Girls Chase Girls | #1 [COMPLETE]

chapter 3 (new)

Xia

Xia had been back at school an entire week before somebody that wasn't a teacher spoke to her.

"Hey, Qi. How do you solve for x?" A ruddy-skinned boy she had seen daily for three years yet hadn't spoken to once pushed his notebook under her nose.

Xia pretended to give the problem a long, hard look. She might as well have been trying to read tea leaves in the dark. If that's a thing. Do people do that?

"I don't know."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah." She raised a shoulder in resignation. "I don't really like...math. It's...I don't get it." A dramatic understatement if her last Pre-Cal exam grade was to be believed.

"Oh. I mean, I just thought you would, you know, considering."

She blinked up at him. "Considering what?"

He hesitated to answer and that was answer enough, but she wanted to hear him say it.

"Well?"

"I don't know. I just figured you would."

"Any particular reason? I don't raise my hand in class. I don't share my notes. I don't even talk. Why would you think math was my thing when I never said it was?"

He hunched over and shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to make himself small under her scrutiny. His acne-scarred cheeks were burning hotter by the breath. Petty annoyance kept her from saving him from himself. Xia wanted him to choke on his stereotypes.

"Didn't think so." She folded her homework into the pages of her textbook and began to pack her things. The library was her favorite place because of the solitude it offered; it wasn't much good to her, now.

"That's why nobody likes you. You think you're so much better than everybody else, don't you?"

"Not at math!" she shouted over her shoulder and, ducking under the furious glare of the librarian, made her escape. The bleachers on the sports field would have to do until the presumptuous jerk infestation in the library was resolved.

Let's get one thing straight. Xia might have sucked at math (numbers, how do they work?!), but Xia was brilliant at event planning. She could plan a revolution in the school gym given the chance, but ask her to factor any equation more complex than X^2-1, and you could expect tears.

She could talk to people. They listened when she spoke, because she made her words count; they were never once wasted. She just didn't tend to have anybody to say those words to is all.

Xia chewed a thumb nail and tried once again to understand inverse functions. I can't balance a checkbook, but they want me to get inverse functions. This is a state-sanctioned form of torture. She was looking up the number to Amnesty International as soon as she got home.

"You look down in the dumps. Why the long face?"

Xia perked up at hearing Phaedra's voice. She didn't want the other girl thinking she needed to be saved again. She'll never go out with me if I'm that pathetic. Her brain churned to a stop. Since when do I want Phaedra Barlowe to go out with me? We're barely even friends. Life-saving didn't confer instant friendship, right?

"Uh, it's nothing," Xia stammered, faking a laugh. "I was thinking—about stuff. I was thinking about...stuff." She couldn't think of anything else to say. The truth was out of the question.

Phae threw a leg over the cold bleacher seat and gave it a straddle. She was still dressed in her volleyball uniform topped with a nylon sports jacket, an Adidas sponsorship insignia splashed across the dark blue back panel. Her usually gelled hair was plaited in a French braid that curled over her shoulder like a pet snake. In short, she was sweaty and muddy and didn't much seem to care. Perfect, basically.