Bird-Dogging: an Academy Fan Fiction [on hold indefinitely]

Chapter Six

      "Oh. Um. Hey." Oh, real cool. I rolled my eyes at myself. Think fast, Sang! "Long time no see." Kill me now.

          My lame attempt at humor earned me a deep chuckle. "It does feel like forever since I've seen you." I blushed. Ok, so no accent. It's Luke or the other guy. What was his name again? Door Hero...coffee guy...I remember it was a different name, like mine. I was drawing a blank.

      ...
      ...
      ...

       "Sorry. Were you busy?" the deep voice said.

      I facepalmed, humiliated by my silence. "Oh, no. Sorry. I just, um, my roommate, uh, well." I sucked in a deep breath to stop my rambling. Get a grip. It's not like this is the first time you've ever talked to a boy on the ph- oh right. It is the first time. I brought my hand to my cheek.

      I had worked pretty hard in high school to be invisible. I had kept my head down, studied hard, and read a lot. I was happier that way. Attention had equaled pain back then; my mom had beaten me for getting notes from boys, receiving a phone call resulted in getting a lemon juice and vinegar cocktail, and if she caught a neighbor looking in my general direction, I was grounded to my room until she thought I'd been forgotten.

Invisible was easier.

      When I had moved out and into the dorms, I was mostly ignored still. My roommates my freshman year had been more interested in drinking and sex, exploring their newfound independence. I had been alone in almost every way for years, so independence was nothing new for me. Two of them had flunked out their first semester.

      Sophomore year had been just plain awful. I'd gone from my role as invisible girl to being seen by my roommate as an annoying little sister. No, more like the annoying friend of the annoying little sister. My roommate made me the butt of her jokes, my innocence always the punchline, and the whole year was a nightmare.

      But over the summer, I had made friends with Lanie. Kind of. And Billy had moved me from working the register to waiting tables, forcing me to interact. I had Tess now, too. She was ten shades of awesome, even if she was constantly pushing me out of my comfort zone to have fun and talk to people.

      This felt different though. I found myself wishing I still had the "how to talk to people" prompts that Dusty had written out for me on the back of three by five notecards a year ago.

Maybe this is Darwinism at work. Survival of the fittest keeping me from passing on my obviously defective DNA. I gulped. Am I seriously thinking about mixing chromosomes when I'm not even sure who I'm talking to?

      "Well, you're busy. I'll let you go," the guy said to me after another stretch of silence.

       "Wait!" I frantically said. "No, wait. Just... I'm sorry. I'm just nervous. It's not every day I have a cute guy on the phone." Open mouth, insert foot.

      "So I'm cute?" he asked after a beat. I could actually hear the smirk on his face, and I found it equal parts endearing and annoying.

      I groaned. "Can we just start over?"

       "I don't know, Coffee Thief. I've enjoyed all of our interactions so far." Oh thank the moon and stars! It's Coffee Guy! Still need to remember that name though.

       "Right. Still, so sorry about that," I said.

      He laughed. "I'm not. I don't mind sharing."