Savanna

Chapter 15

I know mum has always hoped I'll talk to her about guys who might possibly be my boyfriends. I just haven't had a boyfriend yet. Though, I'm not so sure my mum would believe it now, as she has seen Jake at our place. At least I could dodge her questions after it had happened - I told her I needed to go study. And of course illustrate the poster.

Once back in my room, I took a better look at Jake's work. If I hadn't seen him doing it, I would have thought it took him at least an hour. I didn't spot even one tiny grammar mistake. Everything was smooth, perfect. And there was a lot of text, like he'd used more than one book as information sources. Or at least the Internet. But no. He took it all from the notes and his head.

Pulling myself away from the admiration, I took out my pencils. I already know that Jake is some should-not-exist otherworldly fantasy creature or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if there were bunch of other things he could do that I'm not aware of. Right now I just decided to throw him out of my mind and start drawing. But a while after, I found myself drawing too gingerly. I realized I didn't want to ruin this poster - my illustrations couldn't be compared with his perfect handwriting.

The next day at school, I noticed Nicole looked a little jealous, although she tried to hide it. But still I was often hit with questions like: What else did you do? and What did you talk about? and so on.

Rudy appeared at school a little before the beginning of our third subject. He took his seat at the desk in front of us.

"Look who's here! Where were you for so long?" Nicole asked as soon as he had approached us.

"Looked after my sister," he said simply. "My parents were away this morning."

"And no one else was at home?" Nicole was referring to Rudy's big family.

"My uncle was, but he was busy." Rudy shrugged.

Nicole nodded. "Okay then. But you didn't miss much anyway. Mrs. Finley didn't show up, so our first lesson was called off."

I then remembered how the day before Rudy had left so suddenly after a phone call he'd received. I'd wanted to ask about it.

"Rudy, did something happen yesterday?" I asked worriedly. "You left so fast."

He looked away for a second. "It was about my brother. He got... attacked."

"Attacked? By who?"

"A dog," he replied, turning away from us to take out his things as the teacher had entered the classroom.

"Why did the dog attack him?" Nicole asked, her eyebrows furrowed.

"It had gotten out from behind the fence and... Karl happened to be on the wrong spot at the wrong time."

"Will he be okay?" I asked.

Rudy nodded. "It wasn't even as bad as it had seemed at first. He's okay."

As the lesson began, our chat stayed at that. I might be a bit paranoid, but I couldn't help myself when the thoughts of savannians crossed my mind.

The last lesson was biology. I had brought the poster already in the morning. Now I just took my seat next to Jake, trying to ignore him. Until he began speaking to me.

"You're a pretty good artist," he mentioned.

"Thanks," was my simple, almost monotonous answer. I didn't look at him. I know he just said it because he wanted my attention. I'm not that good artist. And he was kidding when he said he's hitting on me, too... Right?

"You have a nice home. Maybe I could come over another time?" He was searching my eyes, smiling.

"Better not," I said, maybe a little too fast.