𝐆𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 || #𝟏

Chapter 30

"You'll be my girlfriend?"

"Yeah, I'll be your girlfriend," I say. I try my best to smile, and he returns it.

But in the deep pit, at the bottom of my heart - it didn't feel right.

-- ------ --

"For the science project," Ms Smith announces - "You'll all be working in pairs. I want you all to pick something to experiment on, and then write down your hypothesis, aim, your method, results and conclusion. This project will be worth 40% of your science grade, so I expect the work to be well-prepared."

As she explains this, she is painting her nails blue. The whole class sits in silence as we wait for her to continue explaining.

"Um..." Max starts, raising his hand, "how do we decide who we're in a pair with?"

Ms Smith annoyingly looks up, and dramatically sighs. She puts down the bottle of nail polish, starts typing on her laptop, and brings up a table on the screen with all of our names.

"Okay," she boredly drawls. "Alexis, you'll go with Angel. Iris with Abigail, Lorelei and Emily, Lilliana and Elena, Jasmine and Lilac, Shawn and Max, Luke with Tyler, Alice and..."

She repeats the table of contents on the screen. Once she's done, she shuts her laptop, takes out her bottle of nail polish, and continues to paint her nails. Lilac makes her way over to the desk next to me, and we start discussing what to experiment on.

"What if we did an experiment on how long nail polish lasts under different conditions?" I asked. "Ms Smith would be... Very happy with our experiment, I'm assuming."

"Don't forget to tell me about your idea so I can approve it," she calls out after. Lilac thinks for a moment, then starts talking.

"What about we experiment on how plants grow under different types of fertilisers?" She suggests, but it is just at this moment that Alexis tells Ms Smith their science project idea - and she writes it up on the board so to tell everybody that it had been taken. "Darn, how'd she get our fertiliser idea?"

Thinking for a moment, I start to try and think about something a lot harder. Something that doesn't really require us to experiment, and go through all the trouble, but also something that was good enough for Ms Smith. Maybe I should really just go ahead with the nail polish idea.

"No!" Ms Smith barked at Emily, who had just said that she wanted to test how long nail polish lasts under different conditions. "I've already done that experiment, and for your information, nail polish only lasts for three days before it starts flaking!"

Emily trails back off to Lorelei, sulking the whole way. Jolene stands up tall, marching to the front of the classroom to tell Ms Smith what her idea was. Ms Smith rolls her eyes, gets up and writes down their idea - 'how durable wool is under different conditions'.

Something finally clicks in my mind, and I turn to Lilac. "What if we did the effects of hurricanes on the surface temperature of the ocean?"

Lilac thinks for a moment, then she nods her head. I get up from my seat, shuffling forward to the front. Ms Smith is painting her final coat of nail polish, and doesn't even notice that I'm right in front of her.

"For our project, we've decided to do the effects of hurricanes on the surface temperature of the ocean," I say. Ms Smith stops her nail painting, grabs her whiteboard marker and starts writing our idea. 'The effects of hurricanes on the surface temperature of oceans'.

As I turn to go back to my desk, I see Lilliana chatting with Lilac, sitting in my seat. I awkwardly walk back, and stand in front of them as they whisper to each other, giggling. Lilliana takes notice that I'm ready to move back into my seat, flashes a smile at me, and leaves.

"So..." I start, settling back in, "I'll make a google doc so we can both collaborate. Does that sound good?"

"Yeah sure, whatever," Lilac dismisses. Distinctively colder than before.

"I think that we should split the work," I continued, just as if nothing had happened - and I hadn't noticed the cold tone in her voice. "I'll write the method, we'll both do our research on the topic and you'll write the conclusion. Does that sound good?"

"Yeah, sounds great," Lilac monotonously agrees. "Since you're writing the method, and I'm writing the conclusion, can you do all the work in this lesson? I really have nothing to do."

Ouch. I try to hide my wince, and act cool. "You could jump ahead in your research..?" I uneasily suggest, "it's just that getting things done quicker is more convenient. It gives us time to go back and edit our work."

Lilac rolls her eyes, "sure."

I open up the google doc, and I start writing down our hypothesis. Just as I finish writing that section, I see Lilac out of the corner of my eye on her phone, furiously texting away. I disregard it, but realise that Lilliana is also texting on her phone. Could they be talking to each other?

"For the hypothesis, I wrote that since hurricanes are attracted to warmer bodies of water, the surface temperature should have a slight drop. Because of the wind constantly moving the water around, it doesn't have enough time to-"

Lilac looks at me weird, as if I had just said the dumbest thing in the world. I really don't know much about hurricanes, and the hypothesis doesn't even have to be correct. It's an 'educated guess'.

"What do you think about it?" I asked, trying to be as kind as possible. Lilac ignores me, and goes back to texting whoever it is on her phone. "I just thought that since heat is basically energy, and hurricanes are attracted to warmer bodies of water because of the warmth - and gain their energy from it... They must use that energy as a source of their power, if that makes sense."

Lilac ignores me for a bit, then finally says something. "Yeah, it makes sense."

"That's good," I say, putting on my best smile. "We should focus on different hurricanes to take our information from... We could start with Hurricane Katrina-"

Lilac lets out a huge snort, looks at Lilliana and my suspicion is confirmed. Without Lilac knowing, I stand up, pretend as if I'm going to talk with Ms Smith and I sneak a glance at her phone.

They're talking about me. And it's not in a good way.