E i g h t
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Calliope Liu had not been having a good day.
It had already started out poorly because she had been up until the early hours of the morning the night before finishing an essay for her history class, and she was pretty sure she had answered the prompt entirely wrong. Then, Calliope went to her math class and discovered she didn't get as great of a score as she had hoped on the test she had studied hours for. All her classes seemed to drag on for hours, even more than usual. The cherry on top was Penelope informing her during lunch that they were having an emergency cheer practice straight after school, so Calliope couldn't escape back to her apartment.
So, Calliope was already in a sour mood when she got to the girl's locker room. She was trying to avoid conversations with all the other girls as she got dressed in her practice uniform. The only person she spoke to was Penelope, and even then Calliope only managed to give responses with as little words as possible.
This didn't matter as much to Penelope, who was completely content filling the silence. "You're about to walk into a disaster when you come to Academic Decathlon practice tomorrow. Without that bitch Peter there, it's like everyone's fallen apart at the seams. Who knew he was actually the glue holding our team together?"
Calliope shook her head. "What have I said about calling Peter Parker a 'bitch'?"
"I hate the fact that you two are apparently friends now," Penelope grumbled.
Overhearing the conversation, Phoebe Atkinson turned to look at Calliope and loudly questioned, "Since when are you friends with Peter Parker?"
"Because Peter's my lab partner and he's nice to me..." Calliope responded, her eyes narrowing as she frowned at her. She had to stop herself from adding on 'which is more than what I can say about you guys right now'.
"Didn't even realize Peter even had friends besides Ned," Alicia Hamilton commented in a snide tone. "He's gone all reclusive and weird ever since he got that internship at Stark. I think the only person who seems him outside of school is Ned."
"He's, like, always disappearing at random times and doesn't do any extracurriculars," Phoebe added. "I'm pretty sure he's a male escort."
"Well that's certainly a jump," Calliope remarked. "He could just have a lot going on at home on top of that Stark internship.
"Also Peter's not hot enough to be a male escort," Penelope commented. She then winced and glared at her best friend when Calliope elbowed her in the side.
"I don't get why you guys are in my business so much anyways," Calliope continued as she reached up to tighten her ponytail, trying her best to hide how annoyed she was. "I know you guys love gossip, and I do too most of time, but there's literally nothing here to talk about. I don't want to deal with that, I'd rather just focus on practice."
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By the time cheer practice was coming to a close, all Calliope wanted to do was curl in her bed and ignore everything from the outside world while she watched some sort of trashy Netflix rom com. Her annoyance with her teammates had persisted all throughout practice that afternoon, and her coach seemed to be especially on edge, snapping at the group over every miniscule mistake. It didn't help that the basketball team was practicing on the other half of the gym, and every time Calliope happened to glance over she saw Cole leering at her.
However, as Calliope would discover, her escape from cheer practice wouldn't come quite as easily as she had hoped.
"Hey! Hey, Calliope!"
Calliope tried to run out the gym doors and pretend she didn't hear Cole. However, he stepped in Calliope's pathway and blocked her from escaping. Penelope looked as if she wanted to run out the gym as well, but Calliope grabbed her arm to keep her there for moral support. "Cole," Calliope managed to say through gritted teeth. "What's up? What are you doing here?"
And when can you leave?
"Figured I'd run into you here, and I wanted to talk to you about something," He said with a smile that didn't seem to be genuine in the slightest. "Do you have any plans for Homecoming?"
No. No.
Calliope wanted to melt into the floor. Or spontaneously combust. She even started wishing that a random alien spaceship would appear in the sky, shoot only her down, and then fly away without harming anything else. Just anything to get her out of this conversation.
"Why do you want to know?" Calliope managed to say, already dreading what the Cole's answer.
Unfortunately for her, Cole asked, "I was wondering if you would be my date for the Homecoming dance."
Just kill her now.
A part of her just wanted to skate around the question, avoid giving him an answer, and hope that Cole forgot about her. The fact that this was happening in such a public space certainly wasn't helping matters. But a part of Calliope knew that if she wasn't upfront now, Cole would just never take the hint and keep persisting, no matter how much she kept trying to imply she wasn't interested.
So, she took a deep breath and mentally prepared herself for the conversation that was about to unfold. "Well...I'm going to Homecoming. Just not with you."
Cole's face dropped, and Penelope didn't bother to hide her snort of laughter. "What do you mean?" He questioned as if the word 'no' was something foreign to him that he didn't understand, which didn't sound too far off from the truth.
Calliope loudly sighed and slowly responded, "I don't want to go to Homecoming as your date."
Cole's eyebrows furrowed together, likely because he was having difficulty processing the fact that not every girl in the universe wanted to go on a date with him "Why not?"
"Because I actually want to have fun that night."
Penelope laughed out loud at this, and Cole's face dropped. "But you won't even have a date that night," He stupidly pointed out.
"Since when do I need to have a date to have fun at a dance? What if I just want to hang out with my friends?"
Cole rolled his eyes, and Penelope inched forward and started to raise her hand as if she was about to slap him. Calliope had to grab Penelope's hand and physically force it down, but that became significantly more difficult when Cole said, "I just don't get you."
Calliope's eyebrows furrowed together. "I don't know what there is about me to 'get'."
"Well there's this whole thing with Homecoming. But there's also the fact you seem to care more about art and cheer than any of the actually useful classes. I don't even know what you do around here."
"I'm in the computer animation program, assho,e," Calliope glared. "Have been since freshman year. There's a pretty heavy art component that comes along with that."
"The highly selective computer animation program!" Penelope chimed in behind her.
Cole, unsurprisingly, didn't seem that impressed. "That program is still a thing here?"
"We literally just got a huge National award for it."
"I still don't get why you want to go to a science school when all you want to do is draw," Cole said. Calliope's chest felt like it was twisting in on itself, "I've seen your little doodles around a lot. They're cute, but I don't get why you think it's so special."
"They're not doodles. It's my art. It's not just this cute little thing that I do."
"Yeah, okay," He scoffed, and Calliope had to fight back the urge to kick him to the ground. "Your art – whatever. That program is still a piece of cake compared to engineering. Your work is easy, I don't get why you're saying it's so highly selective."
"Isn't half the job of an engineer drawing diagrams and designing?" Penelope loudly questioned. "Or am I hallucinating?"
Cole glared at Penelope, and she held her middle finger up in return.
Calliope let out a loud sigh and chose not to entertain this ridiculous conversation with Cole anymore. She didn't feel like fighting about something she was passionate about and keep trying to justify herself to Cole.
It didn't mean Calliope still didn't have to be pissed about the whole interaction, though.
"I'm leaving now," She informed him with a glare, already beginning to stomp towards the gym door as she shouted over her shoulder, "And in case it wasn't clear, hell will have to freeze over before I even entertain the thought of going to a school dance with someone like you."
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a/n:
hi guys !!
i really aspire to be like calliope in the fact that she just doesn't take any bullshit. like i get walked over Way Too Easy and calliope is not about that and i love her for it.
i hope you all enjoyed the chapter and have a lovely day !! i'll see you at the next update !!
- g ♡