Homeroom 23

Chapter Eighteen: Corkboard

In order for me and Daniel to share a corkboard, we would need to share a common area where we could keep said corkboard, and what better place for a communal cork board than a shared room? Nowhere! Well, there was only one problem with that, which was that at the time me and Daniel didn't have a shared room, but there was a very quick and easy solution to that problem. The only issue was that said solution involved making a deal with Samantha.

"So...Samantha..." I started, as nonchalantly as possible, leaning on the doorway of our room. Samantha had been lying on her bed, facing the wall, but when I began talking she turned to me, as if to humor what I was saying.

"What do you want?" She asked, not bothering to play into my trying-to-be-chill act.

"You know how you and Xavier kind of live across the homeroom from one another? That's gotta be awfully inconvenient, so I'm willing to trade rooms with Xavier so that you guys can be closer." As I said this Samantha just stared at me blankly.

"I know that you're not doing this for me. You're doing it because you want to be with Daniel." She then turned around and went back to whatever she was pretending to do while facing the wall.

"Can't two things be true at once?" I asked, removing myself from the doorway in attempts to garner her attention again. "Sure, I just want to be with Dan, but doesn't it also benefit you?"

"The answer is no." Samantha said, not bothering to turn around.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I don't want to move."

"But you're always in his room anyways. Won't it be easier to just move in with him?" As I was attempting to convince Samatha, I knew that across the homeroom Daniel was doing the same to Xavier, and I also knew he was probably having an easier job than I was.

"Melissa, I can't." Samantha finally turned to face me.

"Why not?" I continued to press. "Why does it matter if me and Dan share a room together? I know you don't care about Dan, or me for that matter, if we're being honest. All you should care about is that it benefits you."

"But Victoria likes Danny! What kind of friend would I be if I let you move in with him?" I had been growing progressively more agitated during the course of the conversation, but when I heard that I paused. Victoria didn't care about Samantha. I had come to that conclusion a while ago; and yet here she was defending her and sticking up for what Victoria would have wanted.

"How can you think Victoria still likes Dan? Even after what she did with your boyfriend?" I hadn't meant to say it, but the words just kind of came out of me. Samantha stared at me like a sad puppy.

"Why do you hate me, Melissa?" The question caught me off guard. I didn't hate Samatha, Samantha hated me. It had always been that way, for as long as we had known one another.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I don't hate you. I've never hated you. You're the one who's always hated me."

"I can tell when people don't like me, you know. You don't like my friends, or my makeup, or the clothes I wear, or the parties I go to." I was taken aback by the question. I guess I had never thought of it that way. I always assumed that she would never be bothered by anything I thought of her. I was just some lousy weird girl.

"I...I guess I didn't know that you cared about what I thought," I confessed. "I'm just used to girls...girls like you not liking me. I guess I just wanted to dislike you first. It feels less lonely that way." We both looked at eachother then, and I felt something like an understanding pass between us. While it's true that Samantha was loud, bossy, and at times arrogant, at the end of the day she was just a girl. A girl like me. It's easy to assume that people like her just have everything figured out, but a lot of the time they don't. She was just as wishful for a friendship as I had been all this time, and in a way I just kind of brushed her off.