The Wallflower of Parkview High

Chapter Twelve

I spent the rest of lunch sitting on the toilet lid in one of the stalls in the bathroom, my knees pulled up to my chest, playing what just happened over and over in my mind. Part of me felt proud, like I have finally told Zander what he has been doing and the effect it had on me, however the other part of me felt scared. What was it going to be like around Zander after that encounter?

My thoughts cause another thought to pop up in my mind. Why did I care so much about what Zander thought of me? At the end of the day, he was just another person who I had PE with. He wasn't even in any of my other periods and the only time I ever saw him around school was during break and lunch, or passing periods, when I saw him walking to his next class.

Eventually, that nasally bell rang signaling the end of lunch. I groaned and dragged myself out of the stall. I had Mr. Sinclair next for history and while he wasn't as bad as Mr. Greene for giving punishments when you stepped into his class one second after the bell rang, he still didn't like it when you were late. Since the bathroom that I was in was all the way on the other side of the school, I had to run, but it was worth it and I slid into my seat seconds before the second bell rang.

As Mr. Sinclair explained what we were doing next, I absentmindedly doodled on my arm. However, when he said the word "draw", I instantly perked up.

"You may draw or print out photos to decorate your poster..." I vaguely heard Mr. Sinclair explain. At his words, I couldn't help but smile.

This is going to be more fun than I thought!

"You and your partner are going to choose one of the thirteen colonies to do a poster on. It's fine if you choose the same colony as another pair, but try and make them different." Mr. Sinclair continued.

Okay, nevermind...

As before, Mr. Sinclair gave us thirty seconds to find a partner. I got the usual knot in my stomach, until I remembered...

I frantically looked around the class for Damien, hoping that he didn't already partner up with someone else. Sure enough, he was making his way towards me, with a mixed expression on his face.

"Partners?" he asked, sitting down in the seat next to me.

"Well, I don't know anybody else here-"

"Great!" he exclaimed. I couldn't help but notice the slight edge in his voice.

"Damien, are you okay? You looked kind of-"

"Should I go and get the poster board for us?"

"If you want, though I was thinking we should plan it out on a separate piece of paper first."

"Fine!" Damien sighed. I bit my lip and took my sketchbook out from my backpack. I flipped to the back of it and looked up at Damien.

"Is there any colony you want to do?" I asked.

"I was thinking about doing New York since my cousin lives there, but we don't have to do it if you don't want to."

"No, we can do New York."

"Alright."

"How about this, I can find the information and you can draw the pictures." Damien told me.

"But won't Mr. Sinclair dock points from our grade if we both don't contribute to finding information?"

"Okay, then, maybe we can find four or five pieces of information each and share them with each other and decide which ones are the most important." he said. I just nodded and looked down at my sketchbook.

"Damien?" I whispered after a few minutes. He stopped typing furiously on his laptop and turned to look at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Um..." I began. I didn't know how to ask him this in fear of making him angry and the last thing I needed was for my project partner to be angry at me.