Excuse my French

dix-huit. aux trois crayons

For a moment, I thought I'd forgotten to bring Madame Bovary today, and that alone was enough to send a little shiver up my chest. Then, I fumbled around in my backpack, trying to look as innocent as I could (which wasn't very innocent, considering that my head was half above the desk in the middle of the lecture and that I probably had a weird grimace-smirk on my face), and eureka. I felt its familiar worn cover and that one page that always stuck out.

That was good. Now I had a headache from leaning over for so long.

I straightened up. My head throbbed a little. I hoped the wince on my face wasn't too apparent.

Apparently, it really was apparent, because Olivia shot me a sideways glance, raising an eyebrow. "You okay?" she mouthed.

I fiddled with my notebook (I'd lost track of my pages in the midst of my search), flipping over to the right topic, before responding to her. I mouthed back, "Peachy keen, thank you."

She didn't seem to understand my response, so I shook my head and shot her a quick smile, bending back over my notebook. I glanced up at Madame Cartier, who was going on about the new vocabulary. Oh goodness. She was going to make us do interactive partner work any time soon. My handwriting turned from barely legible scrawling to a mess of swirls.

Ah, I was going to totally fail this next vocab quiz.

But really, I did my own sort of tutor (whom I could bribe into helping me), so I could worry about that later. For now, I had a poem due in about three hours, and I'd gotten about three lines down.

Ms. Jacobs, the creative writing teacher (who also taught Luc, according to Josh, to Luc's embarrassment), had a notion in her head that everyone on The Aquiline's editorial team had to contribute something themselves to "get in the spirit of creativity". And since I was co-editor-in-chief, it was especially important for me to get something in.

She hadn't listened to any of my protests about my non-existent creative talents, to say the least. And Lila, who was the other editor-in-chief (who really hadn't done anything to help me), had already submitted her entry—I got no backup from that position.

I bit the top of my pencil, feigning intense interest in the vocab words for household ornaments, and tried very hard not to fall asleep. (It probably was a bad thing when I was falling asleep from my own poem.)

Olivia jabbed my right arm with her finger. "Hey," she whispered, "we're gonna do partner interaction soon."

"Right." I dropped my pencil and rubbed my eyes. Hopefully, Olivia would rat me out for working on an English related project during French class...

Olivia scooted a little closer to me so we could share the textbook. "Are your contacts bothering you or something?"

I put my pencil case on top of the three lines that I'd written so far in a poor attempt to look like I was actually interested in French class. "Kinda." It wasn't really a lie—I was still adjusting to them (I still tried to push up my contacts once every few hours, but I was getting better at not doing that—I had a reputation to keep up, after all). I gave her a flat smile with just my lips.

She caught me though, and took my pencil case off the paper. There was a buzz of French (and mostly English, but Madame Cartier didn't need to know that) all around us, so Olivia wasn't afraid to talk. "The river flows through a haunted valley tonight / Full of will-o'-the-whisps that follow us every day." She raised an eyebrow at me. "I thought this was the literary crap that you hated."

"Ugh, I dunno." I brushed some bangs, which had fallen in front of my eyes, behind my ear. "I'm supposed to turn in a poem to Ms. Jacobs after school."