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Excuse the mistakes

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I was not in the mood for history right now.

Last night, I had gotten maybe five hours of sleep total. I’d stayed up until two in the morning, slaving over an English paper that I had procrastinated on. The lack of sleep was totally my fault, but that wasn’t exactly going to stop me from being grumpy and exhausted.

So, frankly, sitting in a 45-minute class where my teacher pandered on about a bunch of treaties, all of which seemed to occur in either Versailles or Vienna, did not seem that attractive to me. That said, I had to go to class, but I was going to take my sweet time getting there from lunch. 

Olive was home sick today, and Duke had been eating lunch with his football team so they could go over some plays, so I had eaten by myself during lunch. I didn’t really mind eating lunch on my own, since I could usually get a lot of homework done, and I also didn’t need to worry about having super great table manners. I was content at lunch.

However, after the bell rang, signaling the end of the period, I groaned and closed my math notebook. I shoved it in my backpack and walked out of the lunchroom, dumping the remnants of my food into a trashcan.

I head down the hallway towards me locker, and when I turned the corner, I saw that Duke was standing where my locker was, waiting for me. I stopped a couple feet away and tipped my head to the side as I looked at him.

Duke wasn’t paying attention, since his eyes were glued to the well-worn pages of a John Steinbeck novel he had been working through recently, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at how intensely he was reading his book. Whenever I caught Duke reading, it was apparently always during an intense part, and he would always be squinting and pursing his lips.

“Hey stranger,” I said, announcing myself as I approached my locker.

“Bitch,” he muttered, shaking his head and not looking up.

“Excuse me?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting up as I stared at him, very much taken aback. After hearing my voice again, this time a little louder and harsher, Duke looked up at me, and it took him less than a second to realize what he’d said.

“No, no, no!” Duke said quickly, slamming the book shut and stepping closer to me. “I was talking about Cathy,” he stated, holding up his book, “Not you, Harper, I swear.”

“Ah,” I replied, leaning against my locker with my arms crossed against my chest, “and what did this Cathy person do to deserve being called a bitch?”

“Burned down her family home,” Duke said, and I nodded slowly.

“What a bitch,” I conceded, serious for a moment, and then I grinned. I started spinning my combination into my lock, and I asked, “so what brings you to my locker at this fine hour, boyfriend?”

“Well, girlfriend,” Duke replied, and I could tell he was grinning from the sound of his voice, “I have a free period now and was wondering if you wanted to come hang out with me.”

“I would love to,” I said as I grabbed my books. “But,” I drawled, closing my locker and turning to face Duke, “I do have class now, and there isn’t really a chance in hell that you can get me to skip.”

“Are you sure about that?” Duke asked slowly, and he walked towards me until I was up against my closed locker and he was only a few inches away. The tension was there, and I knew what Duke was trying to do.

Too bad it wasn’t going to work.

“Yep!” I quipped, and I gave him a quick peck on the cheek before ducking under his arm and escaping his capture. Duke groaned and rolled his eyes, and I laughed.

“May I at least walk you to class?” he asked.

“You may,” I answered with a smile, and I offered my hand to Duke. He took it, and together, we started down the still-crowded hallway towards my history classroom. Occasionally, a girl would look over and glare at me, but I tried my best to ignore it. This was like something out of one of those teen movies, which was ridiculous.

Duke and I are together, and all these girls’ dirty looks weren’t going to change that.

We reached the open door to my history class, and Duke stepped in front of me and said, “Your stop, Madame.” I laughed at his crappy French accent and put my hands on my hips.

“Thank you, sir,” I replied. Before I could say anything else, the warning bell rang, signaling that we had a minute to get to our classes before the period officially started. “That’s my cue,” I said, and I began to head into the classroom.

However, something stopped me, and I turned back to Duke, who had started to walk back down the hallway. In the back of my mind, I know that I had approximately thirty seconds before I ran the risk of getting in trouble for being late, but at the moment, I didn’t find myself caring.

“Hey Duke?”

“Yeah?” he replied, swinging around to look at me again.

“Wanna go on a date on Friday?” I blurted, and Duke looked surprised. I think I surprised myself too, since it did seem a little random of a question. However, for some reason, I felt like being spontaneous. Plus, it didn’t hurt to have something look forward to on Friday so that I could get through the rest of the week.

“Sure,” He answered after a moment, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Awesome!” I replied, and I instantly wished that I had come up with a better response than simple ‘awesome’.

The bell rung, and I started before realizing class was starting and I wasn’t in class. I spewed out some muffled goodbye to Duke, and then I pushed into my classroom. Thankfully, my teacher, Mr. Burke, was bent over his laptop with a student at his side, which meant that he was have technology issues and wouldn’t notice my tardiness.

I walked quickly to my seat near the window, and just as I sat down, the projector came to life with a PowerPoint, and Mr. Burke clapped his hands. Everyone reluctantly ended their conversations and their phones away, or at least quieted down and put the phones under their desks, and Mr. Burke began to speak.

“Alright!” he said, and he picked up the projector clicker. “Today, I am introducing one of our bi-semester projects.” He pressed a button, and the next slide appeared, outlining the project for class. The first thing I zeroed in on was the fact that we were going to need a partner.

Well shit.

Partner projects could either be a great thing or a bad thing, depending on who is in your class. When you have friends in your class, partner projects are awesome because you have a person you know you can work with who you’re comfortable with. However, when you’re in a class without any friends that you know enough to work with, partner projects suck. You usually get stuck with someone you either don’t know or don’t want to work with, which makes the project suck both while you’re doing it, as well as the end result.

I fell in the latter category, and trust me, I was already mentally figuring out who would be both wiling to work with me and not be a nightmare to work with. So far, I wasn’t having much luck, and was hoping that my class had an odd number so that I could just work alone. I’d take more work over social awkwardness any day.

Mr. Burke went on to explain the project, but no one was paying attention. I caught something about an oral presentation and different wars, but that was about it. People were loudly whispering around me, already deciding on their partners. By the time Mr. Burke told us to pair up, everyone was jumping out of their seat to go find their friends.

Reluctantly, I looked around, trying to find someone who hadn’t already been claimed. Based on what I saw, it was likely that I was going to end up being the kid who either worked alone or the teacher would add to a group. I prayed for the former.

Suddenly, someone tapped my shoulder, and I jumped in surprise. I swiveled around in my chair to find Gretchen Taylor standing behind my desk, looking at me.

“Harper, right?” she asked, pointing at me and squinting.

“Yeah,” I replied, refraining from telling her we’d had at least one class together since eighth grade. “And you’re Gretchen.”

“That’s me!” Gretchen said with a grin, and she plopped down in the seat next to me. There was a moment of awkward silence, since Gretchen was sort of just staring at me and I didn’t know what she wanted, so I didn’t say anything.

Gretchen and I may have had multiple classes together, but we weren’t friends. Not because she was some nasty girl. Gretchen was actually really nice as I could tell. She was incredibly smart, popular, athletic, and really just great in everything. Gretchen was one of those girls you wanted to hate because she just seemed so put together, but you couldn’t hate her because there wasn’t really anything to hate. We weren’t friends because we ran in different circles. I wasn’t as well rounded as her, we never spoke, and I didn’t hang out with the same people she hung out with.

I hang out with my best friend and her girlfriend… and the cast of Friends when reruns are on TBS.

Okay, so maybe I’m a little bit of a shut-in, but that’s irrelevant. The point that I’m trying to make here is that Gretchen is not someone I consider a friend, and she’s a popular girl. She could’ve had any partner she wanted, so I didn’t really have any idea why she would pick me.

Well, actually, she hadn’t said she want to be my partner, so maybe I was just being presumptuous.

“Do you want to be partners on this project?”

Whoop, there it is.

“Sure,” I replied, hoping she didn’t notice my hesitation.

“Awesome!” Gretchen declared with a grin, “this’ll be fun!”

The way Gretchen was acting, it would seem as if we were two great friends and partnering together was totally natural. I decided not to question it for a couple reasons. One, Gretchen was really nice so I didn’t really have a problem being her partner; two, Gretchen was smart and probably wouldn’t be one of those people who didn’t contribute on group projects.

“Are you two partners?” Mr. Burke asked, approaching Gretchen and I.

“Yes sir,” Gretchen replied, nodding her head.

“Great,” he said, and he wrote our names down on a piece of paper. “Your assigned topic is LBJ’s foreign and domestic policies during the Vietnam War,” Mr. Burke informed us, and I scrawled it down in my notebook as he walked away to give other groups assignments.

“Hey, did you catch when this project is due?” I asked Gretchen, and I looked up from my notebook.

“I think he said it’s due next Friday,” Gretchen replied thoughtfully. “Hang on.” She leaned back and asked the boy in the desk behind her, and he blushed beneath his glasses as he answered her.

“Yep,” Gretchen confirmed, sitting back up, “project due next Wednesday.”

“Alright, so we have a week,” I said, nodding once. “That won’t be too awful, seeing as we already read the textbook chapter on LBJ and went over it in class.”

“Can we get it done sooner rather than later, though?” Gretchen asked, and she quickly added, “I’m not trying to be pushy or anything, but I have a lot going on this weekend and next week, but this week is less busy for me.” I hesitated in answering her, and Gretchen jumped back in, saying, “If you’d rather do it next week I can totally make time!”

“No, no,” I said, shaking me head, “that’s totally fine! I’m free pretty much all of this week and up until the due date.”

“Oh, great,” Gretchen replied, smiling. “How about getting together after school this Friday?” she asked, “Then we’ll have the weekend for ourselves without worrying about this project.”

This made me pause for a moment. I agreed with Gretchen that I wanted to get the project done soon, and I would rather have my weekend to work on other stuff than write about LBJ. So, Friday was ideal. However, I also had my date with Duke, and I didn’t want to have to cancel that because despite only just setting it as a date, I was excited.

“Harper.”

Gretchen’s voice disrupted my thoughts, and I blinked as I was brought back to reality. “Yeah?” I asked, trying to hide my embarrassment.

“I was just saying that, like you said, we already have the notes on LBJ so it won’t take very long to generate a power point. Maybe an hour or two, at the most. Plus, if we did it on Friday, I’d have to leave around five, so we’d hopefully we would finish before then.”

“Perfect,” I replied, nodding my head firmly. “Let’s do that then.” Finishing before five meant that I got my date, so I was absolutely fine with that.

“Can we do this at your house?” Gretchen asked, suddenly serious, “I, um… My house is sort of unavailable.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I said, disregarding the sudden shift towards awkward and weird. “I doubt my mom will have a problem with it.”

“Awesome,” Gretchen said, grinning.

The bell rang, and everyone jumped out of their seats, desperate to get to their next class so that the end of the school day seemed closer. Gretchen stood up and grabbed her backpack, and as she walked past me she said, “I’ll text you later so we can make sure Friday is happening. Bye Harper!”

“See you later,” I replied, but then as I watched Gretchen walk out of the room, I realized that Gretchen didn’t have my number.

I thought about going after her and giving it to her before I headed to my next class, but I nixed the idea. Gretchen knew pretty much everyone; I’m sure she could get my number if she tried. If not, there was always Facebook messenger.

I shoved my stuff into my backpack and trailed after everyone as they filed out of the classroom. I turned right and hurried up the stairs, wincing every time someone accidentally rammed into my shoulder or almost tripped me. Crowded stairwells in high school were like obstacle courses, and if you could make it through in one piece and standing, it was a good day.

I walked into my English classroom and plopped down at my desk in the back. As I pulled out my notebook and the essay I wrote last night, Justin wandered into the classroom. We made eye contact, and his jaw clenched as he sat down in the front row.

Since what had happened at the party, Justin had relocated from sitting in front of me to sitting in the front row, since those were the only seats that were open. His jaw-clenching thing was a usual whenever we looked at each other, which was a rarity. I heard whispers that he was scared of Duke after what went down, which I thought was funny.

The bell rang, and suddenly, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out and held it under my desktop as I saw an unfamiliar number. I unlocked my phone to see that the text said: hey Harper! It’s Gretchen. Let me know when we’re definitely on for Friday.

Damn. That girl works fast.

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Woo! New chapter! Get excited!

So, hmmmmmm... how do we feel about Gretchen? Good...? Bad...? Thoughts...?

Also, some fun updates about me, if you care about that kinda of stuff: I've officially been with my boyfriend for a full year (we're actually about a year and a half but who's counting?). I'm almost done with my first semester of college. On friday, my thanksgiving break starts, and I am SO excited.

Also, currently, NHG is about to hit 8 million reads, which is crazy! Thank you so much to all of you! Thank you for reading, voting, commenting, sharing, and even fanning. It means so much to me, and I wouldn't be here without all of you!

5 CHAPTERS OF NHG LEFT!

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