Unfolding

Chapter 23

It's a Girl!

"Stop assessing your value and worth by the amount of people who have walked out of your life." – Nikita Gill

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Coming back to school from winter break was an adjustment. In fact, it took me an entire week to get used to the routine of waking up for school every morning again.

I'll admit, perhaps staying up until 3 am watching Netflix wasn't the smartest idea, but can you blame me? Schitt's Creek was too hilarious to just stop watching after one season.

The post winter break slump could be felt all around, not just within the students. The teachers were taking longer to start the lectures, even having an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon. However, that didn't stop them from beginning to file on the work on the first day back. A quote on quote countdown, had begun until the AP exams. We weren't so much learning new content as we were reviewing old stuff the majority of us had forgotten.

Whoever's idea it was to make AP exams 4 hours long each, has a special place reserved in hell.

It was lunch time and this semester, Caroline, Brooke and I were trying out something different. When I wasn't in the library during lunch, I sat with Brooke and Caroline at a small table in the cafeteria's corner. However, after Caroline finally came clean about her and Lucas, she decided to take him up on his offer and sit with him at lunch. By default, that meant that Brooke and I also had to go sit at Lucas's table because what kind of best friends would we be if we didn't. Her words, not mine.

Now, this is in no way, shape, or form an indication that they are official – as Caroline put it. According to her, she wasn't ready for anything serious but she also wanted to know what it was like to sit at the table with all the cool kids. Despite being a cheerleader all throughout high school, she wasn't the most popular girl in school on account of her very bubbly and blunt personality which most took offense to. So being invited to sit with the cool kids, was a big step for her.

Having already finished eating, I was trying to finish the worksheet Ms. O'Conner handed out earlier, but Aiden seemed to be in the mood to play footsie with me under the table.

Speaking of Aiden, I spent the whole two weeks of winter break trying to convince him to return the Tiffany's jewelry he got me for Christmas. Every time I brought it up, he would give me the same one word reply: Nope!

I reluctantly gave up seeing as to how he clearly wasn't going to budge and I was ready to jump through the phone and knock some sense into him. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the earrings and necklace - I just don't love how much money he spent on it. However, since Aiden wan't budging on returning them, I ended up giving into the selfish voice in my head and started wearing them. It was kind of hard to take them off after.

When Aiden saw me this morning, his eyes immediately caught sight of the earrings and the necklace around my neck. I too didn't miss the look on his face when he did, and he seemed to be in an even better mood since.

"Will you quit it!" I hissed. "I'm trying to do something here!"

"Boo!" He pouted. "Just do it later."

Not bothering to reply to him, I just glared and returned to my work. While he had stopped playing footsie with me, his phone – which was on the table – kept going off like crazy.

Releasing a sigh of frustration, I set my pencil down and looked up at him expectantly. "Are you going to get that?"

"Nope!" He grinned at me.