The next day there are several crushed Skittles in my locker. Yes, Skittles. The candy. They seem to have been squished through the little vents at the top of my locker.
Of course I immediately suspect the geekagers - no one else even knows me in this school. Why they would want to squeeze Skittles into my locker is anyone's guess.
I brush the Skittles off my French textbook and grab it, not even bothering to gather them and throw them out. Some of them land on the floor of my locker, and some on the floor of the hallway. I don't care if people step on them. I don't even care if people slip on them. This is not my fault, nor is it my responsibility. Wow this is a lot of overthinking about the freakin' Skittles. Who cares?
But it bugs me.
At least I'll have a respite from the Akira gang during French class. They all take Spanish. Most of them are actually fluent, too. I'm more normal: my French skills are exactly as good as you'd expect from a high school Senior. In other words, I know lots of French words, and some of the grammar, I can read Le Petit Prince, but in a million years I couldn't have a conversation in French, even with another high school French student.
I get to class early enough to complete my homework before Madame Wertzberger collects it. That is as much of a win as I've had in weeks. But I get distracted, remembering how Erika and Esther and Ronnie would sometimes speak in Spanish to each other, making up jokes and laughing hysterically, while I just sat there, not getting any of it, and wondering how much of it - if any - was at my expense. It didn't happen often, but whenever it did I would make a mental note to try to talk to Erika about it in private, but when we were alone together it didn't seem to matter anymore. So what if she and her friends had jokes I wasn't privy to? What's wrong with that? And they probably weren't about me; they were probably about Spanish words and phrases that they found funny, jokes that just wouldn't work in English. Most of all, I felt like her friends just ceased to exist whenever it was just me and her. The whole world went away when those eyes shone on me alone. [this SUXXXXXXXX]
When the bell rang, I realized that I had doodled and daydreamed my way through the whole French class. I looked up to see a bunch of verb conjugations on the board that I hadn't copied down. I'd have to get them from the kid who sits behind me. He was absent a lot, and tended to get the notes from me, so he owed me them.
Of course I immediately suspect the geekagers - no one else even knows me in this school. Why they would want to squeeze Skittles into my locker is anyone's guess.
I brush the Skittles off my French textbook and grab it, not even bothering to gather them and throw them out. Some of them land on the floor of my locker, and some on the floor of the hallway. I don't care if people step on them. I don't even care if people slip on them. This is not my fault, nor is it my responsibility. Wow this is a lot of overthinking about the freakin' Skittles. Who cares?
But it bugs me.
At least I'll have a respite from the Akira gang during French class. They all take Spanish. Most of them are actually fluent, too. I'm more normal: my French skills are exactly as good as you'd expect from a high school Senior. In other words, I know lots of French words, and some of the grammar, I can read Le Petit Prince, but in a million years I couldn't have a conversation in French, even with another high school French student.
I get to class early enough to complete my homework before Madame Wertzberger collects it. That is as much of a win as I've had in weeks. But I get distracted, remembering how Erika and Esther and Ronnie would sometimes speak in Spanish to each other, making up jokes and laughing hysterically, while I just sat there, not getting any of it, and wondering how much of it - if any - was at my expense. It didn't happen often, but whenever it did I would make a mental note to try to talk to Erika about it in private, but when we were alone together it didn't seem to matter anymore. So what if she and her friends had jokes I wasn't privy to? What's wrong with that? And they probably weren't about me; they were probably about Spanish words and phrases that they found funny, jokes that just wouldn't work in English. Most of all, I felt like her friends just ceased to exist whenever it was just me and her. The whole world went away when those eyes shone on me alone. [this SUXXXXXXXX]
When the bell rang, I realized that I had doodled and daydreamed my way through the whole French class. I looked up to see a bunch of verb conjugations on the board that I hadn't copied down. I'd have to get them from the kid who sits behind me. He was absent a lot, and tended to get the notes from me, so he owed me them.
