The Truce

Chapter 10

The following day was sort of a blur. I kept thinking about how strange - and how not strange - last night was with Sebastian. Not his teasing, of course. That was humiliating. But the atmosphere after we decided to try getting along was a lot nicer than I'd anticipated. Sort of like carrying around a thirty pound back pack for a while. You forget how light you feel without it until you set it down.

Realistically, I wondered what the odds were that we could keep it up. Nice as it had been to get along for a change, it wasn't our usual kind of interaction. Eventually one of us would probably do or say something to set the other off, and I had to admit, I'd most likely be the first to lose my temper.

"Michaela?" The math teacher stopped me on my way to my second class, Wednesday morning.

"Hi, Miss Wilson."

"How's the tutoring going?"

"Really well." To my complete and utter shock.

"Sebastian's homework has improved dramatically. I just wanted to ensure that you....?"

I shook my head and couldn't help my smile. He'd done so well, she thought he might be cheating. "No, Ma'am. He's doing it all himself. I promise. I think he just needed some organization and guidance. He's not actually bad at algebra."

I couldn't tell whether she completely believed me, but she didn't contradict me. "Well, I guess we'll find out how much he's absorbed with the test."

"I'm sure he'll do great," I said, fully expecting that to be the case.

She walked away and the smile stayed plastered on my face. Okay, I admit it. I was proud of Sebastian. He thought he was hopeless in math and now the teacher didn't know what to make of how well he was doing. I also couldn't help being proud of myself. Maybe I didn't deserve much credit since all I was doing was helping him organize and guiding him here and there, like I told Miss Wilson, but it felt like my accomplishment too.

"You seem happy," Scott said at lunch.

"Hmm?" I looked at him.

"You're happy," he repeated.

"I'm having a good day." I wasn't about to elaborate. Scott's jealousy over Sebastian aside, Kennedy would have a field day if she knew I was excited over homework.

"That's refreshing," he said before turning to say something to Ryan.

It was actually. It was nice not to feel like I wanted to strangle someone at lunch, for a change. Kennedy was busily texting, so she had barely glanced at me since I sat down.

After a second, I frowned as I processed Scott's words. What did he mean, it was refreshing that I was happy? Did he find that so unusual? I know we'd been fighting a lot lately, but I wasn't always irritable. We had a great time together on Saturday, and we hadn't fought at all this week. He still didn't know I'd been annoyed by what he said on Monday.

Did he really think of me as being angry or unhappy all the time? Why would he want to be with me, if that's how he felt?

A glance at Natalie told me she hadn't missed that either. She raised her eyebrows in silent question.

I looked at Scott who was oblivious as before. He was invested in some artsy discussion and clearly didn't find his last comment remarkable at all.

Maybe it was because it felt like Sebastian had witnessed all of my conflicts with Scott lately, but I glanced across the lunch room to find that, sure enough, he'd witnessed this one too. He frowned and I refused to hold his gaze, irritated that Scott kept proving him right.