Effortless

Eighteen

I had just finished telling Kailey every detail about my evening at Javier's house. We were waiting for the student council meeting to start so I had time to kill, plus I had been dying to talk about it for what felt like forever.

"Wait, so does this mean that you guys are friends?" Kailey asked way too loudly.

I shushed her. Javier was in the same room as us, just on the other side. He had already said my friends and I were pretty loud at times. I didn't need Kailey to prove his point further. I also didn't want him to know that we were talking about him.

"No, it doesn't mean that we're friends. Why do you want us to be friends so badly?" I asked with an eye roll.

Before she could answer, Mr. Rowe entered the room. Everyone in the room immediately began to quiet down as he walked toward his desk.

I felt like people were constantly interrupting me at the worst times. If our teacher would have waited ten more seconds before coming into the classroom, Kailey could have answered me. Whatever, it just meant that I had to remember to ask her again. Though, over the past couple months I had started to realize that I was forgetting a lot more than usual. I mean, it wasn't anything drastic. It was small errors like losing my phone even though I had it a few minutes before. I was also forgetting parts of conversations that had happened not that long ago. It was okay, though, because I ended up remembering if I thought really hard about it.

Honestly, I had no idea what was said during the meeting. The truth was that now that I wasn't the class president, I had no desire to even be in the student council. I had stuck it out for three full years in hope that the next year would be my year to win. Clearly that year never came.

Student council bored me. If you weren't class president then there was no point in doing it. Everyone else was just background characters that showed up to meetings and maybe a few events. It was just a bunch of straight-A, overachiever kids coming together and making the most insufferable group possible.

But that was just my opinion. Most people would say otherwise. Many of my club mates – mostly the irrelevant ones whose names I didn't know – thought that it was fun even while not being president or secretary.

I was only at the meeting because I had committed to it and I couldn't bail on Kailey. She would be mad if I dropped out just because I didn't get what I wanted. Plus it would look bad on me to quit just because I lost.

My eyes were wandering around the room and I kept locking eyes with Javier. I wasn't doing it on purpose and I didn't think that he was either. It just kept happening. I also noticed his girlfriend looking at me, but she didn't seem as pissed as last time. I couldn't quite figure out the look that she was giving me.

After Mr. Rowe finished explaining whatever the hell he was talking about, he announced for me to stay after once again. I already knew what he wanted to talk about. He was going to try and let me down easy. He was going to tell me that I couldn't go on the student council trip even though I already knew. I was contemplating slipping out of the classroom with everyone else when the meeting ended to avoid the conversation.

Despite not wanting to, I waited for everyone else to leave the room before I went to talk to him. I was bracing myself for his words.

"I just need a little more information from you so that you're all good to go on this trip." Mr. Rowe said with a smile. "I'm really glad you're coming, by the way."

He was glad I was coming?

"What?" I asked, the confusion clear both in the tone of my voice and on my face.

"The trip." He clarified.

His clarification didn't help make the situation more clear. "Huh?"

He rearranged some papers on his desk as he spoke. "The student council trip, Elias. Once the situation was explained to us we were able to make an exception for you. You were only a couple of days past the deadline to pay, so it was fine."