Taking His Dare

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

I spent the night at Rut’s house, after falling asleep to Friends and later being awoken by 51 missed calls from my worried mother.  Oh well. It’s not like I was getting mugged or raped or stolen and hypnotized into thinking I was a different person like she thought I was.

In the morning, I suggested a ‘Chill Day’, as Jake called them. Chill Days consisted of doing nothing but ‘chilling’, but you could probably guess that. Rut asked if I was feeling okay and then felt my forehead. I then proceeded to punch his arm away and kindly tell him to piss off. 

I didn’t want to go to school today. Marisol was obviously mad at me, as was Anna (except I didn’t care about her feelings, as cruel as it sounds.), and I was never good with confrontations. I wasn’t sure if Delia or the twins were siding with Marisol, if there even were sides. And plus, there was Tom. What would he do after yesterday? His talk with Marisol plainly didn’t go to plan, so I had no idea where he stood in the situation. And I just really didn’t like Thursdays.

Rut rudely told me to suck it up, and forced me to change into clothes I kept at his house. I had taken over a whole drawer in his dresser, but he had a drawer in my dresser, too.  So now, we were sitting in his car in the parking lot, because I refused to leave the refuge.  He was impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, glaring at me. I stared out the windshield, searching for any of my friends or Tom. They were on my list of People to Temporarily Avoid. Unluckily, Rut usually hangs out with Tom, so I would have to avoid him, too. This was so not going to be my day.

When it was five minutes to homeroom, and I still hadn’t made any move to get out of the car, Rut popped open his door and said, “You really like it when I have to take drastic measures, don’t you?”, which ultimately made me jump out of the car and run to class. Rut’s ‘drastic measures’ were never pretty.

No one I usually spoke to was in my homeroom, so I was safe there. I took my seat, quietly, for once, and worked on homework I didn’t do the night before. As I completed the math, I thought about Marisol. She was, truly, my one friend that was a girl. It would suck to lose her. The reason she was mad at me wasn’t even completely my fault—how was I supposed to know what Tom wanted to speak to her about? It wasn’t totally resting on my shoulders, I guess. Inexplicably, Marisol went to Anna when after her talk with Tom. Normally, she was one for confrontation, and would have just gone to me with the situation, and we would have resolved it then and there. And above, Marisol was crying over this. She usually never cries, let alone about a boy.

By lunchtime, I had successfully avoided the people on my list of people to avoid. Unfortunately, this lunch had all my friends in it, plus Rut and Tom. So, being the sociable person I am, I sat at the reject table. I was now trying to make small talk with Paul, the lone reject himself. Paul was the studious type, which was therefore looked down upon by the uppermost level of high school hierarchy. Honestly, he was a little dorky. Not that I thought studying and all that crap was a bad thing; I admit I need to so more of it if I don’t want to end up like Jake. It’s just Paul took it a little too seriously. He went all out, with the sweater vests and thick rimmed glasses, and turtle-shell backpack that he carried, completely full, everywhere. And since he was the school’s local reject, he wasn’t very good at this thing called conversation.

“So, Paul,” I started, pulling my sandwich out of my backpack, “how have you been?”

He shrugged his shoulders, taking a bite out of the apple in his right hand, a book in the other.

“That’s good. I haven’t talked to you in a while.”

He looked at me, and shrugged again.