How I See You

Chapter 29 - It's Will.

It's Will.

I'm so pathetic. I can't believe it - I was meant to ask Alyssa to the dance! Right then at the lake! What sort of guy am I if I can't even ask her a simple question?

Okay, so maybe it isn't that much of a simple question. But it's not like we aren't together already, so it shouldn't even be that hard. Part of me wants to ask Tai how the hell he asked Zara - he told me they're going together after some romantic encounter he had with her at the weekend. But then I'll just look even more pathetic if I ask him.

And what must Alyssa be thinking? That I don't want to go to it? Of course she can't think that the problem is that I don't want to go with her. I bet she's getting impatient. Damnit, I bet I look like such a wimp to her. I bet she is getting worried.

The prom is in two weeks, and if I don't get a plan together soon enough then that'll be it.

-

"C'mon, Will!" I hear Lewis mutter under his breath from beside me at the lunch table. He's tapping that stupid plastic fork against the table and any moment now I am gonna lose it. Tai is sitting across from us, staring at the ceiling and smirking as if he's thinking about something else - probably Zara - with Jordon and Evan hunched on either side him, glaring around the room like two wolves.

"C'mon, man," Lewis pleads to me, "I can't talk to her. I don't know what the hell I'm meant to say. And she thinks I'm a fucking perve."

The problem is, that Lewis is sort of a perve.

"Do you need reminding of that party at Annette Flynn's house?" Tai snaps out of his daze with a grin and looks across at Lewis who is staring at him like a wounded animal.

"A'ight, a'ight," Lewis mumbles, glancing down at the table as Evan snickers darkly and Jordon and I smirk. "But I've changed, man!"

"Sure," I end up saying sarcastically. "You were totally not staring at those girls in that way on the bus on Friday," I say, referring to when we were coming home from football and he wouldn't look away from their chest for the whole fifteen minutes.

"Guys, I'm serious," he replies restlessly, looking round at all of us. "I can make this work. And you can help me," he pats my back and I grimace.

Lewis just doesn't give up. But the best way of worming my way out of getting involved with Reina is to treat the whole thing like a joke, and he won't want my help anymore.

Besides, I have my own problems to solve.

-

When Leila walks into the kitchen, she stops dead, her eyes wide, at the sight of me with my books scattered in front of me across the table. I got home earlier today because I caught a different bus - Tai and Evan pulled me along.

"Is that- are you-"

"Yes," I say slowly, scowling and then tearing a piece of paper out of my book where the teacher has written an angry note. I pick up my pen and start writing down the maths answers again.