Arc-en-ciel

Chapter 03: Westfield High

Sometimes eye contact is way more intimate 

than words will ever be

J A M E S 

I hated my own mind sometimes.

Because turns out, I had paid a lot more attention to the girl than I had given myself credit for.

Now, as I stood in the vegetable aisle of the supermarket two days after that football match, I was staring down at a bunch of carrots and thinking about her.

Aunt Janine had sent me out to do groceries, and I had managed to get distracted by carrots. Fucking carrots. Because of a stupid pun, on a stupid, irrelevant girl's T-shirt. Two days after.

I glare down at them. Stupid vegetables.

Like an idiot, a part of me was also thinking about the last moment, leading up to which she dashed away- with a worried expression on her face. I hadn't missed the way she kept looking over my shoulder, and I had even turned around to survey the crowd- nothing stood out.

Why was I giving it any thought? I didn't fucking know. It made me want to be shot in the head.

"Anything I can help you with?" the girl next to me says, batting her eyelashes. She seemed very vaguely familiar and she seemed to know who I was, so I figured we went to the same school.

"No," I grit through my teeth, for what feels like the fifteenth time. How many more times did I have to say it before she left me alone?

"Okay," she giggles. The fuck is she giggling for?

I try very hard not to roll my eyes as I scoop a bunch of the required vegetables into the cart. The girl still follows me around, much to my annoyance, and instead of humoring her by responding every time she said something stupid- I decide to hold my tongue and ignore her instead.

"You're Lakeview's football captain, aren't you?" she says, even though I was very clearly wearing a football sweatshirt that answered the question all by itself.

"Are you taking part in the exchange program?" I hear her ask even when I don't respond to her previous question.

Exchange program?

I frown slightly since I hadn't heard about anything of the sort, but after less than a few seconds of thought, I shrug it off.

If I didn't know about it, it was probably because it wasn't important enough, or because I didn't care enough to pay attention.

Come to think of it, maybe some people I knew were taking part because I briefly remember something of the sort being mentioned in passing in a few conversations.

Huh, maybe it wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me either.

"There were some people from the exchange school at the football game," she continues. Why was she still talking? "I think I saw you talking to one of them-"