Through The Lens | ✓

22

My neighbor was officially the most annoying boy ever.

I rolled my eyes at Payton for the fifth time in the last ten minutes. He was still harping me about Finlay, or, "Bookworm". 

"It's weird, Camilla. It's seriously going to ruin your street cred if anyone finds out that you were doing this over winter break," he said, obviously trying to convince me to stop.

But no, I wasn't stopping.

"I don't care about my street cred, Payton." I gave him a look like 'shut up already'. He didn't.

He scoffed. "Well, you should. It really matters, you know."

I scoffed back. "Uh, no it doesn't. You're talking crap. You don't know anything about street cred because you don't even have any." I knew it was snobby the second it came out of my mouth, but I wanted him to stop.

Hurt flashed in his eyes. He clamped his mouth shut, and gripped the windowsill so tightly his knuckles were white. I gave him a look of victory. But when he looked at me like I had just taken away his puppy, I stopped.

Something was up.

"What's wrong, Payton?" I asked him.

"Nothing," he replied bluntly. I raised a brow. He looked at his hands.

Yep, something was definitely up.

"What happened to harping on me about Bookworm?" I asked, mentally smacking myself for reminding him. But stopped mentally smacking myself when he replied.

"Nothing happened. I think if you really paid attention, you would have realized something that is key to figuring out my weird attitude." He gritted his teeth and closed his window.

I stood there, my jaw to the floor. What was I missing? I was missing something. And I had to figure it out, so I could figure out Payton. And then I could finally get rid of him, and get to Finlay. Because Payton was one of the road blocks.

I walked over to my bed and picked up my glue stick. I slathered some glue onto the back of the picture and put it on it's spot in the album, next to all of the pictures.

I closed the album and looked over at the window. Payton was still gone. 

And for some reason, all I wanted was to see him watching me in that window.