Nerds Are Lovable

3: Nerds Are Organized

"Dad, I'm home!" I yell into the dark house.

I shrug, assuming he's already in the living room watching TV, as we always do after dinner. Closing and locking the door behind me, I walk to the living room and find my dad exactly where I expecting him to be. He always sits on the leftmost seat of the couch, his arm resting on the armrest.

"Hi, dad."

He turns around, stopping the show, "Hey, Haley, dinner's in the fridge."

I nod, walking to the kitchen and grabbing the cold pasta. I stick it in the microwave, reheating it, and while that's going, I grab a water and a fork. Walking back to the living room, I sit in my usual seat, the rightmost spot on the couch with my whole body leaning against the armrest and my legs tucked beside me.

"Who were you with?"

"A friend."

"You have friends other than Emma?" He acts surprised.

Okay, maybe he wasn't acting as much as I let on. I'm a total loser.

"That, was uncalled for," I point my fork with a bowtie on it at him.

"What damage do you think you could do with that?"

"A little stabbing and then use the blood of my enemies as a sauce."

"As your father, I'm gonna have to shut that one down."

I smile at his comment, "I was with Jayden Monroe," I decide to answer his question rationally.

"Jayden Monroe? Like the Monroe family that owns the shopping center?"

"Oh, that would explain the car."

My dad looks at me, trying to figure out what happened today. He knew I wasn't the brightest, nicest, or most considerate person on the planet, but he did know I didn't purposefully feed into the gossip. I didn't mean for these rumors or this reputation to follow me like a lost puppy. The rumors just happen after everything I actually have done. Everything I have come to regret... and some that I haven't. After mom died I felt so shut off, broken. He's the only other person that understands.

Enough with that sob story, you don't know my life.

"He broke my phone," I tell my dad, "I was kindly asking for a new one."

"Kindly?" He raises an eyebrow.

"I didn't punch him," I shrug.

The next few days pass without a sight of Jayden Monroe. I tried going back to the library, which as I say it sounds very out of character, to check if he was in the back studying or tutoring again. But whenever I went, that table in the back of the library was always empty. If Jayden wasn't there, no one else seemed to claim it. Maybe he's the gang leader of the nerds?

"Ms. Librarian?" I speak up, trying to sounds as nice as I possible could, which was passable at best.

The old lady we have as a librarian looks up from the book she's reading. She apparently doesn't mind that I have no idea what her real name is. Her bored expression clearly shows that she's only there to shut kids up and kick them out, like she did to me on Monday. I aspire to be this woman.

"When does Jayden Monroe tutor?"

I can be nice when I want to. When I get what I want out of it.

She raises an eyebrow at me but hands me a piece of paper. I stare at it in confusion but walk away to the back of the library with it. Staring at it, I try to decipher all the different colors and codes that are going on. I realized it's a schedule of some sort, but there's a lot of overlapping.