History Doesn't Repeat Itself

Chapter 13

 "Lev?" Willow says. "You mean the Lev?"

"'The'? Is he a big deal or something?" I ask.

Dan giggles as he scooches closer to me. "Nope, not really. He only aced a hundred percent of the tests he took." He laughs. "That man is an absolute beast. A tall, smart beast."

"Oh?" I say, taking another bite of the sandwich I found inside Willow's bag. "He did?"

Willow cocks her head and glares at me.

"I'm very clueless, please enlighten me," I say, playing dumb.

Of course I knew Lev was the smartest person in the whole school.

Willow clears her throat. "Mister Lev. The Leviathan—"

Dan laughs, "The man the myth the legend."

"Yes. That. Lev is the guy who gets the top spot in the school with zero effort. Just a smart dude, you know?" She says.

"He's the smartest guy in our batch, basically," Dan adds.

I perk up and look at Dan through my shoulder. "He isn't. Not right now." I say. "I hold the title for the top scorer, not him."

"Maybe for this semester. Yeah." Willow says. "But if he were to actually try, he could easily snatch the place from under you."

"Yeah. But not if I snatch it first." Dan says jokingly.

"What's your deal with him anyway? That notebook and those little sticky notes at the back." She says.

I gasp and I cover my mouth right after.

Willow actually read the notes. I mean, a few months since the finals, and Lev and I have been on many dates—Not that he ever stated that those were dates, no, they were only "study hangouts". Not dates. Definitely not dates.

When he comes to my dorm room door, he usually leaves a little sticky note behind my phone case whenever I ask him to hold it. It became a little game we used to play. I would ask him to order, and I would lend him my phone when I go to the bathroom.

I usually return a few minutes later to my phone flat on my side of the table. He would smile at me and tell me "Hey, you're phone got a text message. Better read it later though."

After our little "study hangout," I would go back to my dorm, he would go back to his and I would open my phone case to a sticky note stuck inside of it.

It would have short messages on it. Sometimes in binary, sometimes in morse code, but often times he just uses English. After reading the message, I would text him, and I would send him a picture of the sticky note inside the notebook.

His notebook slowly became a journal. I wrote the dates on the bottom of the notepads, and I would organize them depending on their color, collecting them inside of the box my phone came with.

"You read that?" I say.

"Yeah, he even had a little note on the last page." She says, "A bunch of zeroes and ones. I think he likes you—"

"We're dating." I cut in. "Like around 4 months ago."

I hear Willow choke on the water she was drinking, followed by her struggling to keep it inside her mouth.

I feel Dan and Willow's gazes travel to me—who was just sitting there, casually, like I didn't just say that I was dating the smartest kid in the whole school, possibly the whole state. I try to hold in a chuckle, seeing the space between their eyebrows wrinkle as they give me the weirdest look imaginable.