You Are the Shell to My Tortoise | ✓

39

"So, how's school, honey?" Mom asked.

The gift bag my parents had handed to me once we were seated at the restaurant was sitting on the chair beside me. I'd spent a sufficient amount of time gushing over the present they'd given me—a pair of high audio quality earphones—and now we'd moved on from that topic since our food had arrived.

My parents and I communicated almost daily through texts, and I made weekly video calls to them at night. They were kept updated on my academic progress, but I usually left out the smaller details in my school life unless something really big happened.

I beamed at Mom as I cut out a small slice of the grilled fish on my plate. "Great!"

At the moment, I was genuinely feeling wonderful about my school life. My best friends had just thrown me a surprise birthday celebration a few days ago, and my new close friend had spent the time and effort to get me a present even though I hadn't told him when my birthday was. Even Mr. Jameson had been in a good mood these days, courtesy of Nolan making a half-hearted attempt at staying awake in his classes. It was at my request that he reduced the amount of blatant sleeping he did in Mr. Jameson's lessons, too.

"Well, except maybe chemistry," I admitted, averting my gaze. "I need to work on that, but other than that I'm doing pretty well in my school subjects."

"That's great to hear," Dad said with a smile. "We noticed you've been improving in math, too."

"Ah, yeah," I said, nodding excitedly. "I have! I made a couple of new friends in school this year, and they're really good in math. I've gotten a lot better with their help."

Mom, who had been smiling at me this whole time, leaned forward interestedly. "How nice! What are their names?"

"Cody and Nolan." I sipped from my glass of warm water. "Nolan's a bit better than Cody at math, though Cody is the one who usually joins Ashley and me when we study together."

She hummed. "And they're both boys?"

"Yes," I said warily, not liking the sudden sly look that had entered her eyes. "Why?"

"Do they like you?"

"Mom!" I gaped at her and then at Dad, who was looking amused. "It's not like that!"

"So you don't like either of them?" she said, raising her eyebrows.

"I'm friends with Derek, and I don't see you randomly asking me if he likes me!" I said. "There's something called platonic friendship, Mom."

Laughing lightly, she straightened up in her seat. "I was just asking since you rarely make new friends or talk about them!"

"Well, we're just friends!"

"Okay, okay," she said, still grinning at me. "Did they join your small birthday celebration on Monday?"

"No, we're kind of in different groups," I said. "I mean, I'm not that close to Cody, so they didn't invite him to chip in."

On the other hand, while Nolan was someone I considered a close friend, nobody knew exactly how close we were. My friends might have gotten a hint of it when I bought him an apple pie the other day, but otherwise we didn't really talk much outside of regular class hours.

"What about the other boy? Nolan, right?" Dad said.

"Yeah, Nolan. I don't know, he's kind of not really the sociable type," I said, aware that I was understating just how closed-off he was. "I can't even get him to join us for lunch, and we've been friends for over two months now."

Raising his eyebrows, Dad said, "If he's so unsociable, how did you make friends with him?"

I shrugged. "Well, there was this one day he was sitting at the dorm staircase because he had such a headache he couldn't walk properly. I helped him get to his room. After that, we just started talking on and off."