each other last week! And no, I can't believe we're juniors!"
"Tilly!" we hear someone call. We turn around and it's her boyfriend, Josiah. He runs up and hugs her, "Hey babe," he nods to me, "Hey, Laura."
"Hey, Joe," I nod back, "Where's Josh? Our group isn't complete without him."
Joe shrugs, "He'll be here soon. He got stuck behind a slow car."
Tilly, Joe, Josh and I are our friend group. Tilly and Joe are dating, so Josh and I often get put together on group dates. I actually do have a crush on him, but I have no idea if he likes me back.
We're standing around talking when all of a sudden, I was jumper-cabled from behind. I fly around and see Josh standing there laughing. "Josh!" I exclaim, "Why did you do that?"
He laughs even more, "Nice to see you again too, Laur. To answer your question, it was too hard to resist." Josh is the only person in the whole world who doesn't call me Laura. He's also the only one I let get away with it.
I hit him on the arm, "Well, you scared me."
He grins, "Sorry," he says, not sorry at all.
His grin is so contagious that I can't help but grin back at him. I turn to Tilly and see she's smiling. Before I can ask her why she's smiling, the bell rings. I grab my stuff from my locker and head to my first class, World History.
As I'm walking there, someone falls into step with me. I look over, it's Josh. "What class do you have?" he asks, peeking at my stuff, "History? Me too!" Then he gets his schedule out, "What other classes do we have together?"
I take out my schedule and we look at them as we walk. It ends up that we have every class together. Did I mention that Josh is smart? That's why if I take an advanced class, he'll usually take it too.
"Yes!" Josh pumps his fist, "We can walk to every class together. And we'll be partners for everything."
"Um, Josh," I say, "If Tilly's in any of our classes, I'll probably be with her, but if she's not, then I will be your partner."
He fake pouts, "Fine, I guess that will have to work."
We walk into history and find our seats, which coincidentally Ms. Smith placed right next to each other. The second bell rings and Ms. Smith walks in.
"Good morning class, welcome to the first day of school. How are you all?"
"Goods" and "ehhs" echoed around the room.
"Well, today, as you will probably do in all your classes, we are going to go over the rules in this class."
I zone out while the teacher passes out her syllabus for that class. She starts going over it up front. All of a sudden a note lands on my desk. I glance at the teacher and then open the note.
It says, 'What ya thinking about? -Josh'
I glance over at him, he's grinning at me, I grin back and pick up my pencil. Then I write back, 'Wouldn't you like to know?' And then I throw it on his desk.
I watch him open and read it, then write back. Pretty soon it came back; I open it and read it, 'Yeah, actually, I would.'
I smile and write back, 'Too bad I'm not telling.' Then I send it back.
He reads it and then looks up at me and fake pouts. I smile sweetly and stick out my tongue. He grins and writes something down. When I look at it, it says, 'Your tongue is so cute.'
I glance quickly up and him and raise an eyebrow. He just shrugs and tries to look innocent. I shake my head at him. All of a sudden a hand slaps down on his desk. We look up and it's Ms. Smith. She doesn't look happy.
"Miss. Jones and Mr. Williams, may I see that?" She holds open her hand and slowly I hand it to her and she walks back up to her desk and places it there. Josh and I look at each other and try to hold in our laughs.
'Whoops,' I thought, 'That didn't turn out how I'd hoped.'
For the rest of the hour, we just sit there and listen, when the bell rings, we bolt out of there quickly. When we get into the hallway, we both burst out laughing. "Well," Josh says, "That didn't turn out as we expected. Never thought I get caught passing notes in 11th grade."
I laugh, "Yeah, now days it's getting caught snapping in school."
"Yeah, but I knew you didn't have your phone on you, and I had to talk to you."
I look at him as we reach my locker, "Really, how did you know I didn't have my phone?"
He snorts, "Please, Laur, I know you. You are the goody-two-shoes of our group. You're the only one who doesn't bring her phone to class. I've known this since we were in kindergarten."
I look back up at him as I close my locker, "Josh, I didn't have a phone in kindergarten, and plus, you didn't even know me until 3rd grade."
He sighs as we reach his locker, "I guess, but still, I've known that for a long time."
I lean against the locker next to his as he gets his stuff, "So, you had to talk to me? About what? Cuz I don't think knowing what I'm thinking and talking about tongues is so important that you have to tell me in the middle of class."
He stands up straight, "Umm... I forgot." Then he shut his locker and started walking to class. I run after him.
When I catch up I ask, "What was that all about?"
He shrugs, "Nothing." Then he cheers up, "So what are you doing tonight?"
"I don't know, why?"
"Oh, just wondering," he says. We walk into our next class which was Pre-Calc. We could sit anywhere we wanted, so we chose two seats in the back of the classroom.
While we wait for everyone to come in, Josh fidgets nervously. I don't know why he's so nervous. I've never seen him like this.
The teacher comes in, "Good morning class. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Mr. Johansen. You are all in Pre-Calc, which you know, is a college class. I expect you all to work hard and not give up." He grabs some papers off his desk and starts passing them out, "This is my syllabus."
We quickly went over the syllabus and then he assigned us math books. When we were all back in our seats, Mr. Johansen said, "I expect you to bring your textbooks, graph paper, calculator, notebooks, and pencils everyday."
Then he gave us 10 minutes of free time until the bell rang. So far, so good, no homework and no learning.
Our next class was Personal Finance. Mrs. Consuelo taught it. She handed out the syllabus and then we went over it. At the end we had a couple minutes to just relax.
Josh turned to me, "Umm... Laura, I wanted to ask you something." I knew that it had to be something big, Josh never called me Laura, it was always Laur.
"Yeah?"
"Do you, um..." before he can finish, Noah Cockburn, the quarterback, calls, "Hey, Laura!"
I turn toward him, amazed that he's talking to me, "Yeah?"
Noah is the most popular guy in school. He was a senior and super hot. His hair is black and he has gorgeous light green eyes. His jawline was so sharp, I bet I could cut a piece of wood with it. And his eyebrows were perfect!
I, on the other hand, was not popular. I was a theater kid. I also loved to draw and paint. And I had had a crush on Noah for a while in 9th grade when I was going through a phase, thinking that Josh would never like me. I mean, he won't ever, but still.
Noah sits down next to me, "Hey, do you have a map?"
I frown, "No... why?"
He smirks, "Cuz I get lost in your eyes."
My mouth falls open and I just stare at him.
"Can I have your number?"
I glance at Josh. He's staring down at his phone, ignoring us. I turn back toward Noah, "Sure...?"
He smiles, "Great!" He gets out his phone and waits.
I rattle off my number and watch as he types into his phone. Then he looks up, "I'll text you."
I nod dumbly as he stands up and gives me a smile and a nod, then walks away.
I turn back to Josh, "Hey, what did you want to ask me?"
He looks up. There is something in his eyes that I can't quite place. Anger, sadness? He shakes his head, "Nevermind, it doesn't matter," he says as the bell rings.
As we stand up, I slowly nod my head, "Okay, if you're sure."
We put our stuff in our lockers and then head to lunch. Luckily, we have it with Tilly and Joe. When I sit down, Josh goes to sit across from me, then realizes that TIlly and Joe would probably want to sit together, and so sat down next to me.
After lunch, we walk to his locker first in silence and get his stuff for our next class, which is Spanish 2. And we finally have it with Tilly. Then we walked to my locker and get my stuff.
When we get to class, we check our assigned seats and see they're across the room from each other. But then Tilly and Joe walk in. Tilly's spot is right in front of me and Joe's is in front of Josh.
Señor López walks into the room. "Buenos días clase."
"Buenos días, Señor López," we all reply.
We start out by introducing ourselves. We all have Spanish names from last year. Mine was Isabella. Tilly's was Sofía. Josh's was Nicolás. And Joe's was Matías.
When it got to Josh's turn, he said, "Hola, me llamo Nicolás." I always liked the name Nick.
When it got to me, I said, "Hola, me llamo Isabella."
After everyone introduced themselves, Señor Lopez handed out his syllabus and went over it.