Sam

I don’t see any benefit in holding a grudge. It’s almost childish how nasally her words repeated in the back of my head. If only she had any idea what she did to me. I watched her long red hair sway back and forth as she headed along the opposite hallway. It swished as it rounded the corner. A devil, she was.

How selfish and two-faced do you have to be? To only be my friend when it’s convenient? To throw me out like garbage years ago and waltz right back into my life like nothing ever happened?

I scowled under my breath as I finally turned to head in the direction of my math class, right up the stairs and to the right, but I couldn’t stare and loathe all day.

No benefit in holding a grudge? I still couldn’t believe it. Talking down to me, and telling me how to feel, like she was such a victim! A victim of what? My time and attention? God forbid!

I couldn’t stand her. I hadn’t been able to stand her for years. She’d pass me in the hallways, avoiding eye-contact, pretending like she never saw me, and now that it’s convenient, we’re friends again? She wants to hang out? Get lunch? Of course, why not!? Why not set myself up to get hurt again? Sounds like fun!

The snarky giggles played back in my head, echoing everything I wish I had said.

I visualized every other variation I could have written other than that placating crap I gave her.

 

Misguided

 

No.

 

Misguided Monstrous 

 

No, no. I had something better.

 

Misguided Monstrous Manipulative

 

Yes.

 

Manipulative and

Obstinate,

Naive

Ass

I wandered into class and took my seat in the third row, second seat from the windows. My head couldn’t stop pounding with frustration and anger. It was like a migraine that pressed on my head from the outside in instead of the inside out. It kept hitting me, over and over.

Of course it would be nice to be friends again, but how could I ever trust a person who hurt me so badly? Who treats me as expendable?

Dante had come into the classroom and was making his way to the seat next to mine. We weren’t close necessarily, but we’d saved each other’s asses on some homework questions a few times, so I needed to cool down quickly and not look so shaken up.

I played nice. I have my opportunity. They always say to keep your friends close and enemies closer, right? Maybe this isn’t a bad thing.

Maybe this anger will go away, and we can move on.

Maybe.

Dante sat down carefully so not to wrinkle his clothes, probably a habit he picked up from JROTC. He always tried to keep his uniform neat and tidy.

“Hey man, sorry I’m late, but did you figure out number eight over the weekend?”

I nodded and pulled my bag up to the desk to start fishing around the compact block of crumbled papers in my bag to find the homework. “Yeah. I did them all, let me just get it out.”

Dante went on, “I got held up with my dude trying to talk me into giving his new girl a ride home after school.” I never realized eye rolls could be audible, but I could hear it plain as day in his tone.

“Yeah? What’s the problem? You don’t like her?” I asked absently, still sifting through haphazard stacks in my bag. I found last Thursday’s homework, so Friday’s had to be nearby.

“Nah, I don’t really know her is all, but my guy Rafael is super into her. He doesn’t talk about much else right now,” Dante confided, pulling his own homework page out of a neatly organized red folder. He was a firm believer in the “red is the color of math” theory. I always said math was blue-- this was a major point of disagreement between us.

“Who is it?” I continued to ask questions, hoping to stall the conversation long enough to come across the right worksheet.

“Mona Murphy?” Dante answered, questioning if I knew her, obviously. Mona was a year younger than us, only a junior this year, and with as big as the school was, I really wasn’t imagining it would be someone I knew, let alone the girl I was trying to desperately to get out of my head. What were the odds?

“You good, bro?” Dante asked again, noticing, as I had, that I’d suddenly stopped searching and just stood staring into my bag blankly, dwelling on the thoughts of Mona.

I began flipping through pages again. “No, yeah,” I said cooly. “I know her.”

“And?” Dante pressed, a wrinkle forming in his dark forehead skin.

“What?” I countered, finally catching a glimpse of the page with Friday’s date on it, crinkled into a little according at the bottom of my bag, smashed in between a government textbook and a pencil pouch exclusively housing broken or unusable pencils.

“What do you think of her?” He asked, impatiently.

I shoved my arm down into my bag, feeling a whole lot like Mary Poppins about to pull an entire lamp out of her duffel, and again, stalling.

What exactly was I supposed to say?

I didn’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about Mona right now.

My instinct, of course, was to call her out for being the wild bitch she was in front of Dante, my math teacher, God, and everyone.

Was that what I wanted?

What if she found out I was talking badly about her? That was what caused her to stop talking to me in the first place wasn’t it? That stupid post I made?

No. She’d been looking for a way out of our friendship for a long time. She just needed a reason to reject me-- it was just a convenience.

But then why would she want to be friends again now? This was all very confusing to me.

I pulled the paper out of my backpack carefully, so not to rip it at the creased edges. I began smoothing it against the end of my desk so it would become legible again.

Dante’s dark eyes were pointed directly at my face, evidently trying to read my thoughts. I reached over as the bell rang and rested the worksheet (which at this point could have easily passed for a used tissue) on his desk and pointed out the answer to number eight. 

He nodded and scratched the answer down with a freshly sharpened pencil, not totally taking his attention off me.

Our teacher was in the hallway, yelling at the dawdling delinquent kids to get to class already. “Come on, you got one period left!” His yell that sounded half-threatened and half-encouraging.

“What do you know, Sam?” Dante finally asked again.

I still hadn’t decided how to respond. I took a deep breath, and in that space, all I could think was, be honest, you’d want him to be honest with you.

“She’s kind of a…” I racked my brain for any word that wasn’t “bitch”. “Grandstander,” I decided. “If you know what I mean?”

Dante rose an eyebrow. “I don’t,” he replied.

“Well, she and I actually have a history… of sorts.”

The confused expression on Dante’s face worsened. If he says “I thought you were gay,” I’ll clock him. JROTC or not, I could probably land one good punch in before going down. He didn’t.

“She wasn’t my girlfriend or anything,” I clarified. Dante’s brow lowered slightly. “But we were really close a couple years ago. We’d hang out all the time and get lunch, go to the movies, parties, all that. She’d text me all the time basically, all over me, 24/7.”

Dante nodded slowly, taking it all in.

“She likes attention, you know? And I was dumb enough to give it to her. She led me on for almost a whole year. I bought her food, and presents around the holidays, and I was always there for her, but right when things got serious, she flaked. I got friend-zoned bad, and she was all about the next guy giving her attention within a day.” Justin. I remembered him clearly. I seemed to conveniently leave out the part about how Mona hadn’t shut up about Justin for months, but Dante didn’t need all the detail. And besides, it was technically true, she didn’t take any time to get over losing me in her life before she was holding hands with him in the hallway, flaunting her new relationship in front of me. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“Damn,” Dante grumbled, marking down the last of the problem so he might “show his work” properly. “You don’t think she might be doing that to my boy, Raf, do you?” He was clearly distracted with my words.

“Look, I don’t know. It’s been two years since I really talked to her, but I actually did just get into Creative Writing with her and she straight up asked me to get lunch with her tomorrow. I’m not saying that means anything, but she didn’t say anything to me about talking to Rafael or anyone else.”

Dante shook his head in shame, or maybe pity for his friend. I could have done the same. I’d only met Rafael a few times, but he didn’t deserve what happened to me-- no one did, and if I could stop that from happening again, I’d think that’d be considered a public service.

“Well,” Dante started, finally holding the worksheet back out to me, “I mean, they aren’t official or anything--”

“Mr. Williams,” our teacher, Mr. Saunders, called from his desk, “If you’re going to copy answers, you ought to do a better job of hiding it. You’ll be a receiving a zero for this assignment.” He began to make a note on a page at his desk.

“Wait, Mr. Saunders! Dante wasn’t copying, he was just checking his work. Really, he just wanted some clarity on number eight is all!”

Our teacher glanced between both of us, meeting our eyes with his. He held our gazes for long uncomfortable moments before he finally said, “Alright then, I’ll let it go this time. In the future though, Mr. Williams, come to me for questions or wait until we review instead of making a show out of returning Mr. Tafelski’s work in front of me.”

Dante scowled a little at his tone. I glanced at him uncomfortably as he pulled his red, spiral notebook out to take his notes with an air of defiance in his reasonable and polite set of actions as he prepared for class.

I did the same, sliding an (only partially creased) piece of filler paper out of the package in my bag to prepare. 

Honestly, it’s a good thing I spoke up. I didn’t want him to get a zero, that wouldn’t have been fair. Really. 

I am a good person.