The Hair Tie

Chapter 11

"Did everyone who wants to participate sign up?" Mr. Craw's voice boomed over the microphone, effectively silencing the student body. He saw that no one else was approaching the sign up sheet, which he was holding up, so he began announcing the partners.

My friends and I waited for our names to be called so we could pair up. I was hoping it was someone I knew, so it wouldn't be really awkward. I sighed in relief when Ethan's name was called after mine, indicating that we were partners. He was standing behind me, so I turned around and gave him a high five. "We got this, Sedel! All of you are going down," I exclaimed, pointing to the rest of my friends.

Ethan chuckled and swung his arm around my shoulder. "We'll definitely win, D," he said, using the nickname Bryan had established for me. I rolled my eyes and hit his arm off my shoulder, laughing as I did it. We waited for the rest of the names to be called, and it seemed that there were coincidentally an even amount of girls and boys signed up. So, there were only boy-girl pairs. This should be interesting.

Jessie was partnered with some guy named Roger, Amber was paired up with Logan, Bryan with a girl called Alexis, and Chelsea was with Zach. Well, that wasn't awkward or anything.

I think the pair I was most worried about though was Aidan and Kimberly. The both of them were restlessly standing next to each other, not exchanging one word. Aidan was grumbling some colorful language under his breath, but I didn't think Kimberly could hear it. She was looking in the opposite direction, fidgeting in her spot. "Why don't you ask if you can switch partners?" I whispered to him. It was obvious to him that I was informed of who she was in relation to him, but he didn't ask me about it.

"Crawfish won't do that. He's never done any partner switches in the past, and I don't think he'll do one now." I giggled at his nickname for our principal, but understood what he meant.

"Oh.. Well, someone wise once told me that it'll only be awkward if you make things awkward. So, go talk to her," I shoved him towards his ex, earning me a glare. Nonetheless, he took my words into consideration and tapped her shoulder.

"Look," I heard him say, "we only need to be together for today. If we lose, the faster we can get away from each other. I know you hate being around me as much as I don't like being around you." Wow, I wonder what happened that made their relationship end so badly. Was she the one who cheated on him?

Kimberly didn't even try denying his last statement, so instead, she just nodded her head. "Can we just get along for today?" She stuck her hand out at him, expecting him to shake it, which he did, but only for a second. She didn't seem that bad, but then again, as my saying goes, don't judge an album by its cover.

"Yeah," he said, before turning away from her and back to me.

Our whole group, as well as Kimberly's friends who were standing next to her, could feel the building tension between them. We all understood their history, me most likely less than others. Deciding to break this awkward silence within the groups, I turned to Roger and Alexis, who were located next to their respective partners. "Hey, I'm Drew. It's nice to meet you two," I said, offering them a friendly smile.

They returned the gesture and introduced themselves as well. We were all chatting it up, and I found out that Roger and Alexis were good friends and wanted to be each other's partners, but now they were currently enemies and ready to take the other down.

In the meantime, I heard Chelsea arguing with Zach, something about him being clingy again. I thought he had learned his lesson from before, but I guess not. Amber noticed that he was being a bother again, so she put herself in between the two of them, stopping their quarrel.

Our conversation ended when Mr. Craw announced that it was noon, and the first round was to be started right away. Apparently, there were five rounds each with five pairs going against each other in the water that was four feet deep, so no one would drown or anything. I was positive no one would have signed up if they couldn't swim. When all five rounds were over, the winners of each had to go against each other in the final match, until one pair was left standing. The winners would get a $50 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory.