Amarah

Chapter 13 •Avoiding Confrontations•

An entire week. I had successfully avoided Eli for an entire week. It was hard, but I managed to do it so far.

The first day, in Art class, I had asked this girl to switch seats with me. At first, she was hesitant because she wanted to sit next to her friend, but then I reminded her that she would get to sit next to the "British guy." Her eyes lit up at that and even her friend started to encourage her to switch seats. I rolled my eyes at them, but was thankful that they agreed.

When Eli saw some random blondie sitting next to his seat, his dark eyebrows came together in confusion. He had scanned the class to look for me, but I successfully managed to hide behind a large sketchbook. And after class, when he spotted me, I bolted out of the room so fast that I had briefly considered joining the cross country team. I never knew I could run like that. 

That day, I had seen him looking for me during Lunch and when I noticed him walking towards our bench again, I quickly whispered to my friends, "I was never here!" then ran to the closest building my eyes laid eyes on. The look of confusion on their faces was priceless. Although, Clarisse had quickly recovered when she caught sight of Eli, who couldn't manage to escape her, gladly.

During Literature, avoiding him required having to convince Laith to switch seats with me. Which meant that I had to sit right behind the evil brunette who was making me do all of this. In the middle of class, I could hear Eli asking Laith why I wanted to switch seats and Laith had just shrugged his shoulders in response. I could just imagine Jean triumphantly smirking through all of this.

I did my best to get to classes right before the bell rang and leave the second class was over to avoid any run ins with Eli.

The bright side to all of this was that I was getting in some good exercise. I think I gained some muscles and lost some calories. So, thank you, Jean, this isn't as bad for me as you thought it would be.

The bad side was that I now had to eat in the library to avoid Eli. I didn't get to enjoy the beautiful, fall weather. My friends did join me though, but they had realized that I would not tell them why I was eating in the library from now on. I kept thinking about telling them soon, but whenever I tried to I would get paranoid that Jean would hear somehow and would post my pictures.

Art and Literature class had been feeling a bit dull now without the company of a certain someone, but it was not that big of a deal. I could handle it.

I could handle a lot of things, Alhamdulillah.

•~°~•

It was now the second Eli-free week and I'm pretty sure he had given up trying to catch up to me after class. What can I say? He probably gave up because I run faster than he can.

The bell had just rung, signaling the end of the day. I was walking with Clarisse to her locker after our Statistics class, so that she could put her heavy textbook back in there.  "So, I'll text you if I need any help on the homework because I was a little confused about what Mrs. Ferris was talking about today," she told me as she starting opening her locker.

I leaned against the row of lockers beside hers, most of them being vacant because not many kids used them these days. My side pressing against the cool metal and I crossed my arms and waited for her to finish. "Alright, I'll probably work on it sometime tonight," I replied to her, my eyes wandering across the bunch of kids that were moving in the hallways, desperate to leave school.

When Clarisse opened her locker, it revealed the big mess of unimportant papers she had shoved in there. She let out a deep sigh and decided to just empty the junk right now. As she was cleaning, I kept moving my gaze across the crowd. My brother wasn't going to come pick me up for another hour or so, so I had a bunch of time.