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    When it came to completing school assignments, Nat had never been a reliable person. In fact, the only word that had been written on her worksheet were the three letters in her name, quickly scribbled at the top of the paper in her slanted handwriting. She instead chose to use her almost empty pen to doodle along the margins, specifically because that was one of Coach Hedge's pet peeves.

Nat had never been an artistic person, but she still loved drawing. Whatever few assignments she did turn in often had lopsided stars and crooked moons against the borders.

She let out a sigh as her pen finally ran out of ink. Glancing around, she found Leo fiddling with pipe cleaners he seemed to have pulled out of nowhere. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out what he was making. When his hands stopped moving, her eyes trailed upward to find his hard brown ones fixed on her face, and he had a hard to read expression. Her eyes widened, feeling as if she were caught red-handed somehow.

"What?" Leo asked, his voice suddenly having a defensive tone to it.

Nat blinked a couple times, before stammering out, "Uh, nothing. I was just wondering what you were making."

Leo's expression morphed into one of confusion, before becoming neutral. He studied her face for a moment as if trying to figure out if she was being sarcastic. After a moment, he decided she wasn't.

"It's a helicopter," he said, the fainted smile on his lips as he showed her the pipe cleaners, "Watch this."

After tweaking a small thing with the helicopter, he launched it off the skydeck. To Nat's surprise, the pipe cleaner blades actually began spinning, and the little helicopter made it halfway across the canyon before it lost it's momentum and plummeted downwards.

Nat's eyes widened, forgetting her nonchalant attitude from before, "How did you do that?"

Leo shrugged, looking down to twiddle with an extra pipe cleaner, as if he were attempting to hide a blush, "It would've been cooler if I had some rubber bands."

Nat had opened her mouth to say something else, but decided against it as she saw one of Isabel's friends, Tris, making her way over to the group. Now, Nat liked to think that she was somewhat of a gracious person, but she couldn't stand Tris due to her inability to keep her mouth closed. The girl was always talking about some unimportant thing, and everyone knew not to tell her anything unless you wanted the whole school to next day.

"Ana!" Tris greeted her. Another thing Nat didn't like about her was that Tris went out of her way to give her friends "unique" nicknames. It just pissed Nat off, "Isabel wants to talk to you. She said it's something about your...arrangement?"

Nat rolled her eyes. Isabel was so unnecessarily extra.

"Beatrice, there's nothing to talk about," Nat said, making a point to use Tris' full name, "either she agrees, or she doesn't. It's simple."

The "arrangement," as Tris put it, was how much money Isabel wanted to pay for cigarettes. Not nearly as big a deal as she was making it out to be, but she was one for drama.

"Well, then why don't you go tell her that yourself?" Tris was starting to get an attitude, "why stay over here? You're always talking about how you can't stand him. Just go sort it out with Isabel." The "him" she referred to being Leo, of course.

Nat glanced over at Coach Hedge, only to find him in the middle of a serious-looking conversation with Jason the Amnesiac, who she hadn't seen slip away.

"Piss off," Nat said, turning away from Tris. She decided to ignore the hard stare she knew Leo was giving her, "And tell Isabel to piss off too. She's not getting shit from me anymore."

She heard the sharp exhale of Tris' annoyance, before the clicking sound from her boots signaled she was walking away.

Nat was too angry to realize that she was leaning on the railing. While she was looking out at the canyon, her mind was still processing the exchange that just ended.

"You really don't like me, huh?" She jumped, having forgotten Leo was next to her. His voice had a strange tone to it, empty but with an undertone of something Nat couldn't recognize.

Her mouth fell open as Tris' words appeared in her head.

You're always talking about how you can't stand him.

It was one thing for Nat to talk about how she didn't like someone, but for them to hear about it? And for it to seem as if it was a reoccurring thing?

Nat could feel her face burning with shame as she struggled to find words to explain herself. After a few moments, she gave up, closing her mouth (which she should have done a long time ago.)

Leo squinted at her, his mouth pressed in a hard line.

"Y'know, for someone who wants people to see her as more than just a spoiled rich bitch, you sure do keep proving everyone else right," was all he said, before walking away.










a/n
hey guys im back lol
hopefully ill update more often (already
working on the next chapter!!)
nothing really happened in this one
but i was using this chapter to explore
nat's personality
as you can tell, she is flawed and maybe
she'll go through some development, or
maybe not!! stay tuned to find out.
love you guys, make sure to vote and comment!!

THE WAY I LOVED YOU - the lost heroWhere stories live. Discover now