"Do I really have to go?" I asked for the tenth time in a desperate attempt to sound convincing.
My mom looked at me with the same sympathetic smile that she'd given me the nine times before. "Yes, sweetie. Trust me, it will be good for you."
"I don't need to go back to high school. I already graduated."
"I know that, but I'm worried about you. Just try, for me?" She leaned against the counter across from me and gave me a look, pleading me to go through with this even though I knew that I had no choice in this. She didn't need my permission to force me into this, and I didn't need to be okay with it. I wasn't okay with it.
I rolled my eyes at her and then quickly scarfed down the rest of my bowl of cereal in hopes that eating away my nerves somehow might work. "I'm going to be miserable, I hope you know that."
"You'll make friends," She assured me, going back to putting away the last of the clean dishes.
"Yeah. Who doesn't want to be friends with the freaky genius new girl?" I muttered sarcastically as I put my now empty cereal bowl in the sink beside my tall mother.
"Stupid people," She smiled, wiping her hands on her jeans as she leaned against the counter beside me. "Besides, Luke will be there. He'll help you out."
"I don't need my overly charismatic brother pushing his friends onto me out of sympathy," I argued with a look of distaste. I was sure that Luke had nice friends and everything, but I could see him paying them off to be nice to me or to hang out with me or something just so that it would look like I had friends. I really didn't want that to happen though.
My mom laughed with a bright smile as if she wasn't worried about my impending doom at all. "You'll be fine. Put some effort into this though, at least for a month. If you want to quit then, I'll pull you out. Deal?"
I nodded at her but I was still very hesitant. "Fine, whatever. It's not like I have a choice."
She kissed my forehead like she did when she knew that she'd won an argument. "That's the spirit, Lindsay," Looking at the time, she realized that it was almost time for us to be getting to school so she rushed over to the stairs to yell for my brother. "Luke, let's go!"
Seconds later, Luke came rushing down the stairs with his school bag slung over his shoulder. All three of us shared the same dark colored brown hair but I think that Luke's was darker than mine just by a little bit. He was taller than me, even though he was minutes younger but other than that, we looked a lot alike; thin brown eyes, small noses, we even had the same long smile.
"And you don't even have to do well in your classes, that's not what I care about at all. Just make some friends," My mother added, as if that helped me think better of the situation. It didn't.
"That works for me too, right?" Luke asked as he was running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make it look less like a tangled mop on top of his head.
"You haven't graduated yet," My mother reminded him. "Once you graduate, you're more than welcome to go back and flunk every class. First time around, though, it's school before friends."
"Not fair," He claimed, but he knew that he would never win that argument, and quickly gave it up.
I gave him a small glare because he didn't realize how good he had it. "At least you don't have to do it twice."
"Yeah, whatever. Come on, we have to go now or we'll be late," Luke informed me that it was go time. I was going back to high school even though I'd already graduated so many years before. My mom didn't think that I had any friends, and she was right, because I might know everything but one thing that can't be learned is how to talk to people. The one thing that Luke excelled at, I just couldn't get right.
Hopping off of the stool that I was sitting on, I followed Luke towards the door. "Bye, mom."
"I'll see you guys tonight. Have fun, and really try to make some friends, please."
"Yeah, yeah." I grumbled bitterly just so that she definitely saw how unhappy I was about her forcing me back into high school.
Once we got outside to Luke's car, I got into the backseat because I knew that he planned on picking up one of his high school buddies to ride with us to school and I didn't mind letting that guy get the front seat. I had a car too but I didn't want to drive. It didn't make sense to drive two cars to the same place anyway.
"So are you going to join a club or a sport or anything?" Luke asked me as we pulled out of the drive way.
"No," I scoffed at just the idea of trying to force myself into a group of people like that. I would flounder in a group setting like I have done so many times before.
"Why not? You'd kill it at just about anything that you tried out for."
I shrugged and looked out the window, desperately thinking of an excuse as to why I can't go into the school. I knew that I'd told my mother that I'd try but I was starting to regret that now. "I won't be here long, Mom said it'd be just a month. And I'd look like a freak."
"Well, you are a freak. Embrace it." He suggested and when he could tell that he wasn't helping at all, he added, "It's really not that bad, Lindsay."
"Yeah, for you, Luke. You're the popular quarterback of the football team and you have a bazillion friends. You are the cliche that has a great time in high school. Me, on the other hand, am a socially awkward nerd and in all of the movies, we're the ones that are miserable until graduation."
"Oh, c'mon. You are one of the world's smartest people and you're saying that you can't survive high school?"
I shook my head in the negative. "Correction. I am the smartest person in the world. And you cannot learn spontaneity."
"What does that even mean?" He wondered cluelessly, pulling into his friend, Jack's, driveway and honking the horn.
"It means that the generations change and so do the people, depending on where you go. So no amount of knowledge can predict how one group of people function, especially at this age when personalities are rapid and vary exponentially." I explained. "That's basic anthropology."
I assumed that he rolled his eyes from where he was sitting in front of me, because he did that a lot when I rambled. "Pessimistic much?"
I shrugged, leaning back in my seat. "Realistic."
I watched Jack leave his house and then he was hurrying towards the car and when he got close enough to see me, he looked a bit confused at first.
"Uh, hey, Lindsay. What are you doing here?" He asked, getting into the passenger side of the car. Jack was nice, I guess. I would see him around my house when Luke brought him over since they're really good friends, but we barely talked. I barely talked to anybody outside of my mom and Luke, really.
"Going to school, of course," I said with a sarcastic chirp in my voice. The only way that I was going to survive this experience is by coping with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
"That's cool," He still seemed surprised, and confused, because he knew that I'd already graduated high school.
"Our mom's making her do it," Luke explained. "Because she thinks that Lindsay's too antisocial."
"Even though I'm the perfect amount of antisocial," I added to the story in my defense.
Jack nodded, pretending to understand. "Oh, well that makes sense, I guess."
Once we started getting closer to the school, I began to get even more anxious. "You don't have to help me, Luke. I've memorized the map, and my classes." I explained to my brother, who I knew would try to walk me to my classes and introduce me to his classmates, which I really didn't want him to do.
"Lindsay, I don't mind. Really," He promised with a long sigh because the days that had come before this one, we'd had this same conversation.
I really didn't want him to introduce me to his friends. From what I could tell, they were loud and too energetic all of the time. They were very enthusiastic about incredibly simple things that I just didn't understand. I didn't want to hurt his feelings by insulting his friends, so I couldn't just say 'I don't like your friends.' Especially with Jack in the car with us.
Luke pulled into a parking spot in the student parking lot and I prepared myself for battle. I grabbed my new school bag and, with Luke and Jack, we got out of the car and headed into the school's warzone.
"I'll see you later, Luke." I said quickly, so that I could leave Luke and Jack to go find their friends before classes started and I was free to not have to be around their loud group of friends. He tried to tell me that I should stay with him to help me get through the school but I just walked into the school at a rapid pace to keep my distance from my brother. I kept my head down, trying to avoid any eye contact with anybody. I really just wanted to get this over with.
Finding my locker was easy so I opened it and took out my stuff from my bag like my notebooks, agenda, and some pencils before I decided to start heading to the right classroom. I wanted to get there early, so that I could get a seat in the back of the room to keep the attention off of me.
I turned a corner to get to my first period class, maybe a little too quickly, and slammed my head into something... or, someone? I stumbled back a step and looked up to see a guy standing over me looking a little amused yet also a little bit annoyed. With the impact of the collision, I had dropped all of my books and they fell to my feet, scattering on the tile floor of the hallway.
"Sorry," I muttered quickly, bending down to pick up the books.
The stranger laughed first and bent down to help me with the books. "Don't worry about it," We quickly gathered all of my books and stood back up. Before I could leave with what dignity I had left, he spoke again, noticing the notebooks that I had written all of my classes on to stay organized. "AP calc? These are some intense classes. Are you a senior?"
"Er... a freshman, I think. I'm not entirely sure what I am," I admitted.
He raised his eyebrows at me, looking very skeptical. "You're a freshman taking AP calc?"
I nodded and bit my bottom lip. I wasn't sure what I would technically be considered because I had already graduated, I'm just returning to make friends but I still had to take classes so I signed up for the hardest ones they could offer in an attempt to be at least a little bit challenging for me. It was my first year here though, so I guess that would technically make me a freshman even though I'm the same age as all of the seniors. Not sure how to explain all of this to a stranger in only a few seconds, I decided not to even try. "I should go," I said, rushing past him and down the hall again. I stopped when I heard his voice yelling for me from behind.
"Wait, hang on!" He called.
I didn't want to stop-- I wanted to run the rest of the way to my class. However, my ingrained manners prevailed so I turned back around to face him. "Yes?" I asked as he caught up with me.
"I didn't catch your name." He reminded me with a confident smile, like he thought that I must have accidentally forgotten to give him my name and that I didn't purposefully leave that out.
"That's because I didn't give it." I explained slowly. "And I don't feel like I should. I mean, you find me attractive and that is bad, so I think I'd rather just get to my class."
He looked surprised and I didn't blame him. I knew that I had a terrible habit of being too blunt with people but I couldn't help it. I just made observations, I couldn't understand which observations were supposed to be secrets or which ones were okay to say out loud so I just said them all out loud. "You're a mind reader?"
I shook my head no. "I can read the involuntary signals on your face. Your eyes move back and forth rapidly, but it's unnoticed to an untrained eye. You're mouth wavers and twitches, just stuff like that."
He gave me a curious look, like he was looking at a science experiment. "So, you can tell me how I'm feeling?"
I nodded. Great, I'm already the freaky genius girl and I hadn't even been at the school for half an hour. I should have just stayed with Luke, or at least not stopped to talk to this guy. "I know how you feel, what you're thinking, if you're lying, your every move before you do it."
"Just because of my face?"
I nodded and remained silent. This would all be easier if I just didn't say anything. Every time that I opened my mouth, I just made things worse.
"So who are you?" He asked.
I could tell that not only was he fascinated and amused, he was also a little bit nervous after my explanations. "Now you're afraid of me. That's exactly what I need right now," I sighed sarcastically, wishing that I would just stop talking.
"So, your name?" He asked again.
I didn't want to tell him but I guess I was already screwed. "Lindsay. Lindsay Wilson."
He squinted at me. "As in Luke Wilson?"
"Wilson is a common name," I said tightly, not really wanting to be associated with my brother. I loved him, but people would start thinking that we were alike and we really weren't. We were twins, but I didn't want anybody to expect anything from me because they know Luke. When he didn't say anything, I finally responded. "He's my brother."
The bell rang, signaling five minutes before first period. "See you around?" He looked at me expectantly.
I didn't answer, I just turned around and started walking down the hallway again, keeping my head up this time to see where I was going. I easily found my first period class, fourth level French, without colliding with anymore students.
I sat in the back of the room as planned and answered a text from Luke, telling him that I made it to my first class fine. A little bit of embarrassment in the hallway, but no broken bones or tragedies so far.
I watched the seats around me fill quickly and I counted down the excruciating seconds until the bell rang again to start the first period of the day.
A young-looking male teacher walked into the room and smiled at the class. It was the middle of the year, so everybody was accustomed to the schedule now and I was a newbie. Just great. I tried to convince my mom to at least let me wait until next year, so that I could start at the beginning of the year like everybody else, but she wanted Luke to be there just in case I needed help.
"Bonjour, class. Ca va?" He asked the class of tired teenagers that weren't really paying attention to him.
He got a lot of murmurs in response, some in French but mostly in English.
"Alright. Well let's start with page 273 in the text book, go ahead and read it and then we'll discuss."
The class let out a collective groan and he laughed a little bit, feeding on their agony like most high school teachers seem to do. He couldn't really expect much enthusiasm from a bunch of teenagers at eight o'clock in the morning.
When he noticed me in the back of the class, he offered me a friendly smile. "Oh, you must be Lindsay, the new student."
I nodded and watched all of the gazes in the class turn on me as if he had just told everybody that I have two heads, and they were looking at me with that much fascination as well. What's so exciting about a student being new?
"Wilson? Are you in any relation to Luke?" He asked me with raised eyebrows. Don't people know that Wilson is a common name? Then again, I guess we do look a lot alike, so maybe that was a clue as well.
"I'm his sister," I confessed, trying not to sound awkward but I was clearly uncomfortable, and I was sure that they could all tell that.
"Okay, well tell us a bit about yourself."
I thought for a minute but I still had no idea what to say. When I told that boy about me earlier this morning, I freaked him out. I didn't want to repeat that mistake by telling these people too much about myself. "My name is Lindsay Wilson." That was enough... right?
"Hobbies? Pets? What sports do you play?" The teacher prompted when he realized that I didn't know what else to say.
"Most of them," I answered him.
He raised his eyebrows at me, looking shocked as he blinked at me a few times. I could already tell that I should get accustomed to that look; I'd gotten it many times that day already. "You play most sports?"
I nodded in confirmation. "My best is soccer though."
"Do you speak any other languages?" The teacher continued to fire questions at me in an attempt to get to know the new girl, who didn't really want to be known.
I nodded again, thinking to myself that maybe it would have been a better idea to just lie and pretend like I was a normal person. I wasn't sure how I would do that though and it was almost impossible for me to not tell the truth, so I just went with it. They were going to think of me as a freak anyway, I might as well just cut to the chase. "All of them."
The class around me started to buzz whispers and my face turned red. It was starting already.
"So you speak French?" The teacher looked confused.
Again, I nodded even though I was screaming at myself to just shut up and lie. "Fluently."
"Si vous connaissez le français, alors pourquoi prenez-vous cette classe?" He challenged me, saying 'If you know French, then why are you taking this class?' That sort of thing happened a lot. I'd tell somebody that I know something and they'd try to prove me wrong by testing my knowledge. I didn't really mind because I always backed up my claims with the knowledge that I claimed to have.
And so I get to it to prove that I do, in fact, know how to speak French. "J'avais besoin de remplir mon calendrier. Honnêtement, je n'ai pas besoin l'une des classes que je prends. J'ai déjà tout pris." Saying, 'I had to fill my schedule. Honestly, I don't need any of the classes I'm taking. I've already taken them all.'
He nodded slowly, and so I guessed that I had won him over. "I'm impressed. I'm Mr. Jones, welcome to the class."
I sarcastically saluted him and leaned back in my chair, opening the French book to the page he'd instructed. I stayed quiet for the rest of the class, staying under the radar and when the bell rang, I got out of my chair and headed for the door.
I hurried through the hallway and turned the corners to get to the history wing. I was passing the math wing when the bell rang, signaling the start of second period.
When I got to the room of my AP U.S. History class, I paused a minute before opening the door. I stepped in and saw the teacher at the board, his head turned to face my direction when he heard the door opening.
"You're late." He snapped at me, looking very angry that I was less than a minute late to his class. This teacher was older and angrier than Mr. Jones so that made this a lot worse already. Not to mention the fact that I was never a big fan of history classes.
I frowned without really knowing how to respond to that. "Yeah, sorry. I was talking with another teacher." I said, handing him the note.
He nodded approvingly at the note and then tossed it onto the desk. "Are you new?"
I nodded in confirmation and then added, "Lindsay Wilson." He opened his mouth to speak but already knew what he was going to say so I stopped him. "Luke's sister."
"You can take a seat over there. I'm Mr. Walker." He nudged towards the back and I took a sigh of relief that I wasn't near the front so that I wasn't so easy to stare at.
As I was walking down the aisle of desks, I noticed a girl with blonde hair and bright red lips glaring at me. I saw her left eye twitch and dart to the floor, and I knew exactly what she was going to do. When I was walking past her, I jumped up, avoiding her foot that she jutted out, trying to trip me.
I gave her a small laugh just to show that she hadn't gotten to me because for some reason, that was what she was trying to do. "Thanks for the warning." I winked at her with my left eye and started laughing as I sat in the desk in the back. I wish that I wasn't the only person in that room that understood my come back. Because it was freaking hilarious.
"As I was saying." Mr. Walker continued, ignoring the incident with the other girl. "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War 2 for good. However, Nagasaki did more damage and was more tragic."
"That's inconclusive." I said quickly. Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?
Mr. Walker's head snapped up to me, a slight glare in his gaze. "Excuse me, Miss Wilson?"
"I said that's inconclusive." I repeated, gaining the eyes of all of my classmates. It was too late now, so I might as well go with it. "Nagasaki's reports aren't as conclusive as Hiroshima's. Nagasaki could only report 40,000- 75,000 immediate deaths. Hiroshima had a firm estimate of 70,000. And then there's the aftermath, people dying of radiation, burns, and cancers after the bombs. Nagasaki's rate of death only increased to an estimated 80,000 when Hiroshima spiked to 90,000- 166,000. So technically, Hiroshima did more damage."
Mr. Walker just glared at me even more intensely now but I didn't understand what I had said wrong.... Everything that I said was correct. "I see."
I frowned in confusion. "You seem angry."
"Teacher's don't like to be corrected." Somebody said to me in a 'duh' tone.
I looked up at Mr. Walker, who was still just looking at me with a very angry frown on his wrinkly face. "Well, if you don't like to be corrected, then you shouldn't say incorrect things." I said simply because it was simple. At least, it was to me.
The whole class started laughing (at me or with me, I had no idea) and I watched Mr. Walker's face go bright red, but honestly, I didn't care. Suspension would be nice, no school for a few days? Hell, yeah. Detention, however, sounded like a nightmare so maybe I should have been more polite. I was never very good at politeness either though, because people considered blunt honesty rude most of the time, which was most of the things that I said.
He continued to teach after the class calmed down from what I had said. I kept my mouth shut, too. Most of what he said was accurate, anyway. I hurried out of the room before he could talk to me so I wouldn't have to be late to my next class. I also wanted to avoid the girl who had tried to trip me before because she didn't seem like a very pleasant person to talk to.
My next class was super boring. I just zoned out as the AP calc teacher explained something that I'd learned years earlier. I could do this stuff in my sleep, yet the smartest kids in the school were barely getting it. That explained pretty much my entire life.
During lunch, I didn't really want to go into the lunch room. Too many people judging me for being a new student... no thank you. I thought of a place I could eat and I smiled to myself, knowing exactly where I wanted to go.
I grabbed a bag of chips and a water then headed down the hall. I found the art room easily and looked through the window, there wasn't a class in there, but there was a teacher at the desk in the front of the room. She looked like she was grading papers.
I knocked on the door before opening it and she looked up and smiled at me, waiting for me to explain why I had walked into her classroom.
"Can I help you with something?" She asked politely.
"Hi. I'm new here, and I- I... can I eat in here?" I asked, nervously biting my bottom lip because I was sure that she was going to say no.
The teacher was really pretty with natural auburn hair that framed her face and showed off her perfectly white teeth as she smiled at me. She seemed nice but that was really only because she was smiling at me so much. "If you eat in here, you have to work."
"Do you have paper and charcoal?" I could work with that.
"I'll get some out for you." She nodded and then moved towards the paint covered cupboards. "So where are you transferring from?"
"I'm actually just getting into high school." I admitted as I sat down at one of the tables.
She looked at me, confused as she laid a piece of paper and a set of charcoals in front of me.
"I graduated years ago. But my mom wanted me to come back to live a teenage life, I guess, because she thinks that I need friends." I explained.
She nodded skeptically as she returned to her desk. "What's your name?"
"Lindsay Wilson." I said, opening my bag of chips and nibbling on one of them.
"Oh, I've heard about you. The brainy kid." She recalled.
"Yup." I was thankful that she didn't bring up my brother like everybody else had. It was now occurring to me that maybe I should only introduce myself as Lindsay without including my last name.
"What brings you to the art room?"
I shrugged. "It's always been one of my favorites."
She laughed a little bit as she went back to doing her work. "Mine too. I'm Miss Miller, by the way."
"Nice to meet you." I washed away the chips with a drink of my water and grabbed the charcoals, starting on the drawing... whatever that was going to be.
"So you can really remember things from when you were little?" She asked, starting a drawing of her own. "I read that you were that smart but I'm not sure if I believe it."
"Since the day I was born." I replied, being completely consumed by the project I'd started.
"That must be kind of weird. I mean, I can imagine what people do in front of their babies thinking that they will never know what's happening." She explained.
I agreed with that immensely. "There's just some things that you can't unsee. Everything from that far back, though, is really foggy for me so my memory isn't completely 100%."
For the rest of lunch, we had easy conversation as we both worked on separate things. Miss Miller finished grading whatever she was grading and I worked on my charcoal. I didn't finish though and Miss Miller said that I could come in during lunch any time which I really appreciated.
I kept my mouth shut and stayed under the radar for the last four of my classes and it went by easily. It was boring, but I'd managed. I got a few looks but I had gotten used to them and learned to ignore them.
After school, I found Luke in the middle of a herd of his friends and there were a lot of them. I didn't want to get into the middle of that but he was my ride home so I had no choice.
"Luke, are you ready?" I asked him as I approached.
He looked at me with an apologetic frown and I could already tell that I wasn't going to enjoy what he was about to say. "I have practice. Do you mind waiting? You can watch if you want but I totally forgot that we had an extra practice tonight."
I groaned, desperately just wanting to go home and end this day. "I guess there's no choice."
"I can drive her home." Somebody in the herd offered. I looked up to see the guy that I ran into earlier that day which I found very ironic and very awkward.
Luke gave the guy a confused frown. "You don't have baseball?"
The guy shook his head.
"Dude, that'd be great. Thanks." Luke said to the guy before he turned to me and said, "That'll work, right, Linds?"
"You're friends?" I asked slowly. This was my weakness... picking up social queues and figuring out how people interact with each other. I mean, sure this guy was in the same friend group as Luke but maybe they were only acquaintances or they just had a friend in common.
Luke laughed at me and when he walked passed, he messed up my hair which I really didn't appreciate. "You know, for a brainiac, you're kind of dumb."
By the time I tried to slap his arm, he was already gone around the corner with all of his friends and left me alone with the stranger.
"See you at home!" Luke called from a distance just before completely disappearing.
Not knowing what else to do, I turned to face the familiar stranger. Before I could find something to say, he introduced himself. "I'm Adam, by the way."
I forced a smile because I was sure that it was the polite thing to do. "How ironic, you being friends with my brother."
"Yeah, it's funny how things work out," He told me with a small shrug and I didn't really know what he meant by that. I didn't ask. "My car is this way."
I followed him in the direction that he pointed and kept my distance. "So why are you giving me a ride?"
"Because you need a ride, do you not? And Luke is my friend, you're his sister. I'm a nice guy."
"Well, thanks." I muttered.
He stopped at a huge black Hummer and got in the driver's seat. I reluctantly slid into the passenger side even though the car was so tall that I almost had to leap to make it into the vehicle.
"Nice car." Try to be friendly. Make a friend.
"Thanks. It was from my dad. You know an I'm-sorry-that-I-walked-out-and-never-looked-back kind of gift."
I couldn't help but smile. That was one thing that we had in common. "My I'm-sorry-that-I-walked-out-and-never-looked-back gift was just a $250 Visa card. Consider yourself lucky."
He smiled back and pulled out of the parking lot with all of the other cars eager to get out of the parking lot and back home. "Look who has something in common."
I rolled my eyes and looked out the window.
"So how was your first day of being average?"
I shrugged. "I suck at it. It was horrible."
"It couldn't have been that bad. We aren't too terrible to be around, are we?"
"I spoke fluent French to the teacher, corrected my history teacher, and I swear this one girl keeps giving me the death glare. It's like I'm holding a flashing neon sign above my head that reads 'freak show' and I can't turn it off."
"That's probably Amber, the girl who glares at you. She likes to glare. But other than her, I'm sure that nobody thought that you were a freak," Adam assured me.
"Yeah, sure."
"So can I ask you a question?" He asked.
"Just did."
"Ha. Ha." He said dryly. "Very original."
I smiled at him sarcastically. "I thought so."
"Anyway. If you're so smart, why don't you talk in long words that nobody can understand?" He asked me as he kept his eyes on the road to make sure that we weren't going to get into an accident.
"Circumlocution."
He looked confused jus by that one word. "Huh?"
"It's the use of an unnecessarily wordy vocabulary. I can use big words like that or equanimity, perspicacious, stuff like that. But I'd just end up repeating myself most of the time and all I'd accomplish was looking like a pretentious jerk."
"Ah." He nodded, pulling up in front of my house. I guess he was really good friends with Luke considering he already knew where we lived.
I smiled at him to show my gratefulness. "Thanks for the ride."
"Anytime."
Before I got out, I looked at him in the eyes and nearly glared at him. He kept looking at me in a way that I didn't like and although I wanted to make friends, I didn't want to make special friends or friends that looked at me like that. If I was going to make a friend with Adam, I had to nip that in the bud right away.
Adam laughed a little bit, looking very uncomfortable now. "What?"
"Stop it." I said to him, getting out of the Hummer and standing to my feet with my bag over my shoulder.
"Stop what?" He asked as I shut the door.
I looked inside the open window, continuing to keep my eye contact. "Stop thinking that I'm pretty or whatever it is that you're thinking." I repeated.
He raised his eyebrows, not denying it. "Why?"
I shrugged at him, not sure how I could explain myself without sounding crazy. "Because I asked you to. Anyway, I'll see you at school." I said quietly, walking away from the Hummer and towards the house, preparing for the third degree from my mother about my first day at school.