Worth Fighting For

Chapter 11

Finally, after a long and dreadful summer, junior year officially began. I was worried about how awkward it would be to see Liam for the first time since May. Unfortunately, I was right, it was actually worse than I thought. Something was definitely wrong with him. He ignored me all day and acted like I didn't exist.

"Hey, Liam, how was your summer," I said to him hoping to go back to normal. "It was fine," he said not looking at me. Okay, this seems fairly familiar. Why was he acting like he did at the beginning of freshman year when he wouldn't talk to me? "Did you do anything fun this summer?" He just rolled his eyes. "Liam, I asked you a question," I said now getting annoyed by his attitude. "What do you want?" he said. "I'm just trying to have a conversation, what's wrong with you?" "Nothing's wrong with me, just leave me alone," he replied.

The bell rang dismissing us to our next class and I couldn't believe how much of a jerk Liam was being. I went home that night and Face-Timed my brother, Shane, at college.

"How's my little sis?" he asked. I feel like our bond has gotten stronger since he's left.

"School is hard, ya know, with classes and people," I replied to him through the screen.

"People? What people?"

"Remember Liam Turner?" I asked him.

"Yeah, how could I forget your little ninth grade boyfriend," he laughed.

"Shane, I'm serious, a lot has happened since you've left."

His face got serious. "Well what's wrong then?"

"All of a sudden he's pretending to not know me, and I don't know what went wrong. He's honestly being a jerk about everything, too," I confessed to my brother.

"Well, when guys do that it's usually one of two things. Either you somehow hurt him, or he's having a crisis somewhere else in his life."

I began to think about what it could be. "But I can't think of anything I did to him."

"Well, I don't know, high school boys can also just be moody," he joked.

"Yeah, I guess you're right, it'll get better soon."

"Yeah, it will, I know it," he assured me.

"Thank you," I said to him.

"No problem," he answered.

"How's college?" I asked him.

"It's a lot of work but really fun," he told me.

"Well, that's good, I hope you have a good week," I said to him knowing that I needed to get started on my homework.

"Thanks, Skye, you too," he said while we said goodbye and logged off our computer.

The next day at school, our English teacher assigned a partner presentation. "You and your partner will present this piece of literature," she said as we were studying American Literature. She started pairing up different people from around the classroom. "Skye and Liam, you'll be partners," she finished saying. Oh, no. This was going to be extremely awkward trying to work on a project with him being like this.

"So, when are we going to work on this?" I asked him as we were leaving class. "I can do it, don't worry," he responded. "Don't worry? No, I'm going to participate in this whether you like it or not," I said, standing up for myself. "Fine, then you can do it," he said as he walked out of the classroom. "No, I'm also not going to do all the work," I said to him. "Fine, then I'll do half and you can do half, how about that? Does that fit your little narrative?" "Why are you being so rude to me? What did I do?" I shouted at him in the hall. Without saying anything else, he just left the building. This boy was too hard to figure out.