I was waiting for Jacin at his locker the next morning so that we could go to English together like we always did. “Where is  he?” I said out loud. I stood on my tiptoes to see over the crowd of people. Sometimes he took a while because he was talking with a friend. James came by a few minutes later.

“Jacin’s sick, so he ain’t gonna be here today. But you probably already know that, ‘cause he texted you that.” He said as he started grabbing stuff out of his locker and shoving it into his bag. I rolled my eyes.

“You know a simple ‘hi’ would be nice.” I said, “And what’d you mean by ‘Jacin’s sick’ and ‘you probably already know that ‘cause he texted you that’? The only text I  got today was from Ava. And he seemed fine when I called him yesterday.” I said. He looked confused. 

“What do you mean? He said that he texted you.” He said as he put on his backpack. “What time is it?” He asked as he grabbed his phone out of his back pocket and checked his phone. Barely a second later he shoved it back in his back pocket and started shoving me forward. “The bell’s about to ring in 45 seconds and if we don’t hurry, we’ll be late to English again, and I really don’t want detention. I’m too young to die!” James said. We ran all the way to class.

Then I stopped in the doorway, “But what about -” I started to say. But then James shoved me in the classroom.

“We have less than 8 seconds to sit down and get our stuff out, or we’re dead.” He said, and he shoved me into my seat and raced to his.

I pulled out my English binder, and a pencil. I made sure that the teacher wasn’t looking and pulled out my phone. I turned down the light and made sure that I had Wi-Fi and opened my contacts list and scrolled through it until I found Jacin’s name. I reloaded it to see if I had gotten any messages from him. There weren’t any. I understand why he was avoiding me, but why lie to James?