It was during first period that I realized that my extracurricular activities, which annoyed me to no end while making me look better on paper, were not sufficient to make me look like an ideal college applicant.

Really, it was pretty sad—it was already bad enough to start the day off with chem class with Bredbenner. When the thought struck me, I stopped writing (a pretty bad idea since the teacher tended to rattle off information so quickly that if I missed even five seconds, it would guarantee five incorrect answers on the next assessment). That was not good. That was so not good, especially this late into the game.

Olivia sent me a puzzled look, pushing her notebook over to me so I could copy. I came back to my senses and began to write down everything she had written down as well as everything new that Bredbenner was saying (which was harder than it sounded). Gracious.

By the looks of this lesson, the next chemistry test was going to be crazy hard.

Once we were half-way through the lesson (I was stuck in a phase where I wasn't sure whether I wanted to fall asleep or die of despair), I relaxed since I was finally all caught up. I glanced to my side. Olivia was still giving me that expression that said, "Is there something going on with you?"

"I just had a revelation," I whispered to her out of the corner of my mouth.

"Oh?" Her eyebrows were lifted so high that they were threatening to disappear into her bangs.

I rolled my eyes at her even though I just really wanted to have a deep thinking session about the futility of human effort (kind of...I was exaggerating there). "It concerns my future."

"Huh." Olivia turned back to her notes. "That's, like, totally not general at all."

"Okay, I just realized that I might have just ruined my chances of getting to any college by not participating in any sports," I said, all in a single breath while watching Bredbenner carefully. He was quite a vigilante these days. And the last thing I wanted to do was to infuriate a mad scientist vigilante (now that would really blow my chances of doing anything with my life).

Olivia tried very hard to hide a smile, but she didn't succeed. At all. "You're overreacting, A." She avoided my eyes by writing down a formula from the board.

I followed her lead, but I still pursued the subject. "Seriously, Livy. I mean, you and Lila probably won't understand at all."

"And why is that?" Olivia picked up a highlighter from her pencil case and highlighted a vocab term. She was really reminding me of Lila at this point (since when did she own a neon green highlighter?).

Ugh. She really didn't get it. "Lila does travel soccer outside of school, and that totally counts. You do tennis, and you're great at it. And, like, I don't even know if I have to mention this, but Luc does three sports. Three sports. And he's going to become rugby captain next year, if I'm not wrong."

Her expression lit up (I wasn't really sure if it was because of the Luc mention or the compliment I had paid her). She took a second to compose herself again, which was smart, before responding. "Audrey, but you do—"

"I do basically all the clubs that you do."

There was a pause on her end.

See, she finally understood what I was going through.

"Um," she started slowly, "you're, uh, pretty good at writing. And French. And—"

I scoffed. "Did you just say that I was good at French? Dude, I'm in French 3 Honors while there are those people who started it in middle school, and they're, like, in French 5 now. And then you have to look at Luc, who—"

"Can you stop talking about Luc?" Olivia looked too amused as she shook her head, writing down a couple of points.

Now she was seriously reminding me of myself whenever I teased her about Luc. Maybe that wasn't a good thing. Yeah, that definitely wasn't a good thing.

I had to wait a couple seconds before being able to respond since Bredbenner had stopped talking to survey the class and make sure that everyone was caught up. Once he picked up the subject again, I whispered back furiously to Olivia, "Seriously! I'm inadequate compared to y'all."

"Uh uh," Olivia muttered back to me. "You're underestimating yourself. Now we'll stop talking about this, and I'll let Lila talk some sense into you in third period."

Rolling my eyes, I took back to my notes and wrote down some of the explanations that Bredbenner was giving about the Ideal Gas Law. After all, I knew today was going to be hell.

↔

I wasn't too far off in my predictions about my day. Olivia had actually bothered to walk me to pre-calc (which was about three hallways away from where her class, English Lit, was) and pulled Lila aside, whispering something into her ear. And as I waited inside the classroom for Lila to join me, I knew, with a sinking feeling in my chest and an eye roll, that I was up for a wonderful lecture today from both the teacher and her.

As soon as we sat down in our desks, Lila took my arm and said seriously, "Hi, Audrey."

I wanted to die of humiliation and laughter at the same time, but that wasn't possible since the teacher was explaining our homework assignment due in two days.

"Dude, I'm not dying," I muttered out of the side of my mouth to her.

As everyone in the class took out the homework from last week, Lila nodded at me with an encouraging expression on her face, like I was having a mid-life crisis and I needed some moral support to make a crucial decision. "Uh huh, I totally get it," she whispered back. "It's totally cool."

I rolled my eyes and decided to ignore her as I set my pencil case squarely in between us. Lila continued to say something that I didn't bother to listen to. It was quite fun to actually try to listen to the teacher right now (acting like I was really interested in what the hell pre-calc was supposed to teach me in life was very draining, I found out after a while), especially when the act was compared with paying attention to Lila's sympathy antics.

Lila gave up after she got caught by the teacher trying to poke me in the arm with my own pencil (which she had stolen from me a couple moments ago). I had peace for about ten minutes before the teacher started to actually lecture (we were checking our homework before), which was when Lila stole my pencil from me.

"Hey!" I protested, stealing it back from her. She was so annoying sometimes.

With a smirk on her face, she only took the pencil from me (yet again) and tapped my head with it. "Little one, you must learn to relax."

Under my breath, I grumbled, "I'm only five months younger than you."

Lila's expression cleared up, and for once, she was sober (in the most appropriate way). "A, you are totally going to make it to whatever college you want to attend. You have plenty of extracurricular activities that'll make you look good. I mean—"

I was already shaking my head. "You don't have to dissuade me, you know. I'm perfectly aware of everything. I really should have taken track in freshman year; maybe that would make me look a little athletic...Mmh, I'm not so sure about that, actually—"

"You're so stupid," Lila snickered. "I mean, you don't even see what you're worth."

You're just trying to make me feel better about myself, I wanted to say, but I thought that would just make her try to convince me even more, which would not be fun. So I kept my mouth shut.

"First of all, you're going to a private prep school. The teacher recommendations will probably be raving all about you. And you look good too. And the Ivies like rich people. And yeah. And you're really smart too—don't let Luc tell you otherwise 'cause he's an idiot. And—"

I cleared my throat. "You're rambling."

Lila shrugged. "Well, if Olivia and I can't convince you, I guess I'll let you figure everything out yourself. Go ahead; do whatever you want."

And to my immense relief, she shut up about the matter for the rest of the class. I never appreciated pre-calc so much before today.

↔

So awkwardly, I waited outside the gym office once the last bell of the day rang. I was really drained from all the learning I had done today (history had taken a toll especially since I realized that I was really bad at remembering dates that had no particular pattern to them). Right now, I was just really hoping that someone was actually in the office so I wouldn't look stupid if people caught me waiting for nobody.

Someone from behind me cleared his throat.

I turned around.

Oh dear. Of course he had to catch me now.

"Hey, Luc," I said slowly as I met his eyes. "What's, uh, up?"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "What are you doing here?"

Ouch. Yeah, I knew I was pretty much the opposite of an athlete, but that actually hurt a little. Or maybe a little more than that, especially when it came to Mr. Athlete Extraordinaire. I shrugged it off mentally. That was exactly why I needed to take up a sport now. The colleges definitely didn't need to know that I was this lame.

"I wanted to see if I could make myself look more athletic," I answered quickly. "Um, I mean—"

Luc's lips twitched. "Really? You, Audrey?"

Yeah.

"Stop making fun of me," I whined. "Olivia and Lila were trying to do that to me all day."

"Nah—the way I look at it, they've been trying to stop you from going on with this plan the entire day." Luc hitched his rugby bag over his shoulder. He ran a hand through his messy hair; he'd obviously just gotten out of gym class (as if he needed the exercise). His eyes sparkled with amusement as he looked at me. "It's not a very smart idea, A. It's a little too late to start a new sport successfully."

Now that I thought about it, my plan didn't sound smart anymore. If only Lila and Olivia had told me that straight out so that I didn't look so stupid all this time...

I threw up my hands dramatically. "You too? It stings, Lucien."

"Don't call me that." Luc's eyes narrowed. "It makes me sound French."

I shrugged and walked up right next to him quickly. "Your dad's French though, right?"

Luc glanced down sideways at me quizzically and started walking up the hallway. I followed him. "His stepdad was French. So my step-grandpa, if that makes any sense."

"Damn, I was thinking you were French all this time. So you were just a nerd who decided to study French instead of going outside and shit over the summer." I elbowed him jokingly and smirked up at him.

Luc shook his bangs from over his eyes (he really needed a haircut; I'd been telling him that for the past few weeks over our tutoring sessions and he had brushed me off with a smirk every time). "If you put it that way..." He paused. "Wait, so I actually dissuaded you from trying to take up a sport?"

"I guess so." And then, I added quickly, "Don't let that inflate your ego too much."

He bumped me with his shoulder (which was a considerable four inches higher than mine, so basically, he was bumping my neck, which didn't feel too great). "I know, A. You're so much better than I am, and I should just shut up."

That was pretty funny since I was thinking the exact opposite of that. "Huh."

"Hey, don't let it get to you. You've just got to be confident in whatever skills you have." We were approaching the school lobby, and Luc was slowing down. "That's what'll get you to whatever college you wanna go to."

"Hm, yeah." I noticed him slowing down, and I lifted an eyebrow at him. "You've got somewhere to be?"

Luc glanced down at his watch and back up to my eyes. His eyes were really pretty and golden right now (the way I noticed they always were when he was feeling content), and I just wanted to stand there, staring awkwardly. That wouldn't be great. I would be worse than Olivia then.

Wait. Since when did I compare myself to Olivia in terms of my feelings for Luc? I quickly relocated my eyes to the ground.

Oh dear. I needed to sort up some emotions when I could finally get home. And that better be soon, because my head was starting to hurt. And that wasn't pleasant.

"...and I've got practice till six tomorrow. So how about Thursday?"

I looked up quickly into his eyes again. He lifted an eyebrow at me. "Did you hear any of that?"

We were standing in the school lobby with its myriad of marble columns now. Act normal, act normal. "I was a little distracted," I said as coolly as I could. Inside, my heartbeat was racing and my palms were sweating. I wiped my hands on my skirt as inconspicuously as I could.

"I have practice today; I'll have to go now. Tomorrow, I have soccer practice till six, so how about Thursday for our next session?" Luc repeated slowly.

I elbowed him. "Don't be a smartass." It felt good to say that out loud. Luc rolled his eyes at me. "That sounds good," I continued. "See you then?"

"Yeah, see you tomorrow." Luc headed off to his group of friends (I smiled when I recognized Eli in the group).

I couldn't help feeling a little abandoned as I stood there alone. But then again, I needed to do some introspection, and of course, that needed to be alone.

I straightened my skirt and headed out to the parking lot toward my car.

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So hey guys! So I kind of wrote half this chapter in half an hour and the other half during play practice, so it might not completely make sense...anyways...

Audrey's finally making some connections concerning her emotions! Fun, right? Emotions are always messy, as Audrey would say (something I would say as well). And Luc's being the cute butt as usual. How do you feel about Olivia and Lila? They're definitely fun people. Any other thoughts? Comment below!

This message is, like, following almost exactly the format I use for every A/N for each chapter, so...love y'all, and thank you for everything!

Anne (or Lia, as some would call me)