Pretending to Fake It

Chapter 3- English Class

As I walked into English, I quickly scanned the room and then looked down at the floor. Here's what I saw:

- Nathan Evers in the back corner with his friends that weren't the big four

- The English teacher at her desk reading over something (probably unknown project papers)

- The cheerleaders in another corner, as usual

- And lastly, my seat.

My English class consisted of three groups of people. The popular boys led by Nathan, the popular girls led by his 'girlfriend,' Elena (they aren't officially dating yet, but they might as well be), and me. So I am in the same room with a bunch of populars for almost two hours, according to the schedule. I hate it. Don't get me wrong, I love English, I just hate the people.

The bell rang and the English teacher went up to the board.

I rushed over to my seat, where I sat alone, obviously. As soon as I sat down, Vancote, the teacher, started talking.

"I am assigning a project!" She announced cheekily. Everyone in the class groaned simultaneously. Except for me.

"For this project, you are studying human nature. You and a partner will get together and befriend each other, if you already haven't. You will write a report about each other's 'quirks,' per say. For example, if I was writing a report about myself, I would write that my sneezes are high pitched and that I am very clumsy when it comes to any sort of physical movement. This report for each of you needs to be at least a page, with the correct formatting. It will be due at the end of the semester, and NO, you will not have in class time to work on it, with the exception of the rest of this class. Go."

It sounded like it would be a fun project, if I wasn't going to be forced to work with the most annoying person in school. Everyone scrambled from their seats, trying to sit next to their bestie or trying to find somebody.

I sat there amongst the familiar chaos of getting a partner. I closed my eyes and started to do my tap dance in my head.

"Hey."

My eyes snapped open as I stopped reviewing my dance in the middle of a step. You could only guess who it was. Nathan Evers.

I raised an eyebrow, pretending to be confused. "Hey?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, in a bad attempt to be shy. He's going to have to try harder than that if he's going to pull off my plan successfully.

As I was on my way to English, I was mostly walking behind Wesley the whole time, and staring at the back of his neck gave me an idea. An idea that would require me befriending Nathan and making him play along. If we could pull it off, we would be legends.

"So!" He said awkwardly. Boy, this was going to be painful. "Do you want to be partners for the project?"

If he was really going to do this, I was going to make him work for it.

"No, thanks, I'm good. I prefer working by myself," I mumbled to the floor. Popular kids were so easy to mess with.

"Aw, come on. I promise I won't do all the work!" Dipwad.

"Ugh, fine. Hey, do you want to go into the hallway to talk? It's way too noisy in here."

"Sure!"

I practically dragged Nathan out into the hallway. As soon as we were in the clear, I cut the act.

He, on the other hand, didn't. He leaned against the wall with his hands in his back pockets. Lord, you could just tell by his body language that he was trying way to hard.

"God, just cut the act already Nathan. I know everything about the bet and the prank you made at lunch for prom. Just stop trying. If I didn't know, I would think you were drunk or something because otherwise, you never get within a twenty foot radius of me and surely never talk to me, so I would figure it out eventually."

"Wow. Okay then. I'm absolutely screwed. Oh my god, Wesley is going to kill me. And then bring me back to life as a zombie, make me dig my own grave and kill me again."

I cut him off before this could get more stupid. "Listen. I have a plan to make you a hero in front of your friends because I'm just that nice." He rolled his eyes.

"You are going to have to cooperate with me if this is going to work, Nathan."

"Call me Nate."

"I prefer Nathan, Nate sounds like bait which makes me think of fishing which makes me bored. I don't like being bored Nathan."

He looked at me like I was crazy. Which is appropriate, since I tend to get a tad bit crazy when I get into planning mode. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm a nice person! And because I like to mess with people! You remember when someone hacked into the school computers and changed everyone's schedules so that when they were supposed to be in one place they were in another and it sent the whole school into panic and confusion and administration had to give us a week off to sort everything out but the hacker was never found? That was me."

"You were the hacker that got us a week off?"

"That's me."

He crossed his arms and crossed one foot in front of the other. "I'm listening."

"Okay, so, my plan is in steps. Step 1 is fairly easy, but-"

"Wait. How many steps are there?"

"About six with a LOT of substeps."

"If you heard us at lunch talking about it, then when on earth did you come up with this?"

"The transition from lunch to English! Where else?"

"That's only five minutes though!"

"And your point is....?"

"You know what, never mind." Nathan said, giving up and shaking his head.

I rolled my eyes. "Anyways, Step one involves us getting to know everything about each other."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. If we are going to pull off pretending to 'date,' we need to know absolutely every single detail about each other. We need to know everything about each other and more for the project, anyways... So I figured we could talk somewhere while we worked on the project together like Wesley told you to..."

Nathan rubbed his eyes with his hands. "Okay. We're really doing this. Fine. How about we meet up today, after school. You have a car, right?"

I scrunched up my nose and bit my upper lip. I was going to go to the studio to practice for a few hours before I had to babysit Gavin. I wanted to finish this one dance I started last night. "I mean, I guess I could do it... And yes I have a car. I wouldn't ride with you, anyways."

"Should we go to my place?"

"Oh dear god, no. I actually have a better idea..."