Cuddle Application

9 - The Future is Beyoncé

"I'm not bossy. I'm the boss."
~Beyoncé

➳♀♁➳

The next week was hectic at school. We'd already taken our AP College tests - although I'd taken three, which had rendered me fairly useless after the exhausting feat - but we still had our counselors pressuring us to apply to colleges as soon as possible.

They filtered through the students one by one, starting with last names beginning with A. "L" last names fell on Wednesday.

I slipped out of my Calculus class after my teacher handed me a pass to leave, looking down at the note as I walked down the hall.

Meeting with Mrs. Raymond at 12:45.

The letters were scrawled hastily on a sticky note, written by the office secretary who was no doubt sick of writing so many passes this week.

My sandals slapped against the linoleum floor as I rounded the corner into the rotunda. My school was built like a web - the rotunda in the middle with hallways branching out. The branches all connected at the ends, leaving five small areas in between classes that were open gardens, sanctuaries you could go to during lunch or free period and breathe the open air.

Occasionally they were used for students to make out in between classes, the glass walls creating some very visual scenarios for the other students walking by. I passed Garden B on my way to the counselors' offices and looked inside to see a group of students seated on a bench, seemingly hard at work.

Helaci High was nice but it's "rival," Pemberson High, was nicer. The biggest difference was that they had a pool, and we did not. Our swimmers had to make the five minute commute to the other school to practice. I had been on the swim team both freshman and sophomore years as well as all of middle school, so I had become familiar with the layout of the opposite school.

However, having quit my junior year, I hadn't visited the other campus in nearly a year.

My phone buzzed from my back pocket.

Josh: can we talk?

I turned off the phone and shoved it - a bit angrily - back into my pocket.

Ever since the Sunday morning after the party, Josh had been begging to talk. At first I'd been nice, explaining that I would rather end the relationship. I had signed the DNR and thrown away any possibility of rekindling what we'd been.

Josh, however, did not seem to understand the fact that I'd broken up with him and continued to badger me about "hopefully forgiving" him and "putting it all in the past and starting new" because he "rully did love me."

"Rully?" you ask.

Yes, "rully."

But I had moved on. Not to bigger or better things, but just forward, away from him. I had my friends - Cora, Lina, and Park. I had Oliver, who was quickly becoming my friend - nothing more, mind you. And, I had my family.

Everything I needed to preoccupy me from wanting to be in a relationship.

My phone buzzed again, this time a different boy.

Oliver: Horses?

My eyebrows lifted. Horses?

Me: ... a traditional farm animal, originating from North America, often used by the Mongols when taking over China