Effortless

Seventeen

"Did you want a snack?"

I thought about the question for a moment. "What do you have?"

I was at Javier's house. I was the reason that we were there together yet I found myself ready to leave. I should have left it alone when he said we didn't need to prepare for the competition together. He was being short with me the entire night and I hated it. I hated it so much that it made me want to go home to the demons I called siblings and the devil that was my aunt.

"Chips, fruit, cookies." Javier mumbled dryly as he looked through his pantry. "Literally whatever you want."

"Do you have Oreos?"

Javier glanced at me and then reached to the top shelf. He pulled out a whole pack of Oreos that was unopened. He handed the pack to me and motioned for me to follow him.

I followed him through the house and to his room. We passed two boys who couldn't be older than twelve years old wrestling on the couch and Gabriella egging the young boys on. Gabriella waved at me with a smile and I waved back. I found it odd because she had never greeted me before, but I waved regardless.

Javier so clearly did not want to do this with me. His demeanor was cold and sort of closed off, it was like he was forcing himself to only talk to me when absolutely necessary. It was completely different from the way he normally acted around me. I noticed that after the party was when he started acting differently. That was when he stopped the cocky and way too full of himself attitude around me.

I think I missed it.

He sat down at the desk in the corner of his room and I stood there awkwardly. I didn't know where to sit because he only had one desk chair. I didn't want to sit on his bed because it was on the other side of the room and I didn't feel that it was appropriate. The couch in his room had a bunch of clothes and pillows on it so I couldn't sit there either.

I stood there for a few seconds before he looked at me with confusion. "What are you doing?"

"Where am I supposed to sit?"

Javier shrugged. "I don't care, sit anywhere."

"Yeah, well there isn't anywhere to sit. Unless there's an invisible chair right here." I pointed at the empty spot in front of me. When Javier stared at me blankly I walked up a bit and sat down as if I was sitting in a chair. Seeing as there was no chair in that spot my butt hit the floor pretty hard. I ignored the pain. "No invisible chair."

Javier rolled his eyes. "If I was a bad host, your chair would be the floor."

He then stood up and went to his closet. He came out of the closet with a red bean bag chair and threw it next to his desk chair. He sat down in his chair again and opened his laptop.

I was happy that I could sit in a bean bag chair because I had always been fond of them. I sat down and opened up the pack of Oreos. It felt rude of me to eat them out of the pack but what other choice did I have? Javier didn't give me a napkin or plate to eat the cookies on.

"I created a slideshow on the Industrial Revolution for us to study." Javier told me, his focus on his laptop.

The first round of the competition was about the Industrial Revolution. Just a bunch of stupid shit about stupid people who invented stupid items. It was stupid but an easy topic so I couldn't complain.

He went through his slideshow but instead of us studying together, it felt like he was quizzing me. It was as if he thought that he didn't need to study for this at all, only I did.

"Hey." I said cutting Javier off mid sentence when he was reading a question off of the slideshow. "We're supposed to be studying together."

"Yeah, we are." He said blandly.