Make My Way

Chapter Three

Aria's POV

I stood outside the choir room, scanning the halls for Stella. Where is she? I thought. I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to her in band so now that choir rolled around after a painful period of science, I needed to talk to her. Glancing up at the clock, I saw I only had a minute left and sighed before going in anyway.

Unfortunately, most of the choir was already inside. This included my ultimate enemy. Well, maybe not quite enemy; it was more of a love-hate relationship. A lot of people are confused by that phrase. They think since it has the term 'love' involved, we, ah, enjoy each other but they're wrong. It means we love to hate or would hate to love each other. "Ahhhhhhh. She's here," he sighed.

"Ugh. He's here," I groan and send him a death glare which he responds to by flipping me off and I give him my biggest cheesiest smile as I return the favor. He rolls his eyes and goes to sit down. This idiot, Adrian, is a year older than me and we've been at this since I was in eighth grade, when we were in a play together. He tried to set me up, the guy wouldn't ask anyone out, much less me who he had a crush on, and in the meantime, we spent a lot of time together. There had been a couch backstage that he had to move and so I sat on it with him while it was offstage. We talked about many things, including that guy- Blake- and a lot more. Let's just say he was the one who ruined my innocence.

I sat down in the front row- as far away from him as possible and just before the bell, Stella walked through the door and sat down beside me. "Where were you?" I whispered.

"Long story," she responded. I shook my head and turned my attention toward the teacher. She split us into groups by part- I was a soprano and he was a baritone. She then reorganized us by part and height. Him, being tall, was in the back row and since I wasn't all that tall, but not many of the sopranos were, was in the middle row, next to the tenors.

Stella was sitting next to me and I was incredibly happy with my spot- until I felt my chair move. I turned around to find none other than Adrian sitting directly behind me, resting his feet on the back of my chair in order to annoy me. I pushed his feet down. "No," I sighed in complaint. I groaned, knowing there was nothing I could do now and turned back around. Could this day get any worse? I asked myself.

Choir wasn't so bad except for the constant pressure on the back of my chair and the occasional dirty comment from behind me. When it was finally over, Stella and I decided to go out for lunch. I drove the two of us to a nearby sandwich place and as soon as we were seated, she started talking. "Okay. I have three things we need to talk about. First- you and Caden. Second- Aurora. We need to get that girl a guy. I need some time when she's not hot on my tail. Third- I'll tell you when we get there."

"Okaaaaaaaay...." I said suspiciously.

"What happened with Caden?!"

"Long story short, he flirted with me, dragged me into a closet, and kissed me."

"Wait so you weren't willingly making out with him in there?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I sighed in annoyance, "No. I didn't even kiss back."

"Okay, fine. Now about Aura. Who does she even like that's available?" Stella questioned thoughtfully.

"Well she's still kind of obsessed with Xavier but that's obviously not happening. He's been ignoring her all day. I think she's kind of had her eye on Caden though, honestly."

"Hmmmm..." she wondered, "I can work with that."

"Now item number three on the agenda," I prodded curiously.

"Well," Stella paused, "I may or may not be going to Neil's house on Saturday and he just snapchatted me and said that his parents won't be home and it'll just be the two of us and he's giving me a ride home after and I don't know what to say when I'm there and I'm freaking out," she blurted out in a jumble of words.

"What!?!?" I almost spit out the pop I had been drinking. "And you didn't tell me this immediately afterwards?!"

"I wanted to but I didn't have time!"

"Well this is great! Now you have to talk to him in person!" I exclaimed. They only ever talked on snapchat and through text and I was always on Stella for it. I had never been one to hide behind a screen and I hated that both of them were.

"I guess," she sighed nervously and glanced at her phone, waking it up. "We need to go! Only eight minutes to get back and into the French room!" We stood up abruptly and threw away our garbage before getting back in the car.

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French was fairly uneventful except for the fact that one of my friends, Willow and the guy she had a crush on, Julian, kept glancing at each other out of the corner of their eyes, yet neither one thought the other liked them. I just rolled my eyes and smiled.

My design class was just as uneventful, if not more. It wasn't until I walked into my last period class that things got interesting. Math. I took an upper level math class so I was in with some seniors as well. I stepped into the classroom and mentally killed myself. "NO!" we yelled in unison. I turned around and took a few steps out of the classroom in order to distance myself from Adrian.  I took a deep breath and went back in, attempting to ignore his presence and sat down confidently in a seat near Nora.

When the teacher walked in, Adrian finally went to his seat and I groaned yet again to find him sitting directly in front of me. At least I have the advantage this time, I thought, attempting to stay positive. As the teacher began her lecture, Adrian pretended to itch the back of his head and flipped me off again. In return, I slouched in my seat to kick him through the hole in the back of his chair. He whipped his head around and glared at me.

This was going to be a very long year.