Mr. Superficial (BWWM)

Chapter 26

Paise's P.O.V

'Ashton!'

He opens his eyes wide and shakes his head.

'Sorry,' he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck.

'What's bothering you so much?' I ask, analyzing his face carefully. He's been drifting in and out of focus for a couple of weeks now, just staring. It's really freaking me out.

'Nothing. So yeah, we have a swim meet coming up and I'm super excited,' he says, changing the direction of conversation.

'When?' I ask, giving up the interrogation.

'In a few weeks,' he mumbles. He takes off his bag and places it in his neatly arranged locker.

'I'll be there cheering you on,' I smile, walking with him to homeroom. He smiles back and swings his arm around my shoulder.

When we reach homeroom, Ashton's arm is still draped around me and everyone in the rowdy class goes silent.

I shyly push his arm away and make my way over to my usual window seat. Ashton sits across the room from me with some of his other friends. It doesn't bother me because I know I can't keep one of the most popular guys to myself, even if he is my best friend.

'Hey, Paise,' I hear a voice call.

I snap my head up and see Landon smiling and waving at me from the other side of the room. He's sitting next to Lucas who's typing furiously on his phone and Sean who's trying to pick Kyle's nose.

I've always disliked his friends ever since I was partnered with Sean for a Health project back in sophomore year. He tried to do the assignment, but everything he wrote was wrong so I had to do the whole thing alone.

'Hey,' I smile back.

Landon and I aren't best buddies or anything, but more like mutual friends. We exchange smiles and hello's every now and then at school and are progressing well with our play roles. He's really proved himself that he's not a bad guy anymore, and I'm starting to trust him way more than I used to.

Ashton has been acting really weird about the whole situation, though. He was the first to suggest that maybe Landon had changed over the summer, but now he doesn't like him one bit. He ignores him when he tries to speak to him and even tries to talk me out of going to his house for rehearsal. He's acting so suspicious, but I can't put my finger on it just yet.

The teacher walks in with announcements and after fifteen minutes of talking nonsense, she finally dismisses us for our first period class.

-

'Ashton's so cute, isn't he, Sarah?' Marisa's whiny voice purrs.

My eye twitches for the umpteenth time and I'm closer to snapping my black pen.

These stupid compliments about Ashton have been going on for the whole Chemistry lesson.

Ashton's answering a question on the board and Marisa and her plastic clique have been drooling over him, always giggling when he bit his lip in confusion or scratched his head. And to make it even worse, they'll teasingly glance over at me every time they said something.

I've been trying not to let them get to me, but I have to admit it's really annoying.

'Oh my god, Ashton you're so smart!' Marisa giggles as he completes the complex equation. He smiles at her and walks over to his seat next to me, feeling happy as Larry.

'That equation was actually pretty simple. I knew that in a double-stranded DNA sample, adenine constitutes 16% of the total number of bases, so the percentage of guanine content in the double strand is-'