Cecilia

Chapter 7

"Cecilia." A voice meets my ear and disrupts my peaceful dreamland. 

Huffing, I turn my face and dig it into the warm pillow under my head. "Five more minutes mama." I plead into the silk pillowcase, hugging my stuffed cow to my chest. 

I vaguely hear a snort coming from the person above me before the voice says again, "Cecilia wake up."  The voice that time sounded more boyish than before, not at all like the soft and sweet voice of my mother. 

Yeah, that's because it isn't my mother shaking my shoulders awake.

I reluctantly turn my face and open a single eye, recognizing the newly familiar face of Luca, who's sending me a smile that's too bright for this early in the morning. 

"Good morning." He chirps, backing away slightly. "Best you get up and moving if you want to be in time for your first class here."

"I wanna sleep." I mumble into my pillow. 

"This is what happens when you don't sleep." Comes Matteo's taunting voice. 

I frown over at him but ignore him to look at my pink alarm clock. The one that reads- "7:39?" I exclaim, shooting up right. "Class starts in 21 minutes and you're waking me up now?"

Luca holds up two hands in front of him in defense. "Hey, don't blame us. We tried waking you up earlier and you wouldn't budge." Gray nods beside him in a way of backing him up. 

I run a hand through but hair but don't even try to fight as I rush out of bed and into the bathroom, kicking out Alex who was brushing a comb through his wet hair. 

Twenty minutes later I was dressed lazily in a navy blue sweater and flared blue jeans with my wavy hair messily strewn around my shoulders. I was half-running to my first class, pre-calc with Mr. Weiner- pronounced 'why-ner.' I still have exactly two minutes to make it to class but I find it harder to make it on time to a class when I have absolutely no idea where said class is.

I almost cry in relief when I finally see a classroom with the room numbers matching to the ones on my paper schedule just in time as the final bell rings. 

Taking a deep breath and smoothing back my hair, I take a step Into my new class. 

Automatically, everyone's eyes turn to meet me and my fingers start to fidget with themselves under the attention. I take notice that the teacher isn't here to scold me for my tardiness and I start searching the class for a place to sit.

There were two available seats. One, which is right next to Matteo, who's completely unbothered by my presence and staring onto the notebook below him, and the other, is by another sandy blonde boy who I haven't seen yet. 

Judging by the resting glare on Matteo's face and the warm smile from the unknown boy, the answer is pretty obvious. 

I walk past Matteo and towards the back, which is when I finally see Matteo's eyes briefly flicker up to mine before quickly looking down again. I look at him in confusion but ignore it and continue making my way and sitting next to mystery boy, who had been watching me with his eyes as I went to him. 

"Tommy." The sandy blonde said, a friendly smile on his freckled face. 

"Cecilia." I return his smile with a shy one and his eyes brighten in response. He opens his mouth to say something but is cut off by the door opening abruptly. A short, fat, bald man comes strolling into the classroom with thin glasses perched on his nose and a stack of papers tucked under his arms. 

Tommy quickly diverts his attention from me to Mr. Weiner  and sits up in his seat a little straighter. 

For the next hour, I listen to Mr. Weiner drawl on and on about formulas and numbers and boring  math. Maybe it was all in my imagination, but ever so often I'd feel Matteo's eyes burning on the side of my face.  

Being the non-confrontational person I am, I obviously ignored him and pretend not to notice his shameless staring. Instead I'd turn to Tommy and answered whatever questions he'd throw my way, like my name, why I moved- that one I just awkwardly laughed and said my dad thought this school would be better than my old one- then the rest of my schedule, if I liked school so far, endless questions.

The bell rang and students quickly scrambled up, stuffing books into their backpacks and practically running out of the classroom. I was one of those people. Respectfully, Mr. Weiner's class was dreadfully boring. The kind of boring that made me want to claw out my eyeballs and stuff my ears with them. 

I cringed. That's a violent image. But a completely valid one. 

Disappointedly, I found out most of my classes were like that. Well, until I reached English. The class I happened to share with all four of the guys. 

Right when my hand touched the doorknob to open the door, I was yanked back by a hand on the back of my jacket. I screeched and quickly turned around, ready to fight off whoever had grabbed me like that. 

"Hey Cece." Gray looked down at me casually, as if he hadn't just pulled the force from my body by yanking me like a weightless doll. 

"Cece?" I questioned the nickname. 

"Yeah, that's what I'm going to call you now. Cece." His tone led me to realize that there was no disagreeing. That would be my new nickname. 

"Why did you grab me like that?" I swatted his arm. "I thought someone was attacking me." 

"Sorry." He apologized, finally unwinding his hand from the back of my sweater and letting me go. "We gotta wait here."

"Wait for what exactly...?" I looked at him strangely.

Instead of answering, he raised a finger and hushed me. "Wait- here she comes." 

I looked at him stupidly but I followed his gaze and was met with the most gorgeous girl I'd ever seen. She had dark skin, amazing curls, and very long, long legs. I imagined I looked stupid right now with the way I was gaping at her as she walked past, but when I looked next to me, Gray had the exact same reaction. Except he was grinning like a total idiot as she passed. 

I, at least, had the decency to try and hide the fact that I was gaping at her, but he didn't seem to be bothered at all. 

"Who's that?" I whispered to Gray. 

"My girl." He answered proudly.

I turned to look at him with another strange look. She didn't look like his girl. In fact, she almost seemed to have been purposefully avoiding his gaze, like she was making a point of ignoring him and walking straight past him. 

"Your girl?"

"Nah." I jumped back, startled at Luca's voice coming from right beside me. "She's not his girl. He's just delusional." He patted Gray's back in mock sympathy. 

Gray scowled and pushed his arm back. "Im not delusional. She wants me, she just doesn't want to admit it." 

"Pretty sure that just sounds like delusion but whatever you want to tell yourself!" 

Gray ignored him and walked into the class, ms and Luca following in his footsteps. When we made it in, I saw that Matteo and Alex were already there and seated in two desks in the back of the class. 

Before I could beg Gray and Luca to sit somewhere away from Matteo, they were dragging me towards them and forcing me into the seat right next to Matteo. When I was forcefully plopped down next to him, Matteo turned to me, staring at me with that stupidly intense look that made me want to shrink into myself.

I nervously smiled at him and in response he only raised an eyebrow. Yeah, this class was going to suck.