Two Halves

Rule-Following Rebel

Felix

"And you can't blame yourself for my own clumsiness, but next time, I expect you to protect yourself too, you can't play hero all the time, you're going to get hurt one of these days," she warned me.

"Oh you wouldn't believe my luck in that area," I muttered, hoping she couldn't hear me, but she obviously could.

"I've been told that I'm pretty lucky. Maybe we cancel out somehow?" She added jokingly. She didn't even seem to realize that she said it.

"With your clumsiness? We could easily just be bad luck times two," I joked, but her comment left me thinking: does she know? If she does, somehow she thinks that the two of us combined cancel out? Did that mean that she would in fact break the curse?

She broke me out of my train of thought by shoulder checking me, then pretending that it never happened.

"Oh, uh, I forgot to tell you earlier, I was waiting for the right time!" I suddenly remembered. The worry I had vaguely disappearing as she proved to be okay.

"Tell me what?"

I grabbed her hand and looked her in the eyes as her other escorts headed into the classroom. "She woke up yesterday, Bridgette. She's awake."

Her face was awestruck and suddenly any pain she was in was completely hidden by her excitement.

"Are you serious?" she asked, her voice much louder than it had been all of lunch. "We have to see her, why are we even here? This is amazing!"

"I tried to tell you last night but you didn't... it doesn't matter, you got hurt and you were resting. But yes, after the akuma attack, she woke up," I told her.

"Again, why are we at school right now?" Luka and Max had gone inside the classroom and were waiting for her, but she seemed so excited.

"You want to leave school early to go visit her?"

"Yes! Let's go!"

I smiled at her and asked her for her phone. I called her parents and started talking when her mom picked up.

"Hello?" her mom asked.

"Hi, Mrs. Dupain-Cheng. This is Felix. Bridgette is feeling a little sick and wants to go home early. I was wondering if you could request that the school let me walk her home when they call you?"

"Oh, that's so nice of you to offer, but it wouldn't be any problem for Tom to go get her."

Bridgette grabbed her phone back from my hands and talked to her mom. "No, it wouldn't be a big issue. All of his important classes are in the morning... Mom I promise... yes... by the way, I'm going to have them take my vitals and everything before I head back so it may be a while... yes I'm okay... I just can't focus with my concussion... Mom I'm always getting hurt, I'll survive... I love you too, buh bye." Bridgette hung up the phone and turned to me. "I was planning to just ditch."

I chuckled, knowing that would have been much easier. However, I didn't want her to get in trouble because she decided to see my mom. I may be bad luck, but I wanted to be a good influence in her parents' eyes.

We went to the nurse's office and I talked to her about Bridgette's fake headaches. She pretended to be weak, but not bad enough that they needed to call an ambulance.

"Her parents are swamped at the bakery and asked me if I could walk her home," I informed her, hoping Bridgette fully convinced her mom to cover for us.

"I'll have to verify that, usually students are only released with their parents and other guardians." She left the room and we heard a one-sided phone call that only lasted a minute. "Alright, your mom said it was alright. Mr. Agreste, are you sure you can afford to miss this class time?"

I nodded, "when Bridgette told me she wasn't feeling well I asked my friend to take notes for me, catching up is worth helping a friend."

She nodded and wrote a few things down on a clipboard. "Bridgette, make sure if you take a nap that you have someone check up on you, you don't want to sleep excessively with a concussion. I will tell the attendance office about this, you two are free to go."

We thanked her and walked out of the school victorious, trying to not act too excited.

Once we were out of sight from the school she got on her toes and ruffled my hair. "Didn't know you were such a stickler for the rules when you're being rebellious." She laughed and stuck her tongue out at me.

"I can't have visiting my mom impact you getting into design school or something down the road-" I defended.

"Design school?"

"Yeah," I started, not knowing how to explain myself. She had never told me that she wanted to go, but she should. "I just figured since you design a lot of clothes that you could kind of make it a full-time thing, after all, you're super talented and you'd make an extremely talented fashion designer."

She was beet red and had stopped walking.

"Everything okay?" I asked, stopping as well and making sure I didn't say anything stupid.

"You really think I could get into design school?"

"Of course I think you could, you're so smart and your designs alone..." I needed to stop rambling.

She smiled at me and came closer, standing on her toes to gain height before she kissed me on my cheek, walking away in the direction of the hospital right after.

Apparently I needed to ramble nonstop.