The Thing About Flip Flops

Chapter Ten: So I Guess He's Not Going To Send Me His Nudes

I sit at my usual table in the library, right beside the large windows behind the nonfiction section.

I'm working on a project for math, and it's really boring. Henry was with me last period, but he had to leave for soccer practice when school ended. So I'm alone.

I look up when I hear someone coming up to my table. It's Chris.

"Oh. Hi, Chris."

"Hi, Audrey."

"What are you doing here?"

He tosses his bag down onto the table and takes the other seat. He fishes in his bag and pulls out a rectangular object.

"Reading."

I smirk. Okay, then. I move to look at which book it is. It's Fifty Shades of Gray.

Didn't catch that? IT'S FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY.

Holy fuck.

Mother of shit.

Wow, I would never have pegged him for liking...

Before he can retaliate, I grab my phone off the table next to my calculator and snap a photo.

Chris yelps. "What the hell, woman?"

I shrug. "It's in case I ever need to blackmail you." He just looks confused.

"What?"

"Blackmail." I try to explain what it means. "It's like when you have dirt on somebody. Do you seriously not know what blackmail is? Say, for example, you send someone your nudes, and then they save them and threaten you later. Like, if you don't buy me a Dr. Pepper, I'll send your nudes to the school. I dunno. Is that a bad example?"

Chris looks at me like I'm crazy. "I'm not gonna send my nudes to anyone, Audrey."

And of course my dumbass brain hears, "I'm not gonna send my nudes to anyone else, Audrey."

And so my face turns red until I squeak out, "You're gonna send me your nudes?"

He leans quickly away from me. "No!" He yelps. "That's the exact opposite of what I said."

"But you..."

Oh god. Oh fuck. Abort mission right now.

"Gotta go! Bye! Smell you later!" I say before sprinting out of the library, not even bothering to grab my math notebook or my calculator.

I hear him call from behind me in a teasing voice, "Smell you later? When the hell did it become the nineties?"

I run out of the library, not looking where I'm going, and immediately slam into someone.

"JESUS FUCKING SHIT!" I yell. I crash onto the ground.

I look up to see dark hair. The person's tall frame reminds me of when I tripped into someone very recently. But then I look closer at the figure.

It's the principal.

"Ah, fuck," I whisper.

***

The next day, I'm sitting in detention after school, twiddling my thumbs, when Jack walks into the room.

He does a quick double take when he sees me, but then ignores me and sits at one of the desks in the back.

It's just us and a girl with green highlights in her black hair who's fiddling with an Exacto knife and glaring at the teacher with a look that makes me turn right back around.

Mental note: don't get on her bad side. But I'm not even going to lie, part of me wants to be best friends with her so that she can be my personal bodyguard and kill all the people who annoy me.