The Cliche Gone Wrong

Chapter Forty-one

I shove my books from my morning classes into my locker, swapping them out for my French, Econ, and History books. I slam my locker closed and turn to my right to start heading to the cafeteria, only to see Asha leaning against the wall of lockers, tapping away on her phone like always.

"So how's your little psych case going?" She asks, not even looking up at me.

"Hello Asha." I say with a roll of my eyes as we start walking down the hall to the cafeteria. "How are you? I'm doing great. I got detention again, but you know how that is."

"That's nothing new," she dismisses. "I want to know whether you've come to your senses yet."

I roll my eyes, almost wishing that Femi or someone else were here to change the topic so I didn't have to do it myself. "Where's everyone hanging out tonight?"

"Don't try to avoid my question!" Asha laughs, hooking her arm through mine as we push our way through the hall. "I see you're still giving that kid the time of day. I thought you would have gotten bored of him by now."

"He's not a puppy Asha."

"No, but he is a dog." This time she doesn't laugh, her face conveying her seriousness. "And you need to remember that dogs bite."

"Thanks for the analogy, sis." I roll my eyes dramatically again, but my earlier playfulness is gone.

Does Asha have a point? No, she's probably just being dramatic.

She lets me focus on my own thoughts for a minute as we push open the doors to the cafeteria, bypassing the incredibly long line to get food since we both brought our own lunches.

"Oh my God I found the perfect dress this weekend!" Asha exclaims suddenly, her fingers frantically flying across the screen of her phone to pull up a picture. "Lemme show you."

"A dress?" I ask as I sit down at the nearly empty table. "For what?"

"Seriously?" She stops scrolling through her phone, looking up to stare at me. "Senior Ball."
"Oh shit," I murmur, trying to remember when that is. "But wait that's not for another month or something. Don't you think it's a little early to be dress shopping?"

"Girl, it's never too early," She smiles as she starts scrolling through her phone again. "I already made Femi start looking, too. We're going to be the best dressed couple there."

"Actually, I think Kenedi and me are going to be the best dressed couple there."

I look over to see Michael sit down on the bench next to me, his dreads that are normally pulled into a braided bun on top of his head dangling over his broad shoulders. Asha and I both exchange a look with each other before we quirk our eyebrows at him.

"Is there something you wanted to ask, Mikey boy?" Asha says, smiling at me knowingly before she looks back at Michael. My heart sinks, not wanting him to ask what I think he might want to ask.

He doesn't look at me, pulling apart the packaging on the burger he got from the lunch line. "Yeah, what're we doing this weekend?"

I shrug, distancing myself from the conversation as I open my own lunch. As I pull my sandwich out of my red lunch pail I happen to look up at the table Shills normally sits at. He isn't there yet, though that's not really a surprise considering the lunch period just started a little bit ago.

I feel an intentional bump on my shoulder and I turn to see Michael looking at me.

"I see you're looking over there again," Michael says as he staring at the jock's table. "Any specific reason?"