Social Media «ᴄᴀᴋᴇ»

Chapter 30

Silence was the only thing I heard all day.

I suppose history was an exception to the silence. No one actually talked, but a video was playing the entire period. No one paid any attention to the video, anyway. Everybody was too stressed out because of the finals we were taking.

Every day in history class, I would just barely turn my head to the right. No one noticed that I moved my head. I would move my eyes all the way to the rightmost corner, and I would watch Rylee. She never noticed me watching her. Now that I think of it, doing that was kind of creepy. But I didn't do that anymore. In fact, I stopped doing it a long time ago. I didn't give myself to Rylee without her knowing anymore. The only person on my mind was Calum. I saw him everywhere. Every second of every day, I longed for his touch and the sound of his voice. A picture of him was installed in my head, and as I sat in this certain history class, I didn't even take a second glance at Rylee—I spent the entire period drawing Calum over and over.

The bell rang, and I took a second to look over the lined sheet of paper, covered with different drawings of Calum's face. I carefully tucked the paper inside my backpack, and I joined Ashton as we walked to English class.

"Are you prepared for the English final?" Ashton asked me. Our walk to English class was silent, and we both knew that Ashton was trying to break the tension.

"Prepared?" I asked. "Well, everyone has a different definition of 'prepared'. I suppose I'm prepared, but I'm not exactly ready. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"It's contradictory, in a way," said Ashton, "but yes. I do understand."

"Are you prepared?" I asked.

"I suppose."

"You suppose," I drawled out slowly. There was a hint of skepticism in my voice, and it made me wonder why it was there.

"I suppose," Ashton repeated.

Ashton and I made a left turn and started walking into the hall. We walked past the overflowing sea of people, and we eventually made it to Michael's locker. Michael's face was warm and red, and he was slightly out of breath. He had just come back from PE.

Ashton quickly wrapped his arms around Michael's waist as Michael grabbed his backpack and folder from his locker. Michael was talking about something funny that happened in his PE class, which brought out some laughs from Ashton and I. Every few seconds, Ashton would sneak a kiss on Michael's cheek, which only made the newly-platinum blonde boy's face turn redder than it already was. After a few minutes, Ashton checked the watch on his left wrist, and he figured it was time for us to go to class.

Michael pressed a reassuring kiss to Ashton's lips. Then he turned to me and patted my back with a smile.

"Good luck on the final!" Michael said. He then merged with the sea of people trying to get to class.

The rest of our walk was silent. We both walked up the ramps and into the massive bungalow that was our English class. Miss Malone was on her director's chair, a stack of paper resting on her lap and a pen in her hand. She made quick marks on the papers, flipped over a few paper, and eventually threw a stapled packet of a few papers on her podium. She must have been grading the juniors' finals.

Ashton and I quietly slid into our seats. I watched as more people started flooding into the class and taking their assigned seats. Most people sat down an immediately got out a study guide and/or flashcards. I didn't get anything out of my backpack except for my pencil and eraser pen (I don't like using pencil erasers. Is that weird?). I knew I had the vocabulary down—you could randomly ask me for a word and I would answer it for you. I was sort of iffy about the historical stuff we needed to know, but I remembered important dates. I was okay with knowing people. I studied hard for this test. For once, I felt like I could actually get a good grade.