Page 9 of Finding Her
Seriously. The guy had taken one glance at it and gone, “Oh yeah, I did notice, but…” He shrugged and said, “Oh well. Anyway, we better go.”
I was convinced he was doing it to punish me, because there was no reason he should have wanted me here. Punishing me for what, I wasn’t sure. I guess he was just mad that his star player had somehow managed to fail a class. But it wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose and I hadn’t gotten any warnings last year telling me there was anything wrong, so how was I supposed to know this was going to happen?
I guess that was enough of an answer for Poppy because she shrugged and dropped onto the ground to do the first part of the circuit. I followed suit, hoping that would be the end of us having a conversation at all. But then, once my guard was down as I started doing push-ups, she started talking again. And I swear she didn’t shut up for the whole class.
By the end of the hour, I was convinced girls’ gym classes were harder than boys’ ones. Heck, that gym class was harder than most of my hockey practices. Or was I really just that unfit after my summer off?
“Everyone meet in the hall in ten minutes!” Mrs. Dixon called as we all filtered out. “I’ll be assigning your lockers for the year before you go to your next class.”
I groaned as I pushed my way into the locker room, thankfully alone as the only boy in the class, and flopped downon one of the wooden benches inside. I hadn’t even thought about how being in this class would affect my locker assignment for the year—specifically that everyone in my first period class would have lockers in the same hall, which meant I would have a locker between thirty freshman girls.
Well, thirty freshmen and one junior girl who seemed obsessed with learning so much about me that I thought she might be trying to steal my identity.
What’s your full name? Where are you from? What dorm do you live in? How long have you gone to Hartwell? What colleges are you applying to?
She might as well have asked for my bank account number and mother’s maiden name.
I grabbed my phone to text the boys about it, but when I turned it on, the lock screen was filled with texts from the one person I did not want messages from.
Claire
Miss you baby xx
Why do you keep ignoring me?
We should meet up soon
My parents asked about you today and I didn’t know what to tell them
Call me later okay?
I just swiped all the messages away. I’d respond later—a while later, so she didn’t get any ideas—and tell her I’d see her the next time our families met up. For some reason, my dad and her parents were obsessed with the idea that we would fall in love one day. Of course, we couldn’t fall in love yet, since neither of us were supposed to date in high school, but telling two teens that then talking about how we were going to get married oneday was some seriously mixed messaging. The issue was one of us was much more interested than the other.
I’d tried to let her down easy a few times, but none of them seemed to stick. And since I couldn’t outright reject her without incurring the wrath of my father, I had to deal with texts like these.
I chucked my phone back into my bag, deciding I could text the boys later, then forced myself to stand and head for the showers.
Exactly eight minutes later, I was walking into the hall, dressed in my school uniform with my bag slung over my shoulder. Even though I was right on the time Mrs. Dixon had said, I was only the second one out here.
The first one, of course, being Poppy.
I pivoted on my heel, ready to shamelessly hide in the locker room with my ear by the door until I heard more girls come out, but just as my palm hit the swinging door, her voice called out.
“Hey, Bear!”
I pressed my lips together and let out a sigh of annoyance.So close. If she was anyone else, I’d probably pretend I didn’t hear her and go into the locker room anyway, but I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t follow me inside. The hallway was the lesser of two evils in this case.
I dropped my hand and turned to face her properly. She was dressed in her uniform too and while I was happy she was no longer wearing the shortest shorts known to mankind, seeing her in her uniform wasn’t much better. I kept my eyes high instead, focusing on her brown eyes that crinkled as she smiled at me.
“Is it me or was that gym class unreasonably hard?” Poppy asked. She leaned against the wall and crossed one foot over the other. “I thought I was going to die halfway through.”
I let out a long breath and looked around the hallway to avoid having to keep staring at her. I could have been nice and made small talk—I’d found it ridiculously hard too, after all—but I didn’t want her to think I was interested in being friends.
“I can’t wait to be done with gym class,” Poppy sighed. She pulled a pack of gum out of one of the thousands of pockets on her backpack and popped out a piece. “I know most people are done their gym credits by sophomore year but I’ve moved so many times that my classes are all a mess. Honestly, I’m terrified I’m going to get to the end of senior year and they’re going to tell me I don’t have any of the right classes. Gum?”
I blinked and glanced at her again as I realized the last part was directed at me. I figured she was one of those people who mostly spoke just to hear her own voice and didn’t need the other person in the conversation to respond, but now, she was looking at me expectantly with the pack of gum held out toward me. I jerked my head just enough for her to take a no. I thought she might look disappointed by the rejection but she just stuck the pack back in her bag with a shrug, still smiling. Did this girl ever stop smiling? She claimed the gym class was hard for her too, but I swear the smile never wavered from her face the whole time we were in there. That was probably why Mrs. Dixon kept pushing us harder and harder—if she’d been using Poppy as a gauge for how easy the class was, the smile on her face would have made her think she was going too easy on us.
Poppy kept chattering on as more girls came spilling out of the locker room but I mostly tuned her out, only reacting when she asked me direct questions. She seemed strangely intent on getting to know me as she asked question after question but I never gave her verbal answers. I was hoping that would get her to slow down and give me some time to hear my own thoughts but it was like the more that I ignored her, the more she wanted to speak to me.
