I sit at my usual table in the library, right beside the large windows behind the nonfiction section.
I'm working on a project for math, and it's really boring. Henry was with me last period, but he had to leave for soccer practice when school ended. So I'm alone.
I look up when I hear someone coming up to my table. It's Chris.
"Oh. Hi, Chris."
"Hi, Audrey."
"What are you doing here?"
He tosses his bag down onto the table and takes the other seat. He fishes in his bag and pulls out a rectangular object.
"Reading."
I smirk. Okay, then. I move to look at which book it is. It's Fifty Shades of Gray.
Didn't catch that? IT'S FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY.
Holy fuck.
Mother of shit.
Wow, I would never have pegged him for liking...
Before he can retaliate, I grab my phone off the table next to my calculator and snap a photo.
Chris yelps. "What the hell, woman?"
I shrug. "It's in case I ever need to blackmail you." He just looks confused.
"What?"
"Blackmail." I try to explain what it means. "It's like when you have dirt on somebody. Do you seriously not know what blackmail is? Say, for example, you send someone your nudes, and then they save them and threaten you later. Like, if you don't buy me a Dr. Pepper, I'll send your nudes to the school. I dunno. Is that a bad example?"
Chris looks at me like I'm crazy. "I'm not gonna send my nudes to anyone, Audrey."
And of course my dumbass brain hears, "I'm not gonna send my nudes to anyone else, Audrey."
And so my face turns red until I squeak out, "You're gonna send me your nudes?"
He leans quickly away from me. "No!" He yelps. "That's the exact opposite of what I said."
"But you..."
Oh god. Oh fuck. Abort mission right now.
"Gotta go! Bye! Smell you later!" I say before sprinting out of the library, not even bothering to grab my math notebook or my calculator.
I hear him call from behind me in a teasing voice, "Smell you later? When the hell did it become the nineties?"
I run out of the library, not looking where I'm going, and immediately slam into someone.
"JESUS FUCKING SHIT!" I yell. I crash onto the ground.
I look up to see dark hair. The person's tall frame reminds me of when I tripped into someone very recently. But then I look closer at the figure.
It's the principal.
"Ah, fuck," I whisper.
***
The next day, I'm sitting in detention after school, twiddling my thumbs, when Jack walks into the room.
He does a quick double take when he sees me, but then ignores me and sits at one of the desks in the back.
It's just us and a girl with green highlights in her black hair who's fiddling with an Exacto knife and glaring at the teacher with a look that makes me turn right back around.
Mental note: don't get on her bad side. But I'm not even going to lie, part of me wants to be best friends with her so that she can be my personal bodyguard and kill all the people who annoy me.
A teacher walks into the room and looks at the three of us disapprovingly.
"Attendance," he announces. "Emily Francesco. Here for threatening a boy with a knife."
I turn to the other girl. She folds her arms defensively, not explaining her actions. I wonder what he did to make her threaten him, but I don't want to invade her privacy by asking.
She raises a quick finger to indicate her presence.
"Jack Golden. For attacking another student and a faculty member."
But Football was the one who threw the punch that hit her, not Jack.
Jack leans back in his seat, and I turn my gaze to the front to avoid looking at him.
"Here. But, for the record, I wasn't the one who punched the teacher. That was Joshua," he echoes my thoughts.
So I was right about Jack being the guy in the fight. I guess Joshua is the jock guy. Number 8, or whatever it was.
The teacher looks up from behind his glasses.
"You both fought, so you will both get equal punishment. In this case, three weeks worth of detention. His detention will be done separately as community service to prevent further scuffles. Oh, and there will be a meeting with your parents."
Is it just me, or does Jack's face pale slightly?
"Lastly, Audrey Parker." I raise my hand. "Here for using foul language directed at a teacher."
"It was one-" I complain.
"Miss Parker-"
"An entire week of detention!?" I let out, speaking what's been bursting to come out since I got here.
The teacher looks up. "According to this paper-" he flourishes the paper around in the air a couple of times, plus a couple extra for dramatic effect, "You were rude and disrespectful. Seems fair to me."
"You've got to be kidding me. This is anything but fair. I have more important stuff to do than sit here with you and them." I indicate the two other students in the room. I get that technically I have no reason to be mean to them but I'm feeling like shit right now.
The teacher raises an eyebrow. "Watch your tone. Children these days..." He makes a noise of annoyance before adjusting his glasses. My head flops into my hands.
"Okay, feel free to work on homework. Only-" he adds, seeing Jack reach for his phone- "Genuine homework. No computers, no telephones, no electronic devices."
We sit in silence for the rest of the hour.
***
Jack actually shows up to poetry class for the first time in two weeks. He didn't show up in the week leading up to the fight, and now, almost a week after, his face is bruised and he's walking with a slight limp. Joshua must've fucked him up. Still, he looks almost as handsome as he always does. Somehow.
"Hey, girl who bumped into me," Jack greets.
I raise my eyebrow at him as he takes a seat. "That's not my name."
He chuckles, but not kindly. "Then enlighten me. What is your name?"
Wait, he doesn't know? I thought we were working on a group project. We've been doing this for what? Two weeks? How could he not know my name...
"Audrey," I tell him pointedly.
"Audrey?" He repeats incredulously, with a snarky laugh.
Ouch. "I like my name, thank you very much." I defend.
"Huh." He takes out his computer and flips it open. I glance away quickly from his screen to avoid invading his privacy. I look back and see that his background is a dog.
"What?" He asks defensively. "Did you think this was going to open up on straight-up porn? Or maybe the spooky Dark Web?" He wiggles his fingers mockingly. I think he's teasing me.
"No." Kind of.
I look over and he's pulling up the doc we have on the poetry assignment.
I tug at the sleeve of my shirt awkwardly, then open my computer as well.
"Audrey. Look. Someone changed our Wikipedia article back to normal."
I turn to Jack, looking at what he's pointing to on his screen.
"Shit. They did."
He makes a tsk-ing noise. "That's a lot of progress erased. Willy Shakeswhore doesn't deserve this."
I nod. "Yeah. It almost makes me want to rewrite everything. Except that would take up time, and I think we'd better get started on this thing. Plus, Miss Spencer said that she would do routine progress checks."
Jack turns to look at me. "What makes you think I care?"
I raise my hands up. "This is worth half our grade!" I defend.
He lets out a short laugh. "Yeah. Half our grade for Poetry. Trust me, I'll be okay if I fail this."
"But..." I look at him, confused. "What about your future?"
"I'm not going to be a poet. Don't worry."
"Then what do you want to be?"
"Look, Audrey-" he breaks off suddenly, "Yeah, you know what? This isn't going to work. I'm calling you A."
There's something familiar in that... I can't quite place it. Maybe it has something to do with me thinking I've seen him before the bumping-into-him incident. I make a mental note of the deja vu.
"A?" I repeat, ignoring the not-friends part. I thought we'd been getting along well last class. "And may I ask why?"
"You tell me," he says mysteriously, making me knit my brows in utter confusion.
"You can't just call people random nicknames that don't make any sense," I exclaim. "It's insulting. There has to at least be an explanation for it."
He thinks for a second. "Oh, don't worry. It makes sense to me," He says with a smirk. "Also, I didn't insult you. I insulted your name."
"I don't let anyone insult me other than my friends."
"Guess I have to become your friend then, A."
He turns back to his computer, leaving me gaping at him. Benefit of the doubt or not, no way am I going to let him become my friend.