When I'm with you

Chapter 19

"Aargghh!!" Jane whined as she looked towards Chad and the baseball team's direction. Well, I couldn't blame her. Seeing all those cheap, random girls flirting with the guys of baseball team (including Chad) was truly an unpleasant view. I kept telling her to stop peeking at them, but she wouldn't listen and continued to look and be pissed at them.

It had been almost a month since Chad had stopped hanging out with us and his actions really did affect Jane, more than I could've ever imagined. Because of this, Jane started acting strange too. I couldn't help but blame Chad for doing this to my bestfriend. Although I knew for a fact that it wasn't really his fault; that Chad was just living and enjoying his life (good for him), without us (unfortunately).

For the past few days, Jane wasn't being herself. She always had this gloomy expression and didn't talk much, which was allarming because Jane was the type of person that couldn't stop talking even just for a second.

There was this one time this week when Mr. Foe, our art teacher, was absent, so Jane and I just talked random stuff for the whole hour. It was weird how one-sided it was. Jane just stared blankly and nodded to what I was saying, though I doubted she was actually listening. It was as if her mind was elsewhere. It was rare for her to remain silent in a conversation; it was a trait she had in common with Chad. They were so alike, since they both had the natural ability to come up with a joke or a topic in a flash. Honestly, I had never seen her so quiet before and I swear it was creepy. Just like that one time with Chad. I guess that's another thing she has in common with him.

I knew she was acting this way because of Chad and somehow I could understand why she was so affected by Chad's distance. Even though she wouldn't admit it, I was sure that she was starting to like Chad, not in a friendly way, of course, but in a romantic way. And since they started out as friends, I couldn't blame her if she was confused with her feelings, especially now that Chad was avoiding her.. well, us.

For some reason, Jane liking Chad bothered me. I still couldn't get rid of the conversation I had with Chad in our garden. I didn't know why but I had this heavy feeling inside of me, as if there was a hidden meaning in everything that he had told me. I hoped I was just assuming things. I hoped that I was just overthinking. Because if what I thought was true, that Chad liked me (which I hoped not) I wasn't sure how to react now that I was sure that Jane liked him. I couldn't bear seeing her hurting because of me. Jane had gone through a lot because of her wrong choices, and now that she had finally met someone who I knew could really make her happy. I couldn't swallow the fact that I could be a hindrance for her happiness.

In the end we spent our lunch break moving our food around our plates, just the two of us. Gab didn't sit with since, for some unknown reason, he was called at the teacher's office. Well, I could just ask him about it after school.

After school we had training for the swim team. As the competition got closer, our training became harder. We were doing at least 5 laps a day, which really was exhausting. This also worsened Jane's anxiety, and she started being moody.

After our training, Katy gathered all of us for an announcement. I thought it was a change of schedule, but I was surprised when she finally told us about it.

"As we all know, the Fresno swimming competition will be held this spring, but there has been a change of events. The sponsors of the race decided that it'd be better to do it this summer. So yeah, we'll be having a lot of time to prepare ourselves." Katy announced happily.

My eyes widened, as a wide grin started forming on my face. I felt so happy that I was speechless for a few seconds. Then my teammates started screaming and jumping out of happiness. Everyone hugged each other, totally pleased with the good news. Someone started chanting "GROUP HUG! GROUP HUG!", so we all huddled together, including Katy, for a big group hug.