for you

Part 56

It's the Friday of that week, and I was waiting at the bench Ruby usually sits at. My subject before lunch was Art, and I don't bring anything to that class. I only took that class because it was the simplest out of all the other choices. The teacher doesn't pay attention to me anyway, I sit at the very back so I'm practically invisible. 

From afar I see Ruby walking towards me so I waved at her. I can see her smiling from the distance as she fastens her pace and finally sits down. 

"Were you waiting here long?" she asks as she puts her books down.

"No, I just got here." She nods in response. She had a stack of books of different subjects and she was attentively and quickly writing. 

"Are you doing homework? During lunch?" I ask. 

"Yeah."

"No one does homework during lunch. This is the first time I'm seeing this."

"I don't really have a choice but to finish my homework at lunch."

"Why? You could always do it at home" I shrugged. 

"In case you forgot, I don't have much time at home anymore" she rolls her eyes. 

"Whoops forgot" I chuckled. "It's next week isn't it? Your competition?"

"Yeah, Monday at 4. Are you coming?"

"Obviously. I wanna see my best friend aka the best dancer in this dancing era win" I smirked. 

She chuckles. "I'm not too confident I'm gonna win."

"But you do in every competition anyway."

"How do you know that?" 

Ah shit. I thought to myself. There you go, exposing yourself once again. Great job Ethan. 

"I- Lucas told me" I rambled. 

Her eyes widened and she looked at me weirdly. "You guys talked about me??"

"N-No" For fuck's sake Ethan. "You're name just came up in the conversation. You're asking too many questions!" I say, hoping she'll stop bombarding questions that gets harder and harder for me to answer. 

"Fine" she huffs. "By the way, don't your teachers give you homework? You seem like you have absolutely all the time in the world to do nothing. Don't you care about your grades?" she asks, her eyes darting towards her reference book and her exercise book again and again. 

"I do!" I stood up for myself. "I just don't do my homework." 

"Then what do you do? Do you cheat during exams?" she scoffs.

"I don't! I mean, I do sometimes but that's normal. I study."

"You what?" she snorts. "You? Study? That's hard to believe."

"After all we did in our friendship and you still think of me as a bad person" I chuckled unbelievably. 

"I don't, I just find it hard to believe you actually study."

"Why? Do I have to be a nerd and stuff my face in books everyday for you to believe that I'm a good person?" 

She paused from writing and looked at me. "N-No, that's not what I meant."

"I think that's exactly what you mean." I took a deep breath trying to calm myself down. "I don't know what it takes for you to believe that I'm not a bad person but it frustrates me a lot." 

I got up and left. I didn't know where this sudden pressed attitude came from. I knew she was joking, but I couldn't help but feel hurt.