Nothing but Hurt

Chapter 6: Fast Typing and Slow Proceeding

Val didn't come for the next week, and even if I texted her, she didn't reply. I eventually gave up, just assuming that I had overthought the fact that we could be friends. Instead, I grew a bit closer to Niru and we began hanging out a bit more. She was somewhat introverted too, so we both were each other's company. Other than that, my life went back to normal, just scrolling through fanfiction on Wattpad, the occasional author's block, and reading books.

The next Monday, I was in the middle of rereading 'One of us is Lying' when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around, expecting Niru, but it was Val. I raised an eyebrow and set the lid of my Chromebook down enough that the letters on the screen dimmed.

"Hey," Val said breathlessly. "So I just sent my portion to you. It's due today, right? We can work on it now because there are still 10 minutes left for class to start."

"Sure," I said shortly. Val sat down next to me and I opened my Chromebook to my Gmail and clicked on the inbox. It was mostly filled with emails from Grammarly and Alison, which was this free online course website. After filtering the emails, I found Val's, opened it and copied it to the document where my work was in a different tab. My fingers were used to transferring work from google docs to Wattpad, or the other way around, so I finished in less than a minute.

Then, once the two parts were together, I began blending them with a joining paragraph, just to transition the two. I turned Grammarly on, fixed the grammar mistakes, and used the word bot to make the story a bit more casual, before uploading the whole thing to Gmail and sending it to the teacher.

"Wow,' Val said, sounding slightly speechless. "That was faster than I thought."

I shrugged and turned off the laptop. "Why weren't you in school last week? You didn't reply to any of my messages." I tried to sound indifferent but I was a bit curious because I'd been noticing that she hadn't been looking as cheerful as she used to in the past month, even before she spoke to me.

Val blinked. "Right. I... wasn't feeling too well."

"Okay," I replied, before turning back to my Chromebook and switching it on. Val stood awkwardly behind me for a minute as if hoping for something else, and then walked away. I let out a breath when she did. It wasn't my business why she was absent, so I wasn't that fazed about it. I guess I was just slightly worried. It did seem like she was going through something, but I honestly had no business in it and if she didn't want to tell me, that was her choice. It wasn't like we were extremely close friends anyway.

Science and Digital Apps went by fairly quickly, and by the time it was lunch, I already had my student ID card out and ready to scan, since today I was going to buy some school lunch. I had even already told Niru to save me a seat and she gave me a thumbs up. The lunch line was long however, so when I finally reached the end to get the pizza, both it and the tater tots they were serving today were piping hot and fresh, but I didn't care because half of the lunch was wasted anyway.

I walked out of the small kitchen and into the cafeteria, where the smell of expired ketchup and ranch immediately filled my nostrils. I made my way to my table where I always sat next to Niru, nearest to the exit and a garbage can, which may sound disgusting, but since no one used it anyway, all that meant was that we had a disposal right next to us. Since the garbage cans in the cafeteria always had napkins, plastic forks, spoons, and knives anyway, we were in a pretty good spot. If you minus everyone sitting at the table.

Somehow, on her first day of school, Niru, a socially awkward introvert, had already made a group of friends, while I was still a loner. To be fair, I wasn't exactly searching for friends, but it still stung a little bit knowing that people just didn't like me a lot.

Niru alternated between talking with me and all the other extroverts on the table, which I was perfectly fine with because I just wanted to finish the pizza that was only cheese and bread at this point, and then munch my feelings away on a handful of tater tots.

"Ooh, can I have some?" One of the girls, who I recognized from my Science class, asked, pointing at my tater tots which I was just about to eat. I looked down and let out a sigh that no one else noticed before proceeding to pass it along to everyone. Yes, the lunches were free but I still only got one tater tot at the end.

I pulled up my mask and put away the now empty lunch tray before heading out of the cafeteria into the library, where I pulled out a KOTLC book and began reading, just for a little bit until the bell rang. When it did, I proceeded to go to my Social Studies class and I was the first one there, like always.