The Wallflower of Parkview High

Chapter Nineteen

"Hey Noah, wait up!"

I turned from where I was walking through the front gates of the school to see Damien running towards me, a small slip of paper clutched in his hand. When he reached me, he stood there and panted like he had just run a marathon (maybe he had, I didn't know since his 7th period class was different from mine).

"Here." he said once he had caught his breath. He handed me the small slip of paper he had in his hand. I looked at it and saw a phone number written on it.

"Is this yours?" I asked looking back at Damien.

"Yeah, I thought we could have a way to talk to each other outside of school. You know, about the project, see how each other's days are going, and other random stuff."

"Okay" I said, clutching the piece of paper in my hand.

"Great!" Damien exclaimed, a wide smile stretching across his face.

"Um, yeah." I shrugged off my backpack, unzipped it and took out my math notebook. Flipping to a blank page, I tore a small piece off, dug in my backpack for a pencil, wrote my phone number across it and handed it to him.

"Since you gave me yours, I thought I could give you mine. You know, if you want it that is." I told him.

"Thanks! Then we can text each other!" Damien said, his smile growing wider.

"You're welcome."

"Bye Noah!"

"Bye." I said back, and then began the long trek to dad's car.

"How's my favorite son doing?" Dad asked the second I opened the car door.

"I'm your only son, Dad." I responded, while buckling my seatbelt.

" I know that." Dad grinned. "Anyways, how was school?"

"It was fine."

"What's that?" Dad asked, looking at the piece of paper in my hand.

"It's a phone number."

"Who's phone number?"

"A friend from school."

To my surprise, instead of demanding to know who this person was, he smiled.

"I'm glad to know you're making friends, Noah."

"Right..." I murmured.

As soon as we got home, I ran up to my room and closed the door. Thank god I didn't have much homework today, because the argument between Damien and Zander during lunch had completely exhausted me. Why were they so hung up on this in the first place, accusing each other of apparently using me? Couldn't they just drop it and move on? Was it really that important? With all of these thoughts swirling around in my mind, I closed my eyes wanting so desperately to take a nap.

About a half an hour later, I woke up from my nap. Making a small noise of annoyance, I rubbed my eyes and leaned over in bed to take a look at the clock on my bedside table, which read 4:51.

Realizing I should get downstairs for dinner, I dragged myself out of bed, down the stairs, and plopped down in my chair at the small table near the window in the kitchen. Sure enough, Dad was cutting up a large piece of lasagna and dishing it onto three plates. Charlotte was washing her hands at the kitchen sink.

"Is anything interesting happening for you guys lately?" Dad asked once we had all sat down.

"My friend and I were allowed to get free slurpees today and 7-Eleven after our shift was done." Charlotte said while digging into her lasagna.