Connected

Chapter XX

He quickly turned back and waved. The people in the car waved back. A man smiled wide. It seemed like he was Eddie's father. In the back, there was a teenage girl, who looked at Eddie heartbroken and me with jealousy. Hmm. It was pretty obvious who she was.

After about a minute, they drove off, leaving Eddie here.

"Come on, let's go to class." I dragged him along, though I knew we didn't have the same class.

He asked me about how Mom was. She was doing well. I was glad she was doing better. The only bad thing was that now she had to stay in the hospital for about a month and a half. So, until May, No one would be at home except for me.

Though I talked to my favorite guys this morning, I still felt really tired and unenthusiastic.

"I wanna go home." I mumbled as I came to my locker. I grabbed my Biology book and started walking to class.

"Already? Classes didn't even start." Eddie chuckled from beside me.

"That still doesn't change the fact that I want to go home."

"Whatever makes you sleep at night." He mumbled. I chuckled.

"Alright then, I'll see you later."

"Yup. bye." I waved at him, only to see him wave back. I sat at my seat and waited for class to start.

I quickly grabbed my notebook and laptop from my bag and opened them on my desk. I wrote the date on the top left corner of the page and continued to write the heading, whatever Ms. Beatrice said she would teach yesterday.

In the process, my pen stopped working. I've always hated when that happens. I started to shake it violently (lke any normal person would), but my pen fell down. I bent down to pick it up, when I realized that someone was standing right in front of me. I looked up.

My eyes widened at the sight.

"I-I-I'm s-sorry." Ryan's bottom lip was quivering as if he was going to cry at that moment. His eyes showed a sense of fear that I don't know where it came from. But even worse, his face was bruised. He was definitely beaten up, to state the obvious. I was shocked to say the least.

I didn't know what to say. Instead of saying anything like, "It's okay," I looked down at my lap, facing the screen. I didn't even nod. I heard him leave, probably going to sit all the way in the back.

I bit my lip, thinking about who would beat him up. About why he would say sorry in the first place.

Ms. Beatrice walked into the class at that moment, partially bring me back from my thoughts. I was still taking notes and listening in class, but it was still there at the back of my mind.

~~~

"Do you wanna come over today?" I snapped out of my thoughts. I smiled at Eddie, but as soon as it came, it turned into a frown. I groaned and held my head. "What happened?" He asked me,

"I have a math test tomorrow and I hate it. Ugh. I don't understand anything." I took my phone out of my pocket to check what other homework I had to do (and checking if Tiger texted me or anything). I still had English homework, as well as studying for the Math test. There were no texts from Tiger, though.

"I could help you. After a little studying, we could watch a movie or something. Then go back to studying?" He held my hand as we continued to walk to his car.

"Sounds fine with me. As long as you promise to teach me something useful for the test." He chuckled. Last time we decided to study, he started geeking out about how cool integration and differentiation in Physics was.