Restart ✔️

02 | Not So Virtual Reality

"Alright, I gave you the whole ride home to think about whatever you needed to think about. I didn't even say anything on the way up. So...Tell. Me. EVERYTHING." Sage says. She's totally in a better mood than earlier. Maybe it was just First-Day-Back annoyances.

"First of all, we're technically not even all the way up the stairs, so that last one doesn't count." Once we reach my door, which is right at the top of the stairs, Sage bursts through it and jumps on my bed excitedly. I assumed she'd be a bit jealous and all because of her past with him, but she's happier than I've ever seen her. Happier than the time she beat Noah and won the science fair in 9th grade.

"Now we're here. Go ahead, spill. I want every single detail of your conversation, your eye action, your flirts, even the number of times he smiled at you." She's on the left side of my bed and smiles up at the ceiling expectantly. When I sit down on the bottom right corner of my bed, she sits up and leans against my pillows. She folds her hands, rests her chin on them, and says, "Soooooooo?"

"Ok, fine." I tell her everything from the moment he sat down next to me in science class to when he wouldn't let go of my hand when I shook it to be sarcastic. And how romantic it was. I tell her every single flirt I did from the mysterious smiles to the hair twirls that I was oblivious to. And how he tucked the strand of hair behind my ear while he smiled at me. I tell her about the date we have Friday and that it only took him a minute to ask me out. I'm pretty sure she has a heart attack after she falls off my bed holding her heart. She reassures me that she's just in shock to how cute James and I would be.

"Wow, oh my God. You guys have serious chemistry," she says when I'm done. It takes half an hour to gossip with her when in reality James and I probably only talked for 10 minutes. Guess everything has to be explained down to the millisecond in a girls talk. I'd never know, I've never even had a boyfriend. Let alone a person I cared about so much that if they died, part of me would die with them. "Oh, look at this, she's blushing!" Sage leans towards me and pulls on my cheeks like she does with her baby sister. "This is just so adorable," she says with her puppy and baby voice.

"Sage, you know how I don't like to be taunted about James. You've known that for a while." I stare her down in the most teacher-like possible way. I go 5 seconds before we both burst out laughing.

Once we settle down, Sage pats my back and tells me, "Ahhh, Cassie Clove, you have just been cast in the best reality TV show. As the star."

We finish all of our homework pretty quickly because it's just the first day. How did teachers even have stuff to assign us? We haven't learned a thing. And this is why every year I ask Sandy to let me miss the first 2 days back. All we do is talk about the rules which, one, I have no intention of breaking, and, two, they're the same rules we used to go over in Kindergarten. There's no point in going if I'm not learning anything new. The sole purpose of school is to teach us new things, not repeat what we've already learned. Apparently, the school board missed that when they were planning our curriculum. I feel like I've been learning about the same history since 6th grade. At some point, you have to admit that there's only one version of history. And we've already learned it all. Besides my compelling arguments on why I should be able to skip the first two days of school, maybe three, Sandy always says no. It's either, "You only get one first impression, darling." or "Every day counts." I don't really get either of her reasons because first of all, I can have that first impression the third day of school. And second, every day of summer counts. After all, the school board is squeezing summer like a lemon: they're trying to squeeze all of the fun out. Our 6th-grade summer was close to being 3 months long. This past one was a month and a half.

Sage and I walk downstairs to find Aiden setting the table. He looks up at Sage and I and asks her, "You staying for dinner?" She tells him she's gotta get home. Her stepdad has a really strict curfew, 8:00. Some days last year Sage couldn't even finish all of her homework before he called her asking where she was. As she starts toward our front door, she stops right before the door and asks, "You can drive me tomorrow, too, right?"