I was quite certain that I had something on my face. Either it was that or that the copy of Madame Bovary in my hands was so ugly that it was a magnet for judgmental eyes. As I tilted my head, reconsidering, I realized that it was probably a combination of both. It wasn't my fault that my acne decided to act up today nor that the lady on the cover was mind-numbingly homely. I sent Olivia, who was walking beside me and holding in a snicker, a flat look and stuffed the book in my backpack.
"You happy?" I asked Olivia, rolling my eyes.
She nodded enthusiastically. "At least I don't have to look at two ugly faces now."
"You're such a bitch." I elbowed her in the side hard even though I had a smile on my face. "Anyway, I'm getting new contacts so that I don't have to wear glasses everywhere."
Olivia stopped in her tracks. "Oh my gosh, really?" Her face brightened. It was absolutely frightening that she was more excited for me than I was myself.
I cleared my throat and glanced around. "Yeah. I've already got an appointment for later next week. Where's Lila, by the way?"
"Oh, she told me she and Luc were running late. They'll be here in a couple minutes." Olivia fidgeted with her fingers, biting her lip. I tried really hard to suppress my smirk, but it didn't work out very well. From the way that Olivia turned slightly redder, I could tell that she'd seen me.
This was the drill every time anything related to Luc came up in conversation. Olivia would either turn a tomato red that resembled my skin whenever I got a sunburn, stutter as if she didn't know how to talk, or studiously avoiding eye contact. And then, Lila and I would try our hardest to make her life like hell—which was, in our defense, very amusing.
I rolled my eyes at her. "You know you're, like, blindingly red right now, right?"
She shook her head and elbowed me jokingly, although her cheeks were still extremely bright. "Shut up."
"You know, all you have to do is confess your affinity for him, and that would make everyone's a whole lot easier." I shrugged my backpack over my shoulder again. Less people were staring at me now, which was lovely, so I focused my attention back to Olivia. "I mean, I know it'll probably kill you, but if you don't do it soon, we all are going to die of second-hand embarrassment on your behalf."
"Just be quiet, okay?" Olivia elbowed me so hard that I stumbled my way into the English Lit classroom.
I held my side as I fake-limped to my desk. "When are Lila and Luc coming again?"
In retrospect, as I yanked out my chair and collapsed in it, groaning in response to my teacher's greeting, I realized that I really should not have said that.
↔
True to her word, Lila showed up in class about ten minutes late with her brother in tow.
"Hey, what did I miss?" she whispered as she slid into her seat next to me. Ducking her head, she avoided the teacher's disapproving stare and pulled out her notebook, like the rest of us had already done.
I shrugged. Two seats away on my other side, Olivia sat, attentively partaking in the book discussion of The Iliad. I turned back to Lila. "You should have seen Olivia earlier. Like, when she was forced to bring up your brother, it was so funny."
Lila snickered. "Oh my gosh, I wish I was there," she whispered back. Pulling out her Iliad, she set her stuff on her desk. "So, what did I miss?"
Since the teacher's attention was focused on some other smart kid who, unlike me, knew what he was doing, I muttered out of the side of my mouth, "Just some bullshit about how great The Iliad is and a huge project that's due in three weeks. No real biggie."
The smart kid stopped talking, and I immediately clamped my mouth shut and tried to write some of what he'd said down. As I scribbled down what I could remember—which wasn't very much, considering that I had a very one-track mind—I raised an eyebrow at the words that I was writing. Scintillating? Rich description of the primal nature of man in war? What the hell was the kid on?
My eyes swept the room and finally rested on Luc Mercier, who looked absolutely fascinated by the teacher's rant about how genius Homer was. I wrinkled my nose. What a try-hard.
Then, a stinging pain in my arm completely distracted me. I whipped myself in the face with my own hair when I turned my head to Lila, who didn't look guilty at all as she still held her very pointy pencil.
"That hurts!" I hissed to her. "What now?"
"What's going on?" She blinked demurely at me like a confused kitten. She pointed at my notebook, wiggling her eyebrows. "Please?"
Aside from sparing her a single disdainful look, I felt no desire to hand my notes over to her like she expected. "Why don't you listen and write down some for yourself?"
Lila sighed so loudly that the teacher shot the two of us a suspicious look. With a wide-eyed look, she waited until the teacher decided to direct her attention on Luc, her brother, who probably had another ingenious remark to make about the lyrical flow of the stanzas of the book or something as sophisticated.
"You're such a party pooper," she complained, writing down the few scribbles she did see from my notebook, regardless of my efforts to hide them from her.
I shrugged her off and raised my hand, earning myself a four second respite from her antics by answering a question about Agamemnon (whose name I could almost never spell). A couple seats in front of me, Luc turned around and looked at the entire back row, eyes resting on me for a split second. Or maybe it was Olivia. I couldn't really tell.
I finished my thought about Agamemnon. The teacher actually looked pleased and pleasantly surprised—like she didn't know I was capable of forming intelligent analyses. My smile turned into a frown. Did I really come off as that dumb?
And Luc, that jackass, initiating eye contact with me again, raised his hand, probably just out of spite. "Actually," he said when the teacher nodded at him, "Agamemnon has a close bond with his brother, Menelaus. His quick temper causes him to act otherwise and to create problems for himself."
I bit my tongue and sank down in my seat. There was something about Luc Mercier that made me feel like everything I did was very insignificant in comparison. It was very annoying because I knew that I couldn't really compete—but whatever. Luc was so much like his sister with his off-handed intelligence. They were both so smart but always forgot that the rest of the world didn't operate on the same wavelength—which was so fucking aggravating.
But of course, I couldn't tell Lila that.
"Your brother is an ass," I muttered out of the corner of my mouth to Lila.
"Yeah, tell me about it," she whispered back, taking the opportunity to copy down my notes while I was distracted with her brother.
"I have no idea why Olivia likes him."
What a lie. To be fair, I had to admit that Luc had the four B's—brains, brawn, beauty, and bravado. The latter part of his person tended to make me want to disregard the first three.
I underlined the word "brutal" three times in my notes and dropped my pencil on my notebook.
Life was so not fair.
↔
At break, I sat in one of the lounge chairs in the library, eyebrows scrunched as I tried to read the copyright page of my very tattered copy of Madame Bovary. Olivia had long abandoned me, declaring that she couldn't stand to be seen with a nerd like me. I hoped she was kidding but I did have a feeling that she really meant it. Lila, on the other hand, had a legit excuse to leave me, much to my disappointment: she had a meeting with her counselor.
Now, all I had to do was hope that no one would see me and give me a couple more reasons to give up from my French reading project—aside from the fact that I could barely understand the book, a relatively minor issue, of course.
As usual, my hopes didn't play out in reality.
Nolan, a guy I knew from one of the clubs that I attended casually called Classic Rock Appreciation Club, plopped himself down next to me and glanced at the page with me. I had the urge to slam the book closed, but then I remembered that the cover was even uglier than the print inside, which was a slightly problematic. Resigned, I sighed and pushed up my glasses.
"What's going on here?" he asked, scanning the page. His expression soon morphed into the same that I had on currently—that of utter confusion and frustration.
"Just my current...project," I answered slowly. I could feel my face getting warmer.
Nolan whistled. "If that's what they're making you do in French..." His voice trailed off when one of the seniors at a nearby table sent him a dirty look.
"Uh uh," I said. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks as I stumbled to find a non-nerdy-sounding answer (to a rather innocuous question). "My personal project. I wanted to test my knowledge of French." And also my tolerance of ugly books. So far, I learned that this tolerance was pretty much non-existent.
"Hm." He looked down at the page for a couple more seconds. "That sounds absolutely fascinating. I'll probably just leave you to that..." He stood up, presumably to leave.
"Hey," I said quickly, holding my hand out. All right, maybe I was a little desperate for company. "Wait. How's lacrosse going?"
He was the one who played lacrosse with Luc and some other guys, I thought. (It was either he or Ty. Or something.)
Nolan shrugged. "Not as shabby as last year. I think we actually have a chance at states if we keep going at this rate. Coach says we'll have to step up our game. My leg's been hurting, though, so I don't know if I can play next game." He shook his head.
"It's gonna be okay, Noe," I said in the most comforting tone I could conjure. From the look that he gave me, the nickname that I'd invented on the spot for him was pushing it. Holding in my breath, I winced and glanced in the opposite direction of Nolan. Why was there nothing interesting going on?
But Luc's name had popped up again, which made me think. Why did he have to be such an ideal college applicant? He could speak French fluently, write eloquent essays about environmental science, and play a varsity sport well. At this rate, when I was outshone by people like him, the only place I'd be attending after Excelsior Prep High was a community college.
By the time I looked back up to say something to Nolan, he'd already disappeared.
"Nice," I muttered to myself.
I had a couple minutes of peace. I spent that time very productively—that is, trying to beat the next level of Angry Birds on my phone. That peace was broken the moment Olivia plopped herself down on the armrest of my chair, clutching a textbook in one arm.
I squeaked and hurriedly tucked my phone under my thigh.
"How's that going?" she asked, looking all too amused as she peeked over my shoulder. "I'm actually surprised you haven't given up yet."
Scowling at her, I crossed my arms across my chest. "Just shut up, will you? I wish someone who could, like, actually understand French was sitting here with me."
At that moment, there was a little commotion as a group of sweaty jocks entered the library. I knew they'd probably stink up the place within minutes, so I stood up, scrunching my face, and began to gather my books. Olivia stood by to wait for me. But as I was stuffing my copy of The Iliad into my backpack, I noticed that her attention was way too focused on the jocks, and I looked up.
Was that Luc? I rolled my eyes and pulled on her arm. "Come on, we don't have time for this."
"Well, I think we can spare a couple minutes." She looked back at me with a little smile.
I shook my head. My nose had an embarrassingly low tolerance for bad odors.
Olivia crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. "Don't you wanna hang with one of the hot jocks?"
I felt my face heat up, and I responded defensively, "Now that was from freshman year. The appeal wears off after many years of constant exposure. Plus, anyway, I need to go finish up reading the title page of this book. It's very important."
"Many years?" Olivia scoffed. Without giving me a second glance, she just took off.
My mouth dropped open. Although I didn't want to feel any more second-hand embarrassment than necessary, I was too starved for company to let her leave. "Wait!" I called as I scurried after her. "After a couple of years! Not several years!"
Luckily for us, the guys had spread out, and Luc had taken over one entire table for himself. That was fantastic I didn't think I could deal with more than one lacrosse geek at a time, especially in my frazzled state of mind. I nearly collided with Olivia as I skidded to a stop dangerously close to the edge of the table.
(They were fatal, I swore.)
As we stood next to Luc, I realized that I had never seen Olivia acting so much like Lila—a deer in headlights. Lila always clammed up whenever an adult made eye contact with her for more than three seconds, and here Olivia was now.
"Hey," said Luc as he flipped through a textbook and glanced up at us. "Do you need something?"
Of course, Olivia couldn't say anything when he was making eye contact with her. After a couple seconds, I realized this conversation was really going nowhere. I couldn't take any more awkwardness even though I needed Olivia to keep me company. Did Olivia even have a specific purpose in mind when she approached him? Casually nudging her toward the entrance of the library, I spoke up for her.
I cleared my throat. "Hi Luc! Olivia just wanted to say hi." Olivia sent me a scorching glare, but I continued on anyway. "And I think that's it! She has to go!"
Luc also gave me a look. (To be fair, I was an awful actress.) Fortunately for both me and Olivia, she scampered off after a three second pause and a moment of eye contact with me, and I was now left with one very annoying and sweaty jock.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Luc raised an eyebrow at me.
"You might as well sit down," he said. I took the seat across from him. "What was that all about? You're not her mother."
It was truly aggravating when he sounded so condescending like that. "Shut up. Olivia has...confidence issues." I winced when I realized how stupid that sounded—not to mention that I was making Olivia sound a lot less awesome than she actually was. And I was saying all of this to her crush!
Thankfully, Luc didn't continue on that thread. Maybe he was too tired or maybe he deemed my choice of conversation annoying. He opened a notebook. "What were you doing in here?"
"Oh." I reached into my backpack and pulled out Madame Bovary. "I was trying to read this. It wasn't going very far."
When Luc frowned at the front cover, I realized just how ugly it looked again and quickly placed it face down on the table. Much to my consternation, he actually took it and examined the cover. "Interesting reading choice," he commented after a little observation.
Was he judging me already?
"Yeah, I know I absolutely suck at French compared to you—" I started to say, but then I cut myself off. Was it just the influence of the bookish, inspirational environment around me or was I having a truly brilliant thought now?
Before I could voice my idea, Luc said sarcastically, looking up from his notebook, "And do you, lowly French student, seek my help?"
I jumped on his train of thought immediately. "In fact, that's exactly what I had in mind! You, Luc Mercier, should totally help me read this book." The idea of it sounded better and better as the words continued to spill out of my mouth. "That would be absolutely brilliant. And by the way, I won't take no for an answer."
This was the first moment in my life that I had ever seen Luc Mercier, asshole extraordinaire, struck speechless.
Mission accomplished.
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Hi guys!
We get to see more of Audrey's personality as well as her interaction with her gang, which is fun. What do you think?
If you read the original versions, you'll be able to tell that I drastically changed a lot of this chapter, hopefully for the better! This also means that a lot of the context of the book from here on out will be very different too, so that's exciting.
Thank you for all your support, I love you guys, and see you soon!