I'd been watching the clock for so long that I was beginning to think that I should consider clock-watching as a possible career path in the future. All right, maybe that wouldn't be a very lucrative profession, but I was getting pretty damn good at it. My stomach felt hollow. Any time now...

It mewled a little. I bit my lip and tried to look as innocent as I could as the person who was making a very deep point about the role of fate in The Iliad stopped talking.

Heh. I clenched my abdomen. Please don't make any more noise. Please. Please. Please. As usual, my stomach did its own thing, like it was a crazy pop star or something.

This time, the person talking actually made eye contact with me. Luckily, his eyes moved over me and went to everyone else in the circle. I exhaled slowly. I was sure I was flaming red—I couldn't tell though. But what I could tell was that I was sweating more right now that I'd ever sweated in any gym class.

The final bell of the day rang, and I stood up from my desk hastily. Stuffing my books into my backpack, I rushed out of the classroom without saying anything to my teacher (I usually did—it was very important to suck up to my teachers in order to get good teacher recommendations in the coming fall). Well, that was mortifying.

In the crowded hallway, Olivia caught up with me, panting a little. "Hey, what's up with you?"

I clutched my stomach, which gurgled a few times (luckily for me, the hallway was so loud with the chatter of everyone walking down it that my stomach couldn't be heard). It hurt. Like really. "I'm so hungry."

Her eyes widened like she'd had a revelation. "So that was you back in there."

"Shut up."

She was so mean sometimes.

She laughed and elbowed me. "You were very impressive, if that makes you feel any better."

I rolled my eyes and took my phone out of my pocket. "Yeah, it totally does." 3:01. Just in time—fantastic.

I turned my head to look at Olivia, who was already peeking over my shoulder like the nosy person she was. "The hell're you doing?" I nudged her chin with my shoulder.

"You going somewhere?" We passed into the school lobby, where we waited next to a column. I unlocked my phone and checked my texts. Nothing so far. Hm, Luc should have sent me a confirmation text by now. I frowned, leaning against the column with one leg bent. (I reminded myself of a Greek statue. If only I didn't look ugly...)

"Hm? Right. Um, Luc and I have another discussion meeting type thing today. He should be texting me by now..."

"Huh." Olivia raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like you're meeting up a lot."

Was she jelly? I didn't know. After Luc's outburst, I'd been thinking—he was right. I always jumped to conclusions before actually observing a situation (which, funnily enough, I used to think I was good at). Maybe Olivia wasn't as shy and skittish with Luc as I thought. Maybe she was perfectly fine with him (aside from her crush on him) and Lila and I had only egged her on.

Either way (I was really, really tired of thinking now—pre-calc had drained all my brain juice a long time ago), I was gonna let it be. Even though it would be awkward.

See, I understood how she felt now. All those times I'd joked with Lila that Luc was hideous—I was being stupid and oblivious and hurtful. Poor Livy. And the thing was that now, I was starting to look forward to seeing his golden eyes every day...

That was stupid. Stop it. Stop it.

"Hepburn?" Olivia prodded my shoulder. "Hey, you're in the middle of a conversation with me, remember?"

"Right." I glanced for the last time at my phone. Nothing yet. Ugh, he was going to be respond late again. I stuffed my phone into my pocket. "So you're giving Lil a ride today?"

Olivia still eyed me suspiciously. "Nah," she said slowly. "Lila said she was gonna hitch a ride with a study partner from her Spanish class or something. You?"

"I'll be hanging at Luc's for a while, and then he'll drive me back." When Olivia raised an eyebrow at me, I was already talking. "Lila gave me a ride to school today. Her car decided to be nice."

Olivia glanced outside. It, indeed, was sunny outside—no cause for an engine in a car, whether it was Luc's new ride or Lila's rusty old Beetle, to stall. (And that made me wonder why the twins' parents didn't just buy both of them new cars. Talk about favoritism.) "Mm. I hope it doesn't break down suddenly when she's trying to get home."

I checked my watch. 3:05. Yeah, maybe it was time for me to take the initiative and to look for him instead of the other way around. "Liv, I'll have to catch you later. Text me? We can totally study for European History later."

"Yeah, see you!" Olivia nodded, holding her books up to her chest.

I turned back into a hallway to head toward the gym. It was a bit annoying to walk against the direction the other people were going. But honestly, I didn't really need to care. I was an upperclassman now. I could push around the freshmen (who were currently acting as the school of fish gathering as they rushed to the school lobby behind me) as much as I wanted. I had that right after all.

The school gym wasn't too far up the hallway. I finally stopped and leaned against the wall almost directly across the boys' locker room (I didn't really need to see the jocks in all of their nude glory, as tempting as that was). Luc did mention that he was going to pick up his equipment before heading out to meet me...

After five minutes of waiting (on my phone, of course), the locker room door opened for the first time. I could see the person's feet. Nope, not Luc's usually polished shoes. Probably a scholarship student (not that I meant to be snobby—or maybe I was intentionally being snobby, and I couldn't help that). But then another pair of shoes came out, and they looked an awful lot like what Luc would wear.

So I looked up.

And yeah, fate decided my taking the lead was worth it, and right at that moment, a very wet, very fresh-out-of-the-showers Luc walked out of the locker room.

Oh my.

Luc paused in his steps, holding up a rugby helmet awkwardly as he casually slung his travel bag over his shoulder. "Hey, I thought I told you I'd meet you in the lobby."

"Oh. Um." I took his helmet for him, and we set out through the hallway together. "Well, I'm here now, so I guess we might as well go along with this..."

He laughed and shrugged, and I took that opportunity to sneak a side glance at him. His floppy, dark, wet hair lay on his forehead, and just at that moment, he decided to run his fingers through it. I held in my breath. Then he met my eyes with a sparkle in his, saying, "Someone's excited to see me."

He didn't really have to know that he was dead on.

I snorted, bumping his side with his rugby helmet even though inside, I was thinking something like, That was way too close. "You wish."

Yeah, right.

↔

I claimed Luc's desk chair as soon as I walked into his room, leaving him to groan as he dumped his backpack next to his bed (which, to his credit, was pretty neatly made). "This is my room, you know," he complained, plopping himself down on his bed.

I span around in his chair with glee. My legs hit his desk every so often, but that didn't bother me too much. As I met his eyes a couple times as the world spun around me, I grinned and responded, "First dibs. So that sucks for you."

He let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. "Fine." He picked up my backpack (which he, as the gentleman, had carried upstairs for me) and unzipped it (or did something like that; I really couldn't tell).

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Getting us started. You know we don't have much time."

My legs hit his desk again, and this time, I stopped spinning. My vision still looked funny (it was from a combination of my wacky contacts and the spinning), but at least I could somewhat focus on my company right now. I let out a very loud sigh. "Well, that was fun. Too bad you had to stop me."

Luc looked up from my backpack, eyes sparkling like they had been when we were walking out from the boys' locker room earlier. "You're wild."

"Yeah, so they tell me." I stood up from his chair and sat down next to him on his bed. "You can have your chair back if you really want it."

"Nah." He pulled out what he'd been looking for the entire time, Madame Bovary. We both agreed on the car ride to his house that we were becoming very good friends with the lady (whom we assumed was Emma, our protagonist, obviously) even though she was as...homely as hell. He gave the cover a nice pat. "Let's go on to part two, shall we?"

"Ooh, can't wait." I didn't think I was feeling very sincere about that.

Luc and I had landed upon an agreement about reading privileges, which I willingly surrendered to Luc. I'd already tried reading a paragraph or two a couple weeks ago, but Luc's snickers (presumably about my horrid accent) sufficiently stifled my zeal for oral reading. So Luc rolled his eyes, golden brown in the light of his bedroom, at me and opened the book.

"Yonville-l'Abbaye, ainsi nommé..."

↔

We finished a little earlier than we had expected. In our brief pause, we looked at each other (a tad awkwardly, of course, since we were both hanging out alone in his bedroom, out of all places). Luc was playing with the edges of the cover, which was falling apart.

I broke the silence. "Stop doing that," I said, reaching across the little space in between us and snatching the book away from him. "You can't mistreat the elderly."

"I won't fight with you about that," he muttered under his breath.

I was very tempted to smack him upside the head with the book, but that would only disprove my protests about its age. Therefore, I resorted to sending him a death glare (that should have killed him, but I guess he was more resilient that I thought). "Can you even go one day without making a snarky comment?"

He paused, as if he was actually thinking about it. "Maybe," he said eventually. "If you pay me."

"I'm already paying you, blockhead." I actually hadn't initiated our payment plan yet, so I was still hoping that he had forgotten and decided to take on this book with me as a favor...

"That's right." He snapped. "You haven't paid me with anything yet."

Asshole.

"Yeah, about that..."

"You seriously weren't hoping I'd forget about that." He rolled his eyes at me. "A, I moved my schedule around for you. Do you know how much work that takes? I'm not gonna take nothing from you for my effort."

As much as I didn't want to admit it, that was incredibly thoughtful of him to do for little old me. I smiled a little more nicely. "Thanks. Seriously, though."

"You're a friend. I'm totally chill with helping you out." He shrugged. "So, do you wanna keep reading or do you wanna start homework?"

I snorted. "Seriously? Is that even a question?" I stuffed Bovary back into my backpack, where it (and Emma, who had seriously unrealistic expectations of her world) belonged. "My head hurts. How do you know all this vocab?"

"Remember?" He grabbed his backpack next to his bed and lugged it up by his side. "I finished all the French courses this school offers. It's expected of me." He stopped. "And I do some extra reading on the side."

"Nerd." I took out my pencil case and The Iliad and nudged Luc's shoulder with the pencil case. "Since when do you have extra time to read in high school?"

He shrugged. "When you make the time, Hepburn. You choose your own fate, remember? Naturalism, not Romanticism."

More literary movements. Luc was seriously starting to become a bad influence on me, because I actually knew (or remembered from English courses in the very distant past) what those movements were all about.

"Yeah, I guess that's right."

He met my eyes, his glowing now with enthusiasm and something else that I couldn't understand. "Yeah. You can change what you want about yourself, and maybe, if you feel good about it, you'll change the way others think of you too."

Philosophical jerk, I wanted to tell him, but we both deserved the peace for once.

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Hey guys! I have no time to write a long note, but thank you for reading and whatnot, and I hope you like this!

Anne