It’s a typical Wednesday morning in Coach Svelte’s U.S. History class. Coach is droning on about Federalist and Anti-federalist while we mindlessly take notes. Well most of us anyways. I was sitting in my seat, minding my own business, taking notes, trying not to fail this test we have on Friday. When I got poked in the ear by something sharp.

I jolted slightly. It was a crudely made paper airplane. Its unwelcomed arrival in my ear was accompanied by scattered snickers in back of the class. 

In hindsight that should've raised a flag.

“Urgh… what the hell,” I mumbled to myself. I open the plane the and I quietly read it aloud: “U r a fajjot?”

I raised my left eyebrow. What the actual fuck? I turned around in my seat.

“You idiots know that the word has two G’s, right? Seriously, did you morons fail kindergarten?”

Laughter flooded the classroom. Coach ceased his droning and tried to get the class’ attention again by waving his arms in a lethargic manner.

I look around and my eyes land on the only possible morons who’d both throw a shitty paper plane and manage to somehow misspell a simple six-letter word. Our football team the Collingwood Canaries who share the collective IQ of 12, more in particular, their new quarterback, Kyler Anderson. He’s the gaping ass-hat with his feet up on his desk surrounded by other lesser ass-hats.

My scowl meets his stupid smirk and then he opens his mouth…

“Hey, he didn’t even deny it!”

“Well yeah dumbass, 'fajjot' isn’t even a fucking word,” the class fell out into a roar once again.

“You’re just mad,” an amazing argument by Mister Anderson. Well played, dumbass.

I squint and tilt my head. “I'm mad because you have the literacy skills less than or equal to a potato?”

He shifts forward in his seat both hands on his desk posturing. “Nah, its cuz you wanna…”

Unbeknownst to either of us,  Coach has been trying to obtain our attention for the past ten minutes. Coach Svelte -now thoroughly pissed- slammed his fist against the whiteboard sending shockwaves that shattered the laughter once prevalent and yelled in his raspy coach-voice, “Aye! If you two jackasses wanna argue you can do it in detention.”

"What? But I didn't," before I could finish my last plea the veins popping out of his skull and neck shut me into submission. Kyler and I met eyes one last time before we direct our attention to Coach's throbbing face.

Thanks fuckface, now I can't go home.

Just before Coach Svelte could get on his soapbox the third-period bell sang like an angelic hymn. Thank god.  The bell rung and ending this period and effectively rescuing me from a lecture. I left the class actively avoiding the stares of Kyler, his goons, and Coach Svelte.

I honestly cannot believe I'm being punished for standing up for myself and finally not taking any more of Kyler’s shit. He's the star player, I don't know what I was expecting. Although I am a little glad I'm bringing him down with me.

Before parting ways I feel his scorching gaze in the back of my head. I turn my head slightly showing only the profile of my grimaced face. I sigh and try to forget about it for the time being.

“Jesse! Let's go we’re gonna be late”

A voice beaconed out to me. The voice belonged to a smiling girl with a beautiful dark complexion. Her hair was dyed a whitish silver -evident in her dark brown eyebrows. She wore a dark shade of lipstick and a silver nose ring - to match the hair of course. She waited for me.

“Patience is a virtue, Nina.”

“And idleness is a vice too, ya know.”

Her name is Nina, she's one of my closest friends. She's actually the first person I met when we moved here. She's really easy to get along with and very "enthusiastic". Still deciding whether that's a good thing or not. She's hands down part of my top 10.

Don't tell her that though, it'll go straight to her head.

“Since when do you care about being tardy,” I laughed. Nina hooked her arm around mine, and we began to walk to my third period.

“What up? What it do? What’s the plan for today?”

I sigh, “Detention.” She pauses. Her nails sink into my arm and she looks at me with her mouth agape. “What?!?” She gasped. “You’re telling me my beautiful baby boy, Jesse, got detention?” I rolled my eyes and scoffed.

She squished my face with her hands and brought my face towards her’s. “What. Did. You. Do.” She put on an insane smile and her eyes peered deep into my soul, though not as deep as her acrylic nails into my cheeks. My eyes began to water. “Uh ma guad, yah nuils haurt su muh.” She furrowed her eyebrows and tilted her head. I point to her matte silver-colored talons. “Oh shit, my bad,” she sang relinquishing my poor cheeks now riddled with nail shaped indentures.

“No but seriously what did you do?”

“You know Kyler the one from my Second period.”

“Yeah?” Her creepy smile returned

“He Kept throwing his stupid paper planes at me, so I finally told him off.”

“Oh,” her tone went especially dry as if a drought dried up all her misplaced excitement. My eyebrow arched into a frown. “What? Was that not good enough for you?”

“No, no. It's good it's just that..”

I inch my head forward waiting for a response.

“I was hoping that it was something more… y'know," she shrugged, "badass.” I half-lidded my eyes and reminded myself that my acts of defiance and disobedience are civil compared to this her's. 'What were you hoping for, me shitting on Coach’s desk?” She turned and smiled silently.

"Oh my god, Nina," I sigh.

“No,” she giggled, “but I didn’t expect you to get in trouble for flirting.”

Did she just… nope. I squint my eyes and I tilted my head up. Nina puckers her lips inwards in a very poor attempt to hide an obvious smirk. 

“Goodbye, Nina.”

“Wait. Wait, I’m sorry.” She pulled my arm preventing my escape due to sudden done-ness.

“But come on, he sent you a love letter,” she sang. “You know Nina, I never realized how romantic calling your sweetheart a 'fajjot' was, until just now,” I said whilst making derp face. She hit my shoulder and started laughing. Oh, my god, her laugh is so obnoxious. I scoffed while fighting off a smirk.

“You should get to class.”

“Urgh,” she groaned, “alright mom I’ll definitely get on that.” Nina began to walk to class at the slowest pace imaginable.

Flirting? Really? Nina is a piece of work, although that got me thinking: Why am I always his target of preference?