To Lie and To Love

Chapter Three

Before I knew it, I heard Miss Searls bring the lesson to an end.

“… that’ll be all for today’s lesson, class. Do not forget to read the pages I’ve assigned to you because you’ll be writing reports on them this Friday.”

I was jerked back to reality with a start as the bell rang for recess and the class simultaneously broke into a cacophony of grumbles and complaints.

“Now, now”, Miss Searls continued, unfazed by the protests. “If you want to make it to college next year you have to start taking lessons seriously and that includes a dedicated mindset to doing assignments.”

I looked around confused before finally realizing, much to my surprise, that I had slept through the entire history class.

And almost immediately after this revelation, Miss Searls called out to me:

“Nova, I would like to meet you before you go out for break”.

Trust her not to miss a thing during her classes, Miss Searls.

Knowing fully well the reason for which my presence was needed, I gestured to Yvonne and Hunter, whom I was supposed to be heading to the cafeteria with as usual.

“Know why she’s calling you though?”, Yvonne asked, a brow raised, supplementing her query.

“Probably because she was caught slacking off again”, Tasha sneered, snapping her chewing gum noisily.

“Just shut up, Tasha!”, I said to her frostily before turning to Yvonne again. “Anyways, I don’t know how long she’s going to take and this is Miss Searls we are talking about here. So, you guys go on ahead. I’ll catch you later.”, I said with a slight wave.

Hunter sniggered gleefully and threw another note in my direction as he exited the class with the others. Without bothering to even read its contents, I quickly stuffed it under my desk.

At this point, the class was almost empty with only a handful of students milling about.

As I made my way to the front of the class, I crashed into someone really hard.

I drew in a sharp breath as I looked up and locked eyes with a very tall, good-looking guy; his height almost dwarfing me in the extreme. His name? Levi, I recalled, as time seemed to come to a standstill right before my eyes.

Levi West; Captain of the school’s basketball team and a star player in the football team as well.

We had quite a number of classes together and, secretly, I had been crushing on him for a long while now. A lot, I would add, if I had to admit it. The thing was, he was very popular and it wasn’t just his Kim Taehyung semblance either. The word was that he was from a very wealthy house too. Plus, he had captured the heart of every girl in Crestwood Valley High School, as a matter of fact, without even breaking a sweat. As if that wasn’t unpromising enough, he was currently dating this other popular girl called Seraphina. Rumor has it, she was his third after two earlier tragic break-ups in less than a month. Tragic on the part of those previous girlfriends, that is.

Clearly, I never had a rat’s chance with this guy from the beginning, not to talk about the nerd that I was.

To save myself trouble, I just had him all to myself in my many different self-directed fantasies. And heaven knows the number of other girls who secretly did that too.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry”. I cringed inwardly at the way my voice turned into that of a helpless squeal all of a sudden. Seeing that he didn’t respond to my apology, which I doubt he heard anyway, I stooped over to pick up the books that had dropped from his hands when we collided.

Smiling apologetically, I said again, ‘I’m sorry”, before I continued on to Miss Searls at the front of the class. He didn’t say anything at all as I walked away and, though I couldn’t get myself to turn around and look at him, I knew without a shadow of doubt that he was still staring at me with that confused look of his.

I was still experiencing the remnants of the effect of the tiny million butterflies in my stomach long after I reached Miss Searls’ table. Taking a deep breath, I said:

“Miss Searls? You wanted to see me...?”