It was great that Trenton wasn’t a creep who held her captive in a dungeon and all, but wasn’t it just as cruel for him to send her back to school on a Monday? Suri thought as much as she fidgeted on the cold metal bench beneath her.
See what Trenton had failed to realize was that just because he had brought her to the school, didn’t necessarily mean that she had to go to classes.
She tugged the blue coat she wore tightly around her small frame and exhaled deeply, forming a small cloud in the winter air. A crumpled ball of paper by her foot caught her attention and she aimlessly reached down to grab it. Propping it beside her, she waited for the wind to fade and flicked her finger to project it into the air. It bounced and rolled across the bleacher, landing at the feet of the boy that she hadn’t noticed.
“Not half bad,” he said, smiling at her so hard that his forehead wrinkled and distorted the freckles on his skin.
Her eyes took in the spotted boy tucked into his faded tweed coat. It hardly fit him as well as it did a few years ago—his lanky arms poked too far past the cuffs and the edge lifted to reveal his sports jersey as he moved to wave hello when she didn’t respond back immediately.
“What are you doing out here, Mateo?”
“You do know I’m the team captain, right?” he said, gesturing towards the field. “We have a game tonight. I left class a few minutes early to check the equipment closet when I saw you sitting out here like a weirdo.”
Suri had expected a more awkward reception, but it appeared that she had worried over nothing as he laughed at her sullen expression. That was a good thing though; it meant that her face wasn’t plastered on all the local news stations as the girl who was almost squashed at station five.
Although, honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if he had heard and was only acting like nothing had happened. She kind of liked that about him. Even when things weren’t great, Mateo acted like they were. Of course, it was easier for him to stay perpetually positive when he was the most popular junior at Stetser High School.
It happened overnight, or it seemed like it did. Back in middle school he was just average—not popular, but not a complete loser either, exactly right in the middle. Then he got straight A’s. Then he got perfect marks again and became the captain of the school’s sports team last year. This year, he still excelled in both sports and academics, but he also added class captain to his repertoire.
Everyone knew his name. He was one of the only people who knew Suri’s.
“Yeah.” He interrupted her recollections as he straddled the bench besides her. “Though you really shouldn’t be cutting classes, it’s probably smart of you to stay out here anyway.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “Why’s that?”
She could only imagine the answer: pop quiz in math, endurance test in gym, junior prom being rescheduled for tomorrow. Except what he said was a thousand times worse.
“Jenny saw your white-haired boyfriend drop you off this morning,” he said, “And she is freaking out.”
“My what!?”
Suri stammered, her ears turning pink despite the freezing air just as the school bell rung out loudly over her words. Throngs of students poured into the field from the u-shaped building, swelling out of it on their way to classes and lunch. Unfortunately for Suri, she looked directly towards the particularly volatile girl that Mateo had seemingly summoned.
Jenny was putting her eyeliner to good use, glaring harshly at the pair as she stomped her way across the field and made the bleachers clang beneath her boot’s chunky heels.
“What the fuck, Suri? You stage a disappearing act for like a week, and then, poof. You reappear. With a guy who is like way too fucking cool for you to even be that close to.”
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