Page 16 of The Confidant
I quickly added a section to the draft for Wednesday’s issue and typed in the words, “The Confidantdoesn’t have time for your questions? Just ask Eliza, theofficialadvice column of Eden Falls Academy. New columns every Wednesday morning! Just email: [email protected].”
Once I had saved it, I shoved my things into my backpack and rushed to the common room so I could watch a funny show with my favorite person in the whole world.
6
HUNTER
“Okay,wolf pack. It’s time to hear you howl!” The cheerleaders called from the edge of the basketball court on Tuesday night.
The gym was packed with students and parents who had come to cheer on the girls’ basketball team. We were playing against our rivals—the Sherman High School Lions—which was the public high school in Eden Falls. And from what I’d heard about each teams’ rankings in our region games so far, it was sure to be an exciting game. The first five minutes of the first quarter had already proven that to be true, with the offense and defense for each team seeming to be evenly matched. I had my AP Chemistry textbook open on my lap with the intent to work on the assignment that was due tomorrow, but if things stayed this intense for the rest of the game, I might not make any progress on it.
Doing my homework in the middle of the crowded bleachers with students standing all around wasn’t ideal, but since Scarlett and I always tried to make it to each other’s home games and I had my sports column to write, it was the only way to do it sometimes.
“Hey, is this seat taken?” I heard a soft, female voice ask above the noise of the crowd.
I looked up. Addison was standing on the stairs beside me, pointing at the empty seat between my friend Mack and me.
I looked down at the spot, not sure what to say since it wasn’t really an empty seat—more like a foot of space Mack and I had left between us so we weren’t all up in each other’s business. But saying no would make things awkward with our future date, and it was possible that someone as petite as Addison could squeeze in, so I said, “Uh, no, it’s not taken yet.”
“Can I sit there?” she asked.
“Sure…”
I was about to scoot closer to Mack, since it would be easier for her to just sit on the end, but she started stepping over my backpack to get to the spot, so I swiveled my legs to the side instead to let her in.
“I’m so glad I saw Mack and Carter’s tall heads in the crowd,” she said as she sat down beside me, sounding slightly breathless. “I didn’t realize how big of a deal the game against Sherman High was, or I would have gotten here earlier.”
“It’s one of the biggest games of the year,” I said, looking up at the backs and heads of the students towering around us since everyone else was standing while we sat. Once I finished my assignment, I planned to stand up with everyone else so it shouldn’t be such a tight fit the whole time.
And what a tight fit it was. Even though I had half of a butt cheek hanging off the end of the bleachers to make room, Addison’s hips and thighs were still pressed right against mine.
I hadn’t sat this close to a girl in public since…well…probably since the last subway ride Scarlett and I had before breaking up last April. Even after our flirtatious moment in the library last night, Scarlett and I had still kept a few inches of space between us while we’d watchedThe Officefrom the large leather couch in the common room.
Would those few inches of space have been there if Scarlett wasn’t paranoid that her dad had paid one of our classmates to keep an eye on us and report our every move back to him?
I liked to think that she would have cuddled up to me if that wasn’t the case.
But just like always, she had hugged her end of the couch. So I tried to seem like I was completely fine with staying on my cushion as we laughed at the pranks the show’s character Jim played on his quirky co-worker Dwight.
Sure, we could avoid the whole worry of classmates spying on our every move by watching the show in her dorm room like we had last year. But since we needed to “avoid the appearance of breaking her dad’s rules,” we now had our movie nights in the crowded common room.
“Working on your chemistry assignment?” Addison asked, glancing at my textbook.
“Yep,” I said. “I have basketball practice in the afternoons, so I sometimes have to do my homework during the games.”
“Want any help?” she offered. “Evan and I just finished our assignments before coming down to the game.”
“Sure. That would actually be great.”
I tilted my tablet toward her so she could see that I’d already completed the first thirteen questions in the online document.
Addison’s blue eyes scanned the last two questions. “Okay, so this one was pretty simple. You just need to calculate the mass of iron, in grams, that reacted to generate the amount of heat calculated in the question above, and you should be good.”
I nodded, looking at the table and formulas we’d been given. While I had a pretty logical brain, for some reason, chemistry just didn’t come as easily to me as it did to some of my other classmates. In fact, the only reason I signed up for AP Chemistry was because Scarlett was taking it and I wanted to have another class with her this year.
Oh, the stupid things we sometimes do to spend time with the people we love.
I started working on the problem, and with just a little more input from Addison, who was apparently a chemistry whiz, I was able to finish the assignment before the first quarter ended.
