soft. [maeve wiley]

twelve.

maeve shook her head. "well, you're both dickheads then."

i looked at otis a little perplexed and then switched to look at maeve, who just stared at her hands.

the door opened and out came mr. groff. "maeve, you're first." he said with a grumpy voice that sounded like it was specifically meant to be intimidating.

maeve stood up and went inside after mr. groff.

otis and i just sat there in silence.

what was this about?

it could only be about the sex clinic. maybe someone ratted us out.

we haven't done anything else that could've possibly got the principal's attention.

otis began moving his leg up and down nervously, so i put my hand on his knee to kind of comfort him and he stopped immediately.

we exchanged small smiles and just waited for maeve to come out.

while we sat there, i noticed the award for the best essay, that adam had gotten earlier this year, standing next to some other awards.

this should've been maeve's, it was her hard work in the end. i saw how disappointed she was. it was her essay that won, but it wasn't her that got the award in the end.

that must suck a lot.

it only took about five minutes and the door opened again.

maeve didn't even spare us a glance and quickly got out of the room, probably wanting to get to class as soon as possible.

mr. groff just looked at us for a few seconds, before dismissing us. "get to class."

he obviously didn't need to tell us twice and soon we were catching up with maeve.

otis grabbed her shoulder and maeve gave him a hard glare, before shrugging his hand off her shoulder. "you're not in any trouble, i sorted it." she said, looking at me.

"okay, what.. what happened?" otis asked.

maeve didn't give an answer and just continued walking.

"are we not gonna talk about this? is that it?" he continued pushing and i nudged his side, trying to signal him to calm down a little.

"i trusted you, otis." she said, shrugging her shoulders and disappearing around the next corner.

otis sighed and looked at me a little cluelessly. "why only me? she just said we were both dickheads."

i shrugged. "i don't know. she's quite confusing, otherwise jackson wouldn't have asked us for advice in the first place."

"quite confusing." otis mocked.

"what?" i asked, confused and offended at the same time.

"you just sounded so english when you said that. you're really becoming part of us."

"shut up."

✰—

"hey, eric!" i called from across the hall, to where eric was standing at his locker.