Behind the Scenes of Life

Chapter 4

By the start of exams I had managed to find out quite enough. My frequent pestering had paid off. So I didn’t know who it was, but the way it sounded only made me think of Chace. I didn’t want to easily believe it was him, but there was the evidence. Well not really evidence, but it sounded like it was him and that was good enough for me. I had written down on a scrap piece of paper all I had managed to find out so far.

Profile of Mystery Guy:

(What I know)

1.       He likes me.

2.       Name starts with C.

3.       He’s an academic.

4.       He regrets something he did to me earlier.

5.       He was planning to ask me out.

6.       He was nervous about it.

7.       He thought I was, “funny, decent, smart and pretty”.

8.       He has blue eyes.

(What I don’t know)

1.       Who exactly he is even though I can pretty much guess, but I’m not assuming it’s him until I hear it from Kina’s own mouth, which was obviously never going to happen.

2.       When he’s planning to ask me out.

3.       Why he’s taking so long.

4.       And why he rejected me in the first freaking place!!!!! (This is obviously based on assumption one of this list)

After committing the lists to memory, I tore the paper up so that there’d be no possibility of anyone figuring out what was slowly becoming my secret too.

First term exams came up a short few weeks later and we had to go to our exam venues. The grade tens were on the top floor. My classroom was in room 207. Each morning, in class teacher’s period, we were told where to go for the day. Chace sat either in front, next to or behind me in the classes of the subjects we had together. That meant he sat near me in, English, Afrikaans and Math. For the rest of the subjects, we were in different classrooms. When the grade wrote a subject both Chace and I didn’t do, we were back in the same classroom for the non-writers. The day that the grade wrote Biology, Chace and I were in room 206 together. I sat behind him. Since we weren’t writing, the teacher in charge of us expected us to study. Being me, I didn’t study. I had brought two puzzle books along to keep myself busy.

While I was busy doing my word search, my chair was being pulled back. I knew it was Chace doing it with his feet. He was always doings like that.

I turned around. “Can I help you?”

He grinned and I tried not to let it show how it made me feel. Inside my heart was melting.

“I’m bored Jane.”

“So am I”

“Really?”

“Yes”

“Yes?”

“Yes”

“No?”

“Yes- wait I mean no.” I let out a frustrated sigh.

“Ha, I got you!”

“You confused me that’s why.” He smiled again. He looked at the book on my desk. “Do you have another  puzzlebook?”

I nodded and then handed him the one that was in my bag. He finished a word search in no time and after doing a few he was back to pestering me. Not that I minded.