Mind and Matter

33 | Emerson

At last, the calendar creeped from the first month of the year to the second, and February started off just as miserable as January. The sun hadn't made an appearance in a week, and the best part was we'd had no snow days to normalize the weather...and cancel school.

As much as I pushed myself to keep up with all my schoolwork, senioritis was hitting hard.

"Do you want to come home with me to study for our math test?" Kalani asked, as we left to our lockers. I shifted my backpack on my shoulder, where my heavy calculus book resided.

"The thing is I've kind of already studied..." I dropped my backpack to the floor at the foot of my locker. "Last week. But in my defense, I had club meetings all this week, so I needed to start studying early."

She groaned. "Why am I not shocked?"

"I'd question if we were really as close as we think we are if you were," I joked, chuckling at my own remark as she rolled her eyes. I yanked open the door to my locker with two hands, and an avalanche of notebooks slipped down the shelf and slammed to the floor. Bending down to pick them up I mumbled, "I cannot wait for college so I don't have to deal with lockers anymore."

"Did I ever tell you about the time I got my ponytail stuck in someone else's locker in middle school?"

We began to share locker horror stories as the afternoon crowd slowly dwindled and people left to go home. Ever since Franco, essentially, had dumped Kalani, she had avoided him and his female counterparts—Neve and her inner circle—like the bubonic plague. Even when they tried to talk to her, she'd ignore them, as if their words never even made it to her ear. I admired her for being able to leave a group of negative people and felt bad for judging her earlier in the school year.

Sometimes a crush could really get in the way of the rest of your life.

Which is why Leo had migrated from my long-distance admirer to my study buddy to (almost) my boyfriend. I didn't know if he considered me his girlfriend so I wasn't going to slap titles on the relationship already.

Then again, how do couples make it official? Surely the guy doesn't drop to one knee, flash a Ring Pop and ask "Can you be my beloved girlfriend?"

That actually didn't sound so bad when I thought about it.

"I'm going to head home so I can understand at least thirty-percent of this test tomorrow," Kalani joked, throwing her backpack on her shoulder and adjusting her plain white sweater. "Just be ready, your phone might blow up with confused texts from me."

"It's all good, girl," I answered, giving her a small hug as she hurried to the door. I turned the other way down the long, windy hallway, in the direction of Leo's locker. His was located on a much emptier side of the school, and no one even occupied the lockers to his left or right. He was well-aware of that luxury and obnoxiously spread all of his books and papers around his feet.