Reality And Us

Chapter Fourteen

Nicklas hated french lessons.

It was Thursday, school was almost over. Almost. And the rest of the time he had school that day was wasted through listening to his french teacher go on and on about something Nick didn't even care for the slightest bit.

It wasn't the language, he loved it. He loved the way his tongue felt when expressing himself in this language, loved the way the words sounded so strange yet so familiar, loved the way the words left his mouth so fluently without thinking, he seriously loved it.

He wasn't the best in his french class, not even close, but he could talk a bit in said tongue and hold a simple conversation, and that was enough for him.

The reason he hated the class was the way they taught the language - in Nick's point of view, it was logical, following an order hat you just had to understand, but after you did everything starts to make sense. There was no random bullshit, everything about French was reasonable, you just had to know the reason why the structure was as it was, and that was a thing they never taught.

They taught the language itself, but without the theory behind it, a mixture or sociology, math and a few others, it was plain boring, and in Nick's opinion, a lot harder to learn.

He had looked into it - the theory behind the language - when he was thirteen or something, and ever since that he had found himself loving it, because he loved things that made sense, and it did.

But school failed to give that enthusiasm about French to its students, failed to make them notice the beauty of it through forcing children study vocabulary and and useless grammar (who even uses the passé simple?), instead of everything that made you curious and willing to learn.

He wasn't really listening to his teacher, none of his classmates were, and he wondered if they'd be as excited as he was about understanding the pattern behind this language.

He wished he knew, because especially lately he had started to realize that he barely knew any of them. He had always assumed to know them, but maybe they had some hidden sides to them, parts of them that were interesting.

That didn't mean that he thought them to be interesting, or relevant. He just started to acknowledge the possibility of them being more intriguing than he had originally thought them to be.

He did think of that possibility as very small, but still, a possibility.

He continued to sit there, suddenly the bell rang. Finally.

He was one of the first to leave the room, he couldn't stand being there, too many bad memories flying around in that place.

He was walking through the hallways when suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard Myles' voice louder than all the noise the students made.

"Aye, Nicklas, you were dope yesterday!"

Yesterday they had had a match against the girls' team, because the coaches couldn't stand the constant crap from all of the players anymore, and Nick had tried his best, obviously.

The coaches had stopped the game because the comments between the students had only gotten worse throughout the game. They hadn't even scored a goal yet at that point, the girls neither. It was a boring game.

So why did Myles talk to him like that? He barely had done anything during the game.

He continued to walk, hoping the other boy would leave, but that didn't happen. Instead, his teammate spoke up again.

"You know, there's this girl in our grade, she's hella cute and-"

"Would you be so kind as to get to the point fast?", Nick asked, this boy was wasting his time. He didn't want to talk about cute girls.