Assisting Victoria

Part Twelve

            I tried to ignore the way people were looking at me as I made my way to class. My eyes stayed glued to the ground as I heard whispers and snickering from those around me. I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. I was terribly embarrassed. They knew. They all knew that I liked her.

            When third hour came around I was almost afraid to go for the first time. Some of the kids that had seen the picture in my locker were in my band class. What could be worse than that? Well, I suppose if Tori had seen it then it would have been worse, but this was almost as bad in my opinion.

            I walked in the door and some of the kids started to whisper to their friends. I knew this wasn’t going to go well. Luckily, Mr. Baron was in his office and didn’t see me yet. I slipped back out the door and went down to the end of the hallway.

            The people working on the building weren’t there today, probably because they didn’t really have much else to do at the moment, so I decided to sneak into the new part of the building, where I knew no one else would be, and find somewhere quiet to hide out until 3rd hour was over.

            Did I feel bad about skipping? Yes. It wasn’t like me to ever skip class. I was a good kid, and although I failed many times, my goal was always to try and make my parents happy. I didn’t care about that though as I sat down there curled up on the floor with my arms around my knees. I needed a break from everything. That was all.

            Tori didn’t have to move anything into her new office thankfully. I was terrified the whole hour that she was going to walk in, find me huddled in the dark corner, and get me in trouble. What if she knew? What if someone said something during the hour and she overheard them? My mind was starting to race. I could feel a panic attack coming on and tried my best to stay composed, and breathe evenly. I didn’t need to lose control now, not with the possibility of someone finding me.

            I closed my eyes and relaxed and after a while lost track of time. It seemed to have flown by pretty fast and before I knew it the hour was over. I stood up, a little stiff from sitting on the hard ground for the past hour, and cracked the door open to make sure everyone had gone to lunch already. When I found the coast to be clear enough, I walked out into the hallway. Just as I was going to be walking past the band room, Tori walked out into the hallway.

            She was reading papers that she had in her hands and when she looked up at me she jumped a little.

            “Oh… geez you scared me. Hi Kelsey.”

            “Sorry about that.”

            “Hey I didn’t see you in class. Where were you?” she asked.

            “I uh… overslept.”

            “Oh. Okay. Well how’d yesterday go? Did you get signed up for tutoring?”

            “Yeah, now all I need to do is find something to do for an hour before I go since I had to make it at 3:45pm. I might be able to go down to the library and read or something.”

            “I see… well,” she paused for a moment. “You could also help me if you wanted to.”

            “Help you?” I asked, a little too confused sounding.

            She smiled.

            “Well don’t make it sound like it would be such a horrible thing.”

            “Oh no… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” I said.

            “It’s okay. Really though, I’ll be here more often getting things situated, plus there’s a lot of stuff I have to get done for our next concert and all. I could always use the extra help.”

            I took a minute to think, because I didn’t want to seem too excited about the idea, and then answered her as casually as I could.

            “Yeah sure. I guess I could help you out.”

            “Great! Awesome! When’s your first appointment?” she asked.

            “I start on Monday,” I answered.

            “Okay, so starting Monday I’ll see you down here right after classes get out.”

            “Sounds good,” I said.

            Let’s be honest though. That sounded more than good to me. That sounded amazing. I had a whole hour to look forward to every day with Tori. I didn’t even care about what I’d be helping her with, besides, whatever it was couldn’t have been really hard. I was just thrilled that she offered the job up.

            This brought my mood up a little and I practically skipped to lunch to find a very confused Lauren sitting alone at our table.

            “Hey where we were?” she asked.

            “Sorry. I was talking to Tori.”

            This made her perk up a little.

            “Ooh about what?” she asked excitedly.

            “I’m going to be spending some time with her helping her out after school every day before I go to my tutoring appointments. Oh yeah, and I sighed up for tutoring. I guess I should have mentioned that too.”

            “No way! That’s so cool. You get to spend alone time with her. You know, if you really think about it, she has so many other students that she could ask to help her and yet… she always picks you. You don’t think that’s weird or anything?”

            She smiled and nudged my arm. All I could do was roll my eyes.

            “It’s not going to be anything special, Lauren. I’m just helping her get stuff done so I have something to do instead of just walking around or reading in the library. And besides, I’m never doing much in class. She asked me because the others are busy that’s all.”

            “Whatever you say.”

            I shook my head. Lauren was so stubborn sometimes that it really drove me insane. She wasn’t going to believe me until I could prove to her that nothing was going to happen, and I would. After a while she was going to see that I was helping Tori out without it turning into anything else and then I could say I told you so. Kind of a bittersweet win for me, because I would have liked it to turn into something else, but I also didn’t want to be wrong.