Bet Me

Chapter 4

"You guys, we're almost done with our project. We should celebrate when we finish." Beth says to James and I. Today was February 27th, and our project was due March 5th. "We should. We could go out for dinner or something." James said, agreeing with Beth. "We could invite some of our friends and you could invite some of you friends. We'd just have a good time." Beth adds. 

We stayed afterschool today to work on our project but we haven't gotten any of our materials out. We've been sitting around and talking for the past 20 minutes. "Well, I would like to stay and help, but I have to go take a test for my Physics teacher. I was going to tell ya'll this morning, but I forgot." Beth says. "Wait, so you're leaving us?" I ask her. "Yeah, but i'll be back. I'll try to finish my test as fast as I can." Beth says. "No, take as long as you need. Physics is hard so you're going to need as much time as possible." James says to Beth. Beth smiled at him. "Bye ya'll," she says, "I'll call you when i'm done." she says to me. "Okay. Good luck." I say to her.

After she left, James and I sat around for a little while longer. "Do you really want to work on the project right now?" he asks me. "Not really. I kind of want to work on the board and not the project itself." I say to him. I pulled out some paper and markers and set them on the table. I handed a paper  and marker to James and told him to start decorating. After hesitating for a second, he grabbed the materials and began to work. He sat directly in front of me and began drawing on the paper. 

I thought about what I needed to draw but I couldn't remember what I needed to do. I looked at James paper to get a clue but he was just doodling. "James, what are you doing?" I asked him. "I was drawing a cat. See." he says showing me his drawing. "Thats not what your suppose to be doing." I say to him. "Well, I didn't know what I was suppose to be doing. Do you know what your doing? You don't even have anything on your paper." he says, pointing to my blank sheet. "Shut up." I simply say. "No, you shut up." he said, mocking me. "James." I say. "Elena." he says in the same tone.

Before I could respond, James' phone began to ring. "Hey Carly." he says answering the phone. "I'm working on my project..... No.....My friend Elena....Yes....Yes but.....No......Carly, chill out......Carly, i'm not about to argue with you.....You're being ridiculus.....No i'm not.....We'll talk later.....Hello? Carly?"  He moved the phone from his ear and saw that she had hung up. "Wow. I can't believe she hung up on me." James says. "She sounds upset." I say to him. "Yeah. She was like, why do you spend so much time with those girls and blah blah blah." he says to me.

"Would you like to talk about it? The girls always come to me for advice." I say. "Sure. Carly's been a pain in the butt for the past month. She becoming so jealous. At first, it was kind of cute, but now it's so annoying. I can't do or say anything without her getting upset." he explains to me. "Have you tried to talk to her?" I ask him. "I've tried, but we always end up arguing. We've been together for about 7 months but she doesn't trust me. She's always accusing me for something. Right now, she was yelling at me because she said that I spend too much time with you and Beth." he says.

"Well, I can understand why she's upset. She's younger so she feels intimated. She thinks that you hanging out with us might change your feelings toward her, although, she seems very mature for her age." I say to him. "Well, even if she does feel intimated, she should trust me." he says. "True, but as a girl, I can understand where she's coming from. Since she sounds jealous, she might follow my philsophy on boys and girls." I say to him. "You have a philosophy? That sounds interesting. Tell me." he says.

"Okay, so basically, I believe that boys and girls can't be friends with one person developing feelings for the other. But this does not mean that the other person knows or that the feelings are acted upon. Either the person will keep in the feelings to protect the friendship or the person would let out their secert in hopes that the other feels the same." I explain to him. "Humm, your philosophy sounds interesting. But I don't believe it." he says. "So, you're saying that you think guys and girls can be friends, without all the extra feelings?" I ask him. "Yeah, guys and girls can be JUST friends."  he says.