The Ice Cream Pact

Chapter Five

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J A K E
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When I got to detention, I was caught a little off guard at the small ping of excitement that I felt in my chest when I saw Denise sitting there. She met my gaze before I could look away, and waved. I returned it with a little smile and nod, and then sat down in the last open seat- which was diagonally in front of the one she was sitting in.

I couldn't tell if I felt her eyes on me when I sat down, or if it was just my brain reminding me that she was there, but I felt something pulling me to look back at her. I had made it a solid 20 minutes without looking back, when suddenly a piece of paper hit me in the head.

I whipped my head around in slight shock, and she put a hand over her mouth to keep from cracking up- the throw had obviously not been intended to be aimed directly at my head. I found myself holding back a laugh, too, and reached down to pick up the paper. The teacher hadn't noticed, since he was deep into his grading. When I opened it up, I saw it was a note:

this teacher looks
like Chicken Little.

When I looked up to see what he looked like, I accidentally let out a laugh, but quickly cleared my throat in an effort to cover it up. The teacher looked up at me, as did everyone else, but I just hid the note beneath the desk and casually looked around the room. The sound of Denise's little chuckle behind me had me holding back one of my own.

We tossed it back and forth a few more times, before she also let out a little laugh, and this time, the teacher did look up to see the note. I could tell we were both biting back our hysterics as he then got on our case about passing notes. After he had gotten settled back into his grading, I casually took out a pencil from my backpack and wrote a last thing-

he's just mad
the sky is falling

        I heard her holding back her laugh, and I grinned at my desk. Nearly a half an hour had passed when the teacher fell asleep, and we all carefully got out of our seats as to not wake him. Well, except for Denise, who shot me a confused expression when I turned around to look at her. I just nodded towards the door, and despite looking skeptical, she hesitantly got up and left the room with the rest of us.

"What if he wakes up?" She asked once we were a little down the hall. The others had ran off, so it was just us two walking now.

"Well, technically he wasn't supposed to fall asleep, so he wouldn't be able to rat us out without ratting himself out, first," I replied, "we're good."

She nodded as we rounded a corner towards the parking lot. I had noticed over the course of these two detentions that her natural expression was pleasant and inviting.. as opposed to my severe case of RBF.

"Are you playing in the game tonight?" She asked me, and I snapped myself out of the little mini-trance I had been put in.

"Yeah, are you going?" I replied, and she scrunched her nose a little in thought.

"I might," she responded, and I raised an eyebrow.

"Are you not a big fan of football?" I looked back down at her.

"No, I am," she told me, "I'm just not a fan of the football players at this school," she added, and then met my gaze with a little smile, "no offense."

"None taken, I don't like them, either," I shrugged, and she laughed. "Maybe you'd be a good-luck charm for us if you came, though."