Excuse my French

deux. une idée

I was quite certain that I had something on my face. Either it was that or that the copy of Madame Bovary in my hands was so ugly that it was a magnet for judgmental eyes. As I tilted my head, reconsidering, I realized that it was probably a combination of both. It wasn't my fault that my acne decided to act up today nor that the lady on the cover was mind-numbingly homely. I sent Olivia, who was walking beside me and holding in a snicker, a flat look and stuffed the book in my backpack.

"You happy?" I asked Olivia, rolling my eyes.

She nodded enthusiastically. "At least I don't have to look at two ugly faces now."

"You're such a bitch." I elbowed her in the side hard even though I had a smile on my face. "Anyway, I'm getting new contacts so that I don't have to wear glasses everywhere."

Olivia stopped in her tracks. "Oh my gosh, really?" Her face brightened. It was absolutely frightening that she was more excited for me than I was myself.

I cleared my throat and glanced around. "Yeah. I've already got an appointment for later next week. Where's Lila, by the way?"

"Oh, she told me she and Luc were running late. They'll be here in a couple minutes." Olivia fidgeted with her fingers, biting her lip. I tried really hard to suppress my smirk, but it didn't work out very well. From the way that Olivia turned slightly redder, I could tell that she'd seen me.

This was the drill every time anything related to Luc came up in conversation. Olivia would either turn a tomato red that resembled my skin whenever I got a sunburn, stutter as if she didn't know how to talk, or studiously avoiding eye contact. And then, Lila and I would try our hardest to make her life like hell—which was, in our defense, very amusing.

I rolled my eyes at her. "You know you're, like, blindingly red right now, right?"

She shook her head and elbowed me jokingly, although her cheeks were still extremely bright. "Shut up."

"You know, all you have to do is confess your affinity for him, and that would make everyone's a whole lot easier." I shrugged my backpack over my shoulder again. Less people were staring at me now, which was lovely, so I focused my attention back to Olivia. "I mean, I know it'll probably kill you, but if you don't do it soon, we all are going to die of second-hand embarrassment on your behalf."

"Just be quiet, okay?" Olivia elbowed me so hard that I stumbled my way into the English Lit classroom.

I held my side as I fake-limped to my desk. "When are Lila and Luc coming again?"

In retrospect, as I yanked out my chair and collapsed in it, groaning in response to my teacher's greeting, I realized that I really should not have said that.

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True to her word, Lila showed up in class about ten minutes late with her brother in tow.

"Hey, what did I miss?" she whispered as she slid into her seat next to me. Ducking her head, she avoided the teacher's disapproving stare and pulled out her notebook, like the rest of us had already done.

I shrugged. Two seats away on my other side, Olivia sat, attentively partaking in the book discussion of The Iliad. I turned back to Lila. "You should have seen Olivia earlier. Like, when she was forced to bring up your brother, it was so funny."

Lila snickered. "Oh my gosh, I wish I was there," she whispered back. Pulling out her Iliad, she set her stuff on her desk. "So, what did I miss?"

Since the teacher's attention was focused on some other smart kid who, unlike me, knew what he was doing, I muttered out of the side of my mouth, "Just some bullshit about how great The Iliad is and a huge project that's due in three weeks. No real biggie."