Owen

Tacos and Smack

At about the two month mark my teachers started cracking down. Or they at least thought my ability to write should have improved drastically. It was getting a little better but I was slow as fuck at writing.

My sixth period teacher was the worse.

Mr. Palmer was a giant dick.

Most of my teachers had been pretty cool about emailing me typed up notes, considering I couldn't keep up with lectures. But when I rolled into sixth period, Mr. Palmer decided that he had done that long enough and I was expected to take my own notes. If I failed to get everything down, well than, I was fucked.

Nice guy huh?

Worst part, Donny wasn't at school for the week, some yearly vacation with his family. So it wasn't like I could even copy his notes down. I had thought about asking Sydney but I had never seen her write notes before and Alison wrote short handed notes which wouldn't work. The few times I had tried to take short handed notes I couldn't remember what every thing meant. My only other option was Chelsea, god knows Mina wouldn't help me out, but Chelsea was missing today too.

So there I was, struggling to keep up, growing more and more frustrated and we were only a few short minutes into the lecture. I blew out a breath, shaking my head. I was fucked. Palmer always made his tests from his lecture notes. I wasn't even going to be able to study.

I leaned back in my chair, giving up, as I closed my eyes. But just as I was about to completely surrender to defeat, someone sat with a thud beside me.

My head snapped back, glancing over at Mina. She didn't say anything, she just slid the first page of her finished notes over to me.

I watched her for a minute, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Some of the finer hair around her face falling out, it made her look softer than she was. She had the diamonds studs in her ears, I wondered if she ever took them out. Were they a gift or something passed down from her mom? Her green eyes were focused, a spread of freckles across her cheekbones. She had her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she looked from her page of notes and back up at the screen where Mr. Palmer droned on and on. Her pink nail polish was chipped on her fingernails. Did she always paint her nails? Was the paint always chipped?

She must have felt me staring because she looked over, her eyebrow raised in question. I gave her a half smile, mouthing thank you. I wasn't really expecting her to say you're welcome or to even smile back. That wasn't something Mina did, especially if I was involved in the situation. But the faintest tug of her lip happened, the smallest fraction of a smile. I felt my heart pound, maybe, just maybe, I was starting to win her over.

————————

I was sitting in the living room on the couch, my chair just to the right of me when Alec burst through the front door followed by Colby and Pink.

"Hey!" Alec said, a bag in his hand.

"What're you doing here?" I asked.

My dad was somewhere in the house, working, which meant Alec wasn't here to babysit me.

He checked his phone, turning back to Pink as he said, "keep the door open."

I was confused.

And my confusion only grew when Drew, Donny and Isaac walked in.

"What's going on?" I asked.

My eyes landed on Drew, who once again looked anywhere but at me. Alec placed the bag of whatever it was on the coffee table, dropping down onto the couch beside me.

"I figured if you couldn't come hang out with us, we'd come hang out with you." He said.

"I'm so hungry." Donny commented, rifling though the bag.

"Pass me my nacho man." Isaac said, Pink agreeing from where he was sifting through video games.

"What'd you get again Colby?" Donny asked, a pile of Taco Bell spread out across the coffee table.

"Cheesy bean and rice burrito and some soft tacos."

"Drew you gonna join us?" Alec yelled over the noise of the guys finding their food.

His eyes shot to Alec's before drifting over to me. I thought we had at least planned to pretend like we were okay. I shrugged my shoulders. Whatever he was still hiding, I'd figure it out sooner or later. Until then I didn't care if he hung out in my house like we weren't becoming strangers.

"Uh yeah." He said, taking a seat in one of the chairs. "That's mine." He reached his hand out for a couple burritos. "I had the Mountain Dew too."

"Do you want a quesadilla or a crunch wrap supreme." Alec asked as he looked over at me.

"Quesadilla." I told him.

He raised an eyebrow at me but handed me it anyway. A quesadilla was easier to eat and less messy. Even if the wrap was a million times better.

Everyone was talking except for me, Drew and Colby. I was just taking everything in. Drew was looking around at everything but me, nerves radiating off of him. And Colby was texting on his phone, a smile tugging at his face as he chewed.

"Who you texting?" I asked him.

He looked up startled. "Oh uh.. Chelsea actually."

"Who's Chelsea?" Pink asked.

Colby's face flushed as he drew the attention of everyone. He shrugged, "some girl."

"You guys hanging out now or something?"

If he was, it might make it easier to win over Mina. Chelsea definitely didn't seem to hate me as much as Mina did. Maybe she could help me out.

"Sort of."

"Dude, you like her." Isaac announced, as if none of us could see it for ourselves.

"She's alright." He said.

"Nah, you like her, look at him he's blushing!" Donny boomed, causing Colby's face to beat bright red.

"Shut up man!" He threw a balled up wrapped in Donny's direction. "She's hot."

"Ah so you just want to hit it." Pink said.

Colby glanced at me. I knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth. But I also knew Colby and he wasn't that guy.

He shrugged his shoulders again. "Dude she wants it bad."

                               ————————

So we have about a weeks worth of chapters to go before we catch up to what I have written for this story. Which we will definitely catch up because I'm now splitting my time between this book and the second book. But I'll do my best to keep updates coming at you pretty fast even after we catch up. And hopefully I'll have the second book mostly done by the time we start it so you can all just have daily updates through the entire book.