The Dating Game

Chapter Four

Juliet

I could see Justin walking into school this morning with a girl by his side.

She had her nose pressed down into a book, her hair distorting her figures from my gaze; I could easily detect her navy-coloured bow in her hair. The girl had similar hair to Justin but she had a completely diverse clothing style. She wore jeans and an average top with sneakers.

Sitting on the bench, Beth jumped up beside me and sat down. She opened up her wrapped-up bacon bap and began munching into it with her Starbucks coffee by her side. Actually, it was something really obscure and complex so I always labelled it "Starbucks coffee".

"Where's Michelle?" I piped up, opening up my bag to find my books.

"By her locker," Beth replied softly.

First lesson was Chemistry and I was not looking forward to it. I had a test so I pulled out my text book and did a little extra revision just to prepare myself. Starting to read over about the different equations, my light was obscured and my book was plunged into shadow. I looked up.

"How's the finger?" asked a boy. Justin.

I held up my band-aid-free finger. "Healing." My voice presented my disproportionate coyness that I had either inherited from my mom (seeing as Dad is nothing like that) or made up myself and actually became that. Maybe this was my façade that concealed the real me beneath the material bracelets on my wrists and the Coke lid around my neck. Or maybe they were the real me.

Justin nodded, his folder under his left arm and compressed against his side. "That's good."

The girl came up to Justin's side and he looked down at her. She kept her gaze on her book Anna and the French Kiss in front of her before he put his arm around her shoulder and gently began to lead her off. He got two metres away when he ceased and turned around.

"What helps me with Chemistry equations are knowing symbols of what each of the things are in a triangle. Then if you have to rearrange the equations, depending on which unit slash thing you want to find, you cover it and if the remaining two things are on the bottom of the triangle, you multiply them and if there's one above the other, it's a divide," he articulated, smiling.

Gaping at him, he nodded once more and strode away, manoeuvring the girl beneath his arm at the same time. Beth had momentarily stopped eating her bacon bap which explained the silence from chewing and swallowing, but when I turned to her, she had a little bread crumb on her lip. I pointed to it and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

"What was that about? You know who he is, right?" she gushed, the half of her bacon bap that remains waggling in her hands with her gesticulations that Michelle would deem an "absurdity". She was known for over-exaggerating something with her hand gestures.

"Justin Bieber," I answered, turning back to my text book with only ten minutes remaining before Chemistry. Or at least, before we'd have to commence our trek to Chemistry.

"Precisely. And you know what his status is at this school? King. King, I tell you. Why's he with us?" She stared off at his disappearing figure that had now submerged into the corridors of West Chance High. She turned back to me. "Actually, he was talking to you." She took a bite out of her bacon bap, the wrapper around the remaining part. "So how do you know him?"

"He came up to me in the beginning of the week," I replied softly again. Soft was always my tone. "He started saying things to me about my surname. I walked off."

"And?" she prompted, eyes bulged with a mouth full of bacon and bread.

"He saw me the other day in the toilets. Some girls were just... I couldn't get out. He came in and told them to go away but I had cut my finger. He took me to the Nurse Office." Throughout telling the anecdote, I was absent-mindedly fiddling with the Coke lid around my neck. I let go before I could cut myself again.