Dream On

Chapter Eleven

The next few hours flew past like a blur of schoolwork, boringness, and droning teachers. Basically, hell on Earth.

The bell rang, signaling that it was time for the best period of the day! Imagine the dancing students, the fanfares, the confetti raining down, everything that you've ever wanted. Introducing, the best period of the day, math.

Yay.

I sighed and trudged to math class, ready for another thrilling lesson of calculus. I plopped down in a seat next to Caden, who was busy messing around with his phone. Meaghan and Ryder were talking together, laughing and smiling. Lucas wasn't here yet, but the air suddenly got a lot thicker and the classroom quieted in a hush.

Turning behind me, I saw Jessica and her two cronies, Belle and Skylar. Out of the three of them, Skylar seemed like the most sensible, but even that was a stretch. Their makeup was flawless, yet you could tell that there was too much of it. A cloud of perfume seemed to follow them wherever they walked, spreading the smell of something like Eau de Toilette or some nasty stench related to that.

They stopped behind Caden, who was blatantly ignoring them, his eyes fixed on his phone. Jessica cleared her throat and tapped him on the shoulder, and when he was unresponsive, she let out a huff of annoyance and sat on him like a three-year-old would on his mother's lap.

Desperate much?

Cue the Kidz Bop 'Senorita' playing in the background.

And now you can stop the music as Caden shoves her off like she's a piece of slimy garbage.

Oh wait, she is a slimy piece of garbage. My bad.

Jessica scowled at Caden, clearly pissed off. "What was that for?" she hissed, pouting her lower lip out into something that was supposed to attract attention, even though it just attracted lipstick on her teeth. Pursing her lips when she saw that it had no effect on him, she pulled out a tube of lipstick and reapplied it with the whole class still dead silent.

Mr. Conway, the math teacher, cleared his throat, motioning for the three bitches to take a seat. "Welcome to calculus," he began, his scratchy voice making me think of that guy from the cigarette commercials. "Today, we will be focusing on review for our test in a few days. Please pick a group of three and work together to study, and I trust that you will all stay focused and get your jobs done," he finished, pointedly staring at Jessica, Belle, and Skylar for the last part. "Alright, you may begin," he called abruptly.

Caden glanced across the table, and I felt my heart stop as his dark eyes seemed to pierce through my soul. "Partners?" he asked, one of his eyebrows raised questioningly. I nodded and motioned to Lucas to join our group. Meaghan, Ryder, and Leo became a trio and took out their math books while chatting easily among themselves, while we three just awkwardly stared at anything but each other.

Sighing, I finally made eye contact with both of them before pulling out my math book. "Guess we should start from the beginning," I muttered, chewing on my lip nervously.

Caden shrugged and pulled out his math book from under his chair, and Lucas did the same a few moments later. "Problem One," Caden began, reading from the book without making eye contact with either of us. "Gregory has sixty-two pieces of bacon. He eats fifty-nine of them. What does Gregory have now?" He snorted and leaned back in his chair. "Stupid second-grader questions. We don't have dyslexia, we don't have Alzheimer's, we don't need the sympathy questions."

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in his chair and wrote in the book. I leaned over to see what he wrote and smiled, laughing a little at what he had written down.