The Wallflower of Parkview High

Chapter Forty Five

All I could hear for the next few hours were the whispers.

From what I could tell, they started right after we got out of PE and spread from there. The people in first period sophomore PE class must have spread the word around that Zander Arador - yes, the Zander Arador - got sent to Mrs Shuster's office for yelling at Mr Greene.

By the time fifth period rolled around, I was pretty sure that the news had gotten around to mostly everyone in the school - even to the freshmens, the juniors and the seniors. Throughout my classes, I could only hear whispers about Zander and how he was probably getting expelled.

As the day went on though, the rumors became worse and worse. Eventually what Zander did got twisted out of proportion so much that some people didn't even know the real reason he got sent up to the office. Seriously, as I was walking to sixth period, I overheard a freshmen say that Zander was getting expelled for having sex behind the school buildings with someone and while I was busy drawing in my sketchbook during seventh period, the person next to me said that Zander had to perform community service for the school because he beat up some poor freshman.

It was all "Zander, Zander, Zander" and it honestly was getting on my nerves. How the hell could something get this stretched out of proportion? People didn't even know why Zander did what he did.

"Is it true that he stuck up his middle finger at Mr Greene and now has to work as a janitor's assistant for the rest of his highschool years?" Alicia whispered in my ear that afternoon as we were walking out of the school gates. I just sighed and shaked my head.

"No, Alicia. It's because he screamed at Mr Greene during PE when he got told off for walking." I answered, fiddling with the edge of my sketchbook that I was holding tightly to my chest, "I don't even know what his punishment is."

"Really?" she asked and I nodded.

"Yeah, I was there." I told her, "I have first period PE, remember?"

"Oh yeah!" she exclaimed, "What happened then?"

"Well he-" I started to say but was cut off by a very excited tone of voice.

"Hey Noah, hey Alicia!"

When I turned around to see who it was, I wished I hadn't. There, rushing towards us was Damien with the happiest smile I had ever seen on anybody's face.

"D-Damien?" I gasped, tightening my grip on my sketchbook. I didn't even know why I was so nervous. After all, he looked the least threatening right now than he did the entire time I've met him. Also he had this big smile on his face so how bad could it possibly be?

"What do you want, Damien?" Alicia huffed before Damien could get a word out of his mouth. Damien just stood there for a minute, not saying anything before ignoring her completely and turning to look at me.

"I want to know what happened to Zander. You were there right?" he asked and I nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Alicia giving me an annoyed look like she didn't want me to tell Damien anything.

However, it was just an innocent question...right? She asked me the same question herself so why did she not want me to tell Damien anything? Was she afraid he was going to respond in a bad way? Did she not want Damien to know about what happened in Zander despite the fact that everyone was talking about it?

"Um..." I murmured, looking from Alicia to Damien. The look on Alicia's face had grown from slightly annoyed to moderately annoyed to extremely annoyed and Damien had an expression of confusion on his face.

"I-I don't-um..." I stuttered, looking back and forth between them. Here I was thinking that after a few months of not seeing Damien around that much, I didn't have to deal with him and another potential argument between him and my friends. However, he just had to run up to Alicia and I with this huge smile on his face and demand me to tell him what happened during PE.