The Academy

Chapter 2

The next day, I stopped by the school store to purchase a white shirt. Hopefully, this will make up for me ruining her shirt. I sighed when the cashier rang up the shirt. Seriously, $95 for a white button up shirt?! My dad gave me $500 for the whole semester and I blew through a fifth of it by the second day.

I planned on giving Alicia the shirt in Calculus, but chickened out when I saw that she was surrounded by her friends. I sighed as I settled into my seat. The guy in front of me suddenly swiveled around.

"Hey, do you have a pencil I can borrow?"

"Sure." I handed him my spare pencil.

"Thanks. I'm Kieran Johnson, but everyone calls me KJ."

"Nicola." I smiled as I shook his hand.

"You're new. Where are you from?"

"North Carolina."

"Dope. I'm from New York. I'd love to get to know you better." He smiled. The teacher began speaking before I could open my mouth again. KJ laughed while turning towards the front. The rest of the class went smoothly. I was easily able to follow along with the lesson. The bell rang signaling the end of class. I turned around to where Alicia had sat to see her spot was vacant. I slumped my shoulders before leaving class.

During lunch, I sat with the same group as yesterday. I got to know Rosé's friends better as we were all joking. They invited me to go explore the city with them over the weekend. I accepted since I'm new to Boston. They loudly cheered when I agreed to accompany them. Their raucous caught the attention of some of the people in the room, including Alicia.

After I finished my classes for the day, I decided to head back to my room. In order to get to my room, I had to pass through the green space. Different club vendors were on the space and were actively trying to recruit people. The moment I stepped foot on the grass, I was swarmed by over 20 different people begging me to join their club. After awkwardly laughing and attempting to say no, I turned around and left. I slipped behind a building and tried to make my way back to my dorm. Unfortunately, I didn't know the campus that well and soon became very lost. I was wandering around until I came across the tennis courts. Weirdly enough, I only saw one person practicing. I moved closer so that I could observe the individual. As I got closer, I recognized the silhouette to be a female. Upon closer inspection, I observed that it was Alicia. I watched her return the ball from the ball machine. She was really good since the machine appeared to be on the max setting.

I meant to quietly watch her, but a bee had other plans. It started to buzz around me so I began to fan it away. No matter how many times I tried to fan it away, it refused to leave me alone. I walked backwards in an effort to get away from the bee, but ended up tripping. I let out a shriek as I fell on my butt. I groaned from the impact. A shadow suddenly obstructed the sun from glaring down on me. I squinted up to see that the sun's glare was replaced by Alicia's glare. Her arms were crossed as she loosely held her racket.

"This is a closed practice." She coldly stated. It took me a moment to respond because I was distracted by how heavenly her voice sounded. She leaned down until our faces were a few inches apart and, literally, snapped me out of my daydream. She slightly smirked at the confused state I was in as she backed away.

"Hey! No one is allowed here! You are to be training! Not socializing!" A man shouted.

"She's just my ball girl. You can go." She answered back. The man seemed satisfied with her response since he nodded and left. She quirked an eyebrow as I still hadn't moved from my position on the floor.

"Oh. I almost forgot. I got this for you." I scrambled to my feet and pulled out the shirt from my bag. "Hopefully, you'll take this as an apology for messing up your shirt." Alicia stared at it for a moment before retrieving it from my hands. She then used it to wipe the sweat off her forehead before tossing it back at me.

"Congrats. You're now a true ball girl." She said before turning on her heel. Tears were brimming my eyes. I've never been so humiliated in my life. My arms limply fell to my side. I lost the strength to hold the shirt, so it slipped through my fingers. I ran away, so that she wouldn't see me cry. My tears were blinding me which resulted in me running into someone. I muttered a sorry and kept running until I made it to my bed. I jumped on to it and cried into my pillow, hoping it would stifle any sound. 

Oof! Nicola just had her first run in with the ice queen.