Innocence Lost On the Gamble of Love

Innocence Lost On the Gamble of Love: Chapter 11

Penelope walked to her bench after fourth period let out with Carina and Hannah in tow.

"What was with that kid? I'm going to mark him down a grade next time." Penelope tiffed.

"He was weird," Carina agreed.

Penelope took a sip from her can of Coca-Cola. "Still, at least we got food."

"True."

"How was class, Hannah?"

Hannah gave a loud sigh. "Do you know how many tests she made me grade?"

"Oh crap, I forgot about that!" Penelope shrieked. "What did I get?"

"A D plus, but I changed one of the answers for you so it ended up being a C."

"Thank you!" Penelope praised, hugging her dark-haired friend with all her might.

"Haha, no problem, Penny."

The trio went over to the bench, and when they arrived, Penelope stood up on it like a pedestal. She always did this when she was hyper or when she was trying to spot Derrick from far away.

Today, she was hyper due to two reasons: the caffeine in her soda, and because Derrick was on his way to see her. He had class on the opposite end of campus and he tended to walk unreasonably slow. Penelope blamed it on those skinny jeans Derrick would wear from time to time.

When the rest of the group arrived, they all surrounded around Penelope, giving her welcome hugs.

"So where's your boyfriend?" Liz asked with a broad smile. She was going to have fun saying, "your boyfriend" to Penelope.

Penelope squinted her eyes to focus out in the distance. She spotted Derrick and Ritchie walking together with some other friend of theirs that she did not know the name of.

"He's like, five feet away." 

"So we're still on for later, right?"

"Oh, let me text my dad!" Penelope placed her soda can down by her backpack before she whipped out her BlackBerry and started texting away. Her fingers cracked down on the buttons of the small QWERTY keyboard at rapid speed. 

"Oh, no. We have Government next," Adrian grumbled in realization.

"I wonder if he's giving us a quiz today," Liz murmured.

"Hey, look you're taller than me," Derrick said slyly, looking up at Penelope who was still toying with her phone.

She smiled at him, removing the phone away from her face. "Good morning."

It is now, he thought blissfully.

Penelope hopped back down onto the solid ground, making herself shorter than Derrick once more. "So how was class?"

"Nothing interesting happened. You?"

"I got a soda."

"I see," Derrick noted, looking at the red can by Penelope's backpack.

"Oh, hey," Penelope spoke suddenly. She received Derrick's attention automatically, he jerked his head back to the right to look at her right before she asked, "What did you do in Finite Math?"

"Took notes, worked on the homework, and there's a quiz this Friday," he replied promptly.

"Oh, great," Penelope said, exhaling air from the corner of her mouth.

Derrick gave her a small smile before saying, "It's easy."

"But you're good at math."

"If you wanted me to tutor you, all you had to do was ask," Derrick said, the corners of his eyes crinkling.