Three's a crowd

37

Monday morning came around quicker than a blink of an eye. Its funny how the weeks always seem so long, yet the weekends always seem to pass by in a hurry. Perhaps it was because of the news that my parents were moving, or the fact that soon I would be practically on my own, but I had barely slept with all the excitement and fear of what was to come.

After we got to school Riley kissed me at his car before we went to our classes. I didn't meet Ava like I usually would since I told Kyle I would meet up with him. He still hadn't hinted to what he wanted to talk about but I wasn't overly worried about it either.

He was waiting under the stairwell beside Math class when I approached him with a smile. He actually wasn't a bad person, and other than the strange way he looked at me sometimes, he really was a good friend overall.

I gave him a hug and as usual he held on a little longer than necessary.

"What's up?" I asked him.
"Nothing." He smiled.
"You sure? Your text said it was important?"
"Yeah, erm I don't really want to talk about it here? Do you think we could meet up after school?"
"I guess so. Riley has practice so I'll just let him know I'll meet him at his house after he's done, if you want to give me a ride home?"
"Its a date." He grinned.

I tried to ignore the fact he had used the word date to describe friends hanging out. Kyle had proven to be quite the jokester over the past few months, and it made sense that he would say something inappropriate as a joke. Or maybe I was just overreacting.

We were soon joined by Ava who definitely made it known that we were both mean for making her walk to class by herself. She pouted and threw us the snarky comment about being terrible people before she relaxed and we made our way into class.

I took my seat in between them both and took out my math book, flipping to the page on Algebraic square routes. I was glad that math was still an okay subject for me. Granted it wasn't like my English or History class where I could do very little, but for the most part I understood the concepts and didn't really struggle.

It was weird but it seemed like Kyle kept finding ways to accidentally touch me throughout class. It was minor things like a touch of our shoulders, or our hands brushing while we worked and as much as I tried to tell myself that it was coincidental, I had the feeling that it wasn't. We had been in class for a few months and this was the first time it had happened.

I couldn't figure out why he was touching me, or why he chose to do it now. It seemed random and even though we had become really good friends since summer break I couldn't make any sense of it.

I had tried to ignore it until last period. I had told Riley that Kyle would be taking me home, although given his weird behavior today it was seeming to be less of a good idea. Still he was my friend and my parents were still here if I needed them.

So we sat in Biology as the last bell rang for the beginning of last period. I cant even begin to explain how relieved I was going to feel when we had finally stopped talking about reproductive organs, but alas today we were focusing on pregnancy.

I understood that it was necessary information, but teaching the stages of pregnancy to a bunch of teenagers was like drumming your head against a wall. Half of the students didn't care, the boys didn't pay it any attention at all, and the only girls that did were the ones that were secretly hoping they weren't pregnant.

I put my hands under the table when Carl walked in. As much as the principal had promised that he wouldn't be an issue, we still had to share a few classes. Still his presence unsettled me as my hands shook under the table the way they always did in this class since he tried to attack me.