Kick Start

Chapter Eight

Camila sat in English, ignoring the teacher completely and twirling her pen between her lips absentmindedly.

She had her eyes trained down on her desk, half-lidded, making her look as if she were practically asleep, but instead of being tired, Camila was simply thinking.

Of course, she was thinking of one specific thing/person/moment and yeah, it probably wouldn’t be hard to guess who that person was.

“Jauregui, what makes the title tie in with the people in the novel?” Mr. Cadette barked, his voice uptight and nasally in a way that made the students cringe in their seats.

Camila kind of wanted to cover her ears when she spoke.

“Many of the characters fight with their pride throughout the story and their prejudices of the other characters. For example, Elizabeth Bennet is too prideful to admit that she may have misjudged Darcy, and for a while, this keeps them from being together,” Lauren answered, not missing a beat.

Mr. Cadette frowned as if he was hoping that Lauren might answer wrong, which really, why would he even think that Lauren would answer wrong?

Almost every single teacher knew that she did just as well in school as she did on the soccer field.

She was just that kid.

The golden girl.

The one who knew every answer.

The one who succeeded and excelled at anything and everything.

The one with a lot of friends.

The one who, apparently, didn’t want to kiss Camila.

So, yeah, Lauren was obviously the reason Camila was distracted.

She just didn’t get what was so wrong with her that Lauren couldn’t even snog her for a minute.

Was she unattractive?

Was she weird?

On Sunday, they had practice and afterwards Camila stayed to train extra with Lauren, like they had been doing for the past couple of weeks, except Lauren had reverted back to her old ways of grunting out instructions and barely speaking a word.

She even tried approaching the subject when they were running, but Lauren had just pushed the pace faster and she hadn’t been able to talk and run at the same time.

And now, it was Tuesday and Lauren still hadn’t said much of anything to her.

Camila had opened her eyes fully and turned to look at the aquamarine eyed girl while she answered, and she kept staring, even when Lauren met her gaze and quickly looked away.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and then Dinah- she had skipped a year of English, hence, being in Lauren and Dinah's class (and Normani and Ally)- whispered in her ear.

“Babe, you really gotta stop with the puppy eyes,” Dinah's breath was hot on her earlobe and she moved away a little uncomfortably.

She glared at the girl. “I’m not making puppy eyes!”

Dinah shrugged. “And you also aren’t butt hurt over what happened Saturday night.”

Camila huffed loudly, and if she had been looking anywhere other than Dinah she would have noticed that Lauren was now glancing at her from across the room.

Dinah had asked Lauren what was up with the whole Lauren-not-kissing-her-thing, and Camila had maybe snapped at the red-lipped girl for it, which was why Dinah now thought she was butt hurt over the whole thing.