The Academy // Harry Styles AU

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Nicole’s POV

My morning the next day had actually started out better than expected when we had time to head down to the dining hall for a quick breakfast before classes started. During my first two classes, which I had with Harry, we agreed to meet again during lunch to try and work on the project and he joked and promised that he would remember when lunchtime was today.

So when it was eventually time for lunch, I was a little nervous to go since I knew for sure that we were actually going to work on the project. I hoped that he would stay on task so that we could get it done, I hadn’t known before that he was one of those students that got in trouble a lot, so I hoped that he could keep on task and stay focused so I won’t have to continue to see him to work on this.

Lunch started out the same as always, my friends and I went to get our food when our grade was called, and then we all pretty much split up when we got back to our tables. I hated that we never really sat together anymore, but then again right now I’m okay with it because I felt like it’d be weird if Harry had to sit with all of us while we did our project.

A few minutes after I had sat down, Harry joined me on time today. Neither of us said anything to each other as we both pulled out the questions that we had to complete about getting to know each other. I noticed that his paper was all crinkled and folded up after he had pulled it out of his pocket; I rolled my eyes at him and began to take out a pen.

“Do you have an extra one?” he asked me, and I gave him a look before turning back to see if I had another pen and unfortunately I did.

He thanked me, and then I began to read over the questions again.

“So I guess we’ve already answered the first question,” I said since that was the one that asked about how long you’ve been in this school or any other boarding school, or in Harry’s case, just school in general.

We began to start talking about the next question which was what we planned to have as our major in college, but it was hard since today it seemed to be extra loud in the dining hall. There was a group of boys and girls at one end of the table playing some card game which would cause them to burst out in a random cheer every few minutes and it was unbelievably annoying.

“It’s quite loud in here,” Harry said after awhile and I agreed.

“Are we allowed to leave and go somewhere else to work?” he asked me.

I hesitated for a minute before telling him that we were allowed to leave to do school work. I told him that we should just go to the coffee shop, so we threw away what was left of our lunch and headed out. When we made it to the coffee shop, I started to feel a bit apprehensive considering that there was basically no one in here and I was pretty much alone with him. Thinking back to what my friends said about him and what he said about himself, I was starting to wish that I had just told him that we had to stay in the dining hall.

During lunch they only had one person working in here, and they usually stayed in the back unless someone rang the bell for assistance there was really no need for them to stand out at the cash register. Harry started heading for a table that was toward the middle of back area of the small building, but I quickly sat down at the table next to the window.

It took him a moment to realize that I had already sat down but he didn’t protest as he walked over and joined me. He asked me to answer the second question on the paper again, which was about what major we wanted to take in college, since I never really got the chance to completely answer the question when we were in the dining hall. I began to answer the question, but Harry soon stopped me.

“You’re going to need to talk louder, I think I could hear you better when we were in the cafeteria,” he told me.

“Dining hall,” I corrected him.

“Like it matters,” he answered.

“Just start over,” he told me and I began to start answering the question again.

I’m guessing I was talking loud enough now, I didn’t even think I was talking quiet to begin with, but I guess to him I was. We had probably gotten to the third or fourth question when Harry began to think that something was up.

“Are you okay?” he asked me,

“You seem a bit off,” he said, trying to make it sound less rude which he didn’t do a very good job of.

“I’m fine,” I answered probably a bit too quickly. He didn’t seem convinced with my answer, but he went on anyway.

“Okay, next question,” he said.

“Don’t you think we’ve done enough for today?” I asked him since I really wanted to leave, it kept feeling more and more awkward being here alone with him and I wanted it to stop.

“No come on, we don’t have very many left and I want to get these done and not have to keep doing work during lunch,” he said.

“You do know that it’s not work as much as it is just listening and writing. I’m basically giving you the answers to the questions, thought someone like you would enjoy that as an easy passing grade,” I told him.

“Someone like me?” he questioned.

“Yes, you know who you are,” I said.

“I wasn’t aware that I was classified under stereotype. What is it? The fact that I’ve never gone to a boarding school,” he said to me. “That has something to do with it,” I told him.

“Okay I’m not really sure what you’re getting at here,” he retaliated.

“You’re one of those troublemaker students and you almost got sent to military school,” I reminded him. “That was a joke, military school was just a threat that was given to me by my mom,” he said. “It was still an option,” I said.

I noticed him roll my eyes at me before speaking again, “Let’s just do one more so I can leave,” he mumbled, and looked down at the next question.

Answering one more question though took longer than it probably should have. Since that conversation neither of us wanted to talk. I’m not even sure why I felt the need to say what I did. I’d just never been around anyone who had a reputation already for being distracting and disrespectful during classes and in general. I guess I could understand why his mom wanted to send him here though. This school wasn’t going to accept his behavior after awhile once they got sick of it.

Once we had finished another question, I convinced him just to stay so we could answer another one. He gave me a look at first since I was the one who didn’t even want to stay to answer the question we just finished, but I ignored it.

I decided that I agreed with what he said earlier and we should just get as much done as we could now so we wouldn’t have to continue meeting up to work on it. I still really didn’t know that much about Harry, but I had already decided that I didn’t really like him. I know that may not sound fair, but I couldn’t help it, I didn’t like what I knew about him.

Normally I wouldn’t listen to sources from people of what they think they knew about someone, but Harry never denied anything I said about what my friends had told me earlier. He basically admitted it for himself. I wondered how disrespectful he was during class since he wasn’t that much of a problem to the teachers in the two classes that I had with him.

I felt compelled to ask him what kind of things he had gotten in trouble for at his old school, but I felt like I shouldn’t being that back up, plus I probably didn’t want to know.

When we had finished the question we had been working on, I noticed that we had started to write less and less for each question since both of us were becoming more unwilling to answer. I didn’t care though; I just wanted to finish this stupid project.