ETHEREAL

2

He's wearing ripped jeans with some chains on them and black shirt with a blue/green flannel. And of course his silver jewelry. We meet eye contact but he just ignores me this time.

I sit next to Isaac and the teacher goes straight into teaching. Right off the bat he assigns us a project.

"Okay class, my name is Mr. Billante but you guys can call me James. Since you all are my AP students and I hate my last name, you all get the privilege to call me by my first name" he begins.. "I'm gonna start by assigning you all, your first assignment. This is 30% of your first semester grade. And I hope you all take it seriously. You will be performing a political debate. You will have a partner. You each will pick a political figure from different parties and perform a debate as that political person"

The class starts talking...

"We get to choose anyone?" a kid says.

"Yes" Mr James answers.

"Mariana you wanna be my partner?" Isaac says.

"Mr. Dobre, I have already assigned partners actually" Mr. James says.

"But... Mariana is new... she only knows me" he says trying to convince him.

"Oh right! Mariana you're the new student. Do you want to introduce yourself to the class?" Mr James says.

I get nervous. He's the first teacher who has asked me to do this. And although I wouldn't say i'm shy. The coffee shop boy is the one making me nervous.

"Umm yeah okay sure." I say.

"Class this is our new student" Mr James says.

"Hi everyone, my name is Mariana Preza..... I just moved down here from New York City... Um I'm really excited to start fresh here and get to know all of you!" I say.

"We're excited to get to know you too Mariana." Mr James says.

That was fucking awkward. I hated that.

"Okay so like I said. Yes you can chose any political figure. And also I already have your partners assigned...." he begins reading the partners........ "Isaac Dobre with Summer Mkay.........." he finally gets to me... "Mariana Preza with Wyatt Torres..... Loren Smith with...." he continues.

Who the hell is Wyatt Torres? I wait till the teacher finishes.

"Okay everyone go sit next to your partners, these will be your assigned seats for the rest of the semester" he finally finishes.

Everyone starts moving around. "So um, who's wyatt?" I ask Isaac.

"Loner kid over there" he says as he points at THE coffee boy. "It's sucks we couldn't be partners.." he says but Im already walking towards coffee boy Wyatt.

"Hi, you're Wyatt?" I say as I approach him.

"Yup" he says uninterested.

"I'll let you guys brainstorm some ideas" Mr James says.

I stay silent. That yup sounded a little too uninterested to me. I sit to the right of him and pull out my notebook. I start writing some politician names. Mostly democrats. Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, AOC.

"Im being the democrat" Wyatt finally says something.

"Who were you thinking of being?" I say.

"We should do a presidential debate, Joe Biden and Donald Trump" he says.

I laugh. "And you expect me to be Donald Trump?" I say.

"Yeah. You must be a republican if you drive a Mercedes G-Wagon" he says.