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After two weeks of completely ignoring Blade, talking to him again was like having a long-lost friend reunited with you. Blade was just so easy to get along with that whenever you get in a fight with him—not that I had much experience in that area—it was pretty much impossible to stay mad at him.

In first period on Tuesday, we got a new student, so I wasn’t completely alone because the teacher forced him to sit beside me. Sure, it wasn’t his choice to but at least I had someone to communicate with other than my paper. His name was Preston, and if it weren’t for the fact that I was totally “smitten” with Blade—as Marcy had told me but I begged to differ—I would’ve been all over him like peanut butter on jelly. Preston had the somewhat baby face, but his body was built like one of those beach God’s you see in the summer and automatically fall in love with, and he had shaggy black hair that swept over his forehead, hiding parts of his electric green eyes.

He was the first to talk to me, so I thought that maybe having him forced to sit beside me wasn’t so bad. So I decided to let him eat lunch with us when third period came.

During second when I got there and waved at Blade and Nick, I sat next to David at the side of the room. He was now my official science experiment partner, and Nick constantly teased me about it because he lucked out and got to partner up with Ryan. As for Blade, his fate was the same as mine—if not worse—because he got stuck with a girl that actually fainted when she found out that she was paired with him for the rest of the year.

Our second period class seemed to have a history of people fainting this semester.

When I sat in the stool next to David, he squirmed suddenly and uncomfortably, groaning loudly. I looked over at him. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Gooooooootta pee!” he sang, putting his arms out to the side. I smirked.

“Then just go,” I said.

“I can’t! She won’t let me!” he wailed, pointing to Mrs. Adams, who glanced up at him and laughed, shaking her head before looking back down at her notes.

“If you need to go so bad, you would go before you come to class, Mr. Collins,” she said simply.

David whimpered almost helplessly and I laughed at his childish behavior. All the way through class, David was moaning and groaning about he was about to explode in his pants, which Nick mistook for some kind of sexual innuendo and called David both immature and premature, but he shut up when David got out of his chair, stood in front of Nick and held his hands over his pants zipper, threatening to pee on him.

I really didn’t know what to say to that so I just remained quiet and did the experiment on myself. When David had no control over his bladder, her got quite moody and somewhat disgusting because peeing was all he could talk about. I just gave up pretending to listen to him and put my earphones in, turning the music on my iPod up extra loud.

Every few minutes though, I found my eyes drifting to the front left table against the wall where Blade sat with the girl—who was also staring at him but she looked to be in a dream-like state whereas I didn’t. He wasn’t paying attention to her though, because he was too busy working on the lab write-up; his eyes glued to his paper not looking up once.

I never noticed until now how he tended to tilt his head to the left whenever he was concentrating, or how his hair fell in front of his eyes and he didn’t bother to move it because he was in the zone; he was way too focused to care.

And even when he was completely unaware about how crazy he could make me feel on the inside, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.



“Guys, this is Preston,” I said as I approached the table that Kayti sat at with David and Nick, unfortunately. Throughout the past two weeks, they had grown to become quite close friends with Kayti and Marcy, and sitting with us at lunch was like their new hobby.

“Preston who?” Kayti asked, glancing up from her pizza and staring at him as he stood emotionless beside me, shifting his weight.

“Preston, the new guy, whose going to sit with us today and be our friend,” I said obviously, widening my eyes at her. She giggled and shook her head.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like . . . last name,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Torrino,” Preston filled in.

“You got a middle name?”

We all looked over at David, whose voice had lowered several pitches as he said that. It didn’t sound like him. It sounded like someone from an old western movie who was trying to make an impression on others that it was his town and if you messed with him, you were most likely going to get hurt.

But I didn’t take David to be intimidating, and clearly neither did Preston—he just stared at David, his eyebrows raised in confusion; obviously able to call his bluff.

“Uh . . . yeah. It’s Sylvester.”

Nick raised his eyebrows in surprise. “So your initials are PST?”

“PST?” Kayti asked, looking at Preston. “As in that extra stuff they charge you when you buy something?”

Preston shrugged, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I guess so.”

“Or PST like pssst,” Nick said simply, shaking his head.

I looked over at David for a second and saw him glaring at Preston still. “What’s with you?” I asked him.

Preston grunted. “I know what this is,” he said. “This is that awkward moment where you’re trying to find out if I’m a good guy or if I’m nuts, and I’m doing the same thing on you.”

David just stared. Kayti and I looked between the two of them, trying to determine what was going through their minds. The tension was so obvious that it could have been cut with a knife. As for Nick, he just sat their silently, raising his eyebrows at David before turning his attention past Preston to look at me. I just shrugged, not really knowing what to think.

David’s leg lifted up underneath the table and he kicked the chair on the opposite side of him backwards. Preston looked down at it for a moment, and then back up at David; who nodded at it.

“Sit,” he said.

Kayti chuckled beside me, as Preston took a seat and leaned back on his chair, crossing his arms on his chest. I sat down next to David and looked over at him with raised eyebrows. He was glaring at the table, and yet smiling at the same time so really I had no idea what the hell was going on in his brain. I nudged him with my elbow and he looked over at me.

“What was that?” I asked him quietly when Nick, Kayti and Preston began a conversation about how people needed to cut the hair up their nose sometimes.

David just shook his head.

Two small hands slammed down on the table in front of me and I jumped, looking up to see Marcy. Her face was red and her chest was heaving as if she had been running for miles.

“Why are you . . . panting?” David asked her.

She glared at him, and then turned it on me. “I was running,” she seethed, “looking for my best friend who was supposed to help me with that test.”

I bit my lip and scratched the back of my head. “Oh right,” I said. “I completely forgot about that.”

“I know,” she said through clenched teeth, and then let out an aggravated sigh. “Come on, Chris. You’ve taken too long to do it. You said two weekends ago that you would and I have four days until the test. Four days! There’s a lot of stuff on it that I still don’t get so can you please try and steal the test for me?”

Marcy obviously wasn’t aware of how her voice had risen exponentially, and the four tables around ours were all staring at us, either thinking we were insane, or just completely brainless. Preston stared up at her in amazement. He must have thought I hung out with mentally troubled people, judging by how David had given him the cold, hard stare as soon as he got to the table, and Marcy was talking about stealing tests. Marcy paused and looked down at him, cocking an eyebrow. Of course the person out of her sight was more important to pay attention to, rather than the fact that she’d screamed out her problems in math and made the entire cafeteria aware of them.

“Hello,” she said blandly, sounding almost uninterested but the suddenly pink tint on her cheeks told me otherwise and whatever boredom she was feigning was obvious enough as anything to me. “You’re new.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m Preston.”

She turned to me and raised her eyebrows, hoping I’d introduce her because clearly, it was such a hassle to say “I’m Marcy” by herself.

“Marcy,” I said, pointing to her. Preston nodded simply. Whatever conversation we had going was getting to be extremely boring, so I stood up, cleared my throat and pushed my chair out of the way.

“Well, I’d love to stay and all, but I need to find a teacher and seduce him,” I said. “I’ll see you all later. And David?”

He looked up at me.

“Do not antagonize him,” I said, pointing to Preston before turning and walking off.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

I found Mr. Griffin in his classroom, marking some tests before lunch ended and he had a fourth period class. I knocked on the door lightly and he looked up at me, waving me inside. My heartbeat increased, because I couldn’t find any words inside of me, and I knew that I was going to end up spilling something by accident; therefore completely ruining the whole plan. I’d probably get suspended for the attempt to seduce a teacher, and Marcy would fail her test.

Basically, both of us would be screwed.

“Hello Christabelle,” Mr. Griffin said with a warm smile, leaning back on his chair and folding his hands on his lap. “Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s school going?”

“Good,” I nodded, smiling back at him but I could tell by the instantaneous furrow of his brows that the smile was fairly screwed up, and appeared to be more of a nervous-scowl-attempted-smile kind of thing just all over my face. A clown was probably more appealing right now. “Um, I have a couple questions though.”

“Okay,” he said, tilting his head to the side slightly afterwards while he waited for me to continue. “What is it?”

“Well . . . there’s this internship that I’m interested in applying for,” I lied, “and they require you to take an entrance exam but its all math and I’ve pretty much completely forgotten everything you taught me.”

Mr. Griffin nodded slowly, beginning to understand what I was hinting to. “Do you want me to assign you a tutor or . . .?”

Wrong!

“Um, no actually, I was wondering if you could prep me,” I said shifting my weight to the other foot. Mr. Griffin’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Really?” he asked. I could tell he was starting to feel a little uncomfortable by the way he squirmed in his chair a little and cleared his throat; since never once had he been giving private lessons to a student before, so obviously this was something new for him. He was used to big crowds, not one-person classes.

“Well, um . . . sure, I’m pretty certain that would be okay,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “What time would you like to uh . . . get together?”

I shrugged, feeling slightly less intimidated because never once had I seen Mr. Griffin act this way. Not once did he become so vulnerable around anyone, unless it was with women but I wasn’t exactly his type. He didn’t go for students, and I didn’t go for teachers.

Now that I had him in his state, my confidence was slowly being brought back and obviously his was shrinking.

“I guess lunch time is fine,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. Meet me here tomorrow than,” he said, clearing his throat again even though he just did short seconds ago and he really didn’t need to a second time.

I nodded and smiled at him sweetly, tilting my head to the side. God, it was so hard not to laugh right now. The thought finally popped into my head.

I was semi-seducing a teacher!

A teacher!

I really couldn’t back out now, even if I wanted to. I hated to admit it but it was actually becoming . . . fun.

“Thanks Mr. Griffin,” I said simply, heading for the door. He looked down at his work, nodded and lifted a hand in my direction as a wave.

“Good to see you again, Christabelle,” he called to me, but judging by the tone of his voice, he was probably thinking oh God, what now?

And I really couldn’t blame him for it, because this was just cruel and yet it gave me a little of an adrenaline rush to do something so daring. As I stepped out of the classroom and the door was closed behind me, I took a couple of steps away from it down the hall to the left and let out a small giggle of anticipation; before reaching into the pocket of my jeans and pulling out my cell phone.

I clicked on Marcy’s name and began to type the text message.

It’s done.

Then I turned and walked off.