Page 10 of Kicking It with the Point Guard

I shake my head. Normal people might say we’re just two people heading in the same direction, but not my Bumblebee girl.

My… She isn’t my anything.

I hear her flustered voice the minute I enter the cafeteria. She’s found a table not far from the door, and she’s got that ridiculous bumblebee up to her ear.

“Yes, he was in there again. He LAUGHED at me!” She’s waving her free arm wildly, garnering the attention of the people next to her, but she doesn’t seem to care.

Oh, to be that comfortable in public…

I smile to myself and head in the opposite direction. I’ve antagonized her enough for one day. Unintentional as it may be.

I gaze around the lunchroom, searching for my boisterous, overgrown friend; but he must be caught up somewhere.

Guess I’m taking my lunch to-go today.

Violet

Why am I really so upset with my library hottie study buddy? Well, for starters, he intruded in my study room. He also laughed at me when I was struggling with math! I didn’t laugh at him when he was sleeping.

Trying to convince myself that my anger at the hot blond guy who abruptly appeared in my life is well-founded isn’t going as well as I hoped it would. After I told Mia about it over the phone, she told me I should take a step back because it sounded like my anger was stemming from somewhere deeper than a shared study room and a snort when I declared my hatred for math.

Of course, she’s right. I’m mostly mad at Professor Drivels, and while I’m not necessarily mad at Dr. Harrington for assigning me a tutor, I am frustrated because I already know that it won’t work.

But I trust her. She’s steered me right for the past three years. I can’t give up on her now. Not when she’s so sure that this tutoring thing will work.

After we got off the phone, I finally organized my stuff and returned everything to its rightful place in my backpack. It was stupid of me to run out of the study room with everything loose like that, but Library Hottie really throws me off my game.

It made matters worse that he was the one to catch my paper out on the lawn.

Ugh… He’s so tall.

I’m five-six, and I had to crane my neck to see his face. He’s got to be well over six feet tall. If he was a girl and we hugged, my face would be pressed right between his boobs.

I snort as I imagine Library Hottie as a girl. But with his dark brown eyes and that honey-caramel blond hair, I can’t deny that he would be pretty.

A thump pulls me out of my thoughts. A girl I vaguely recognize is sitting across from me with a small smile on her face.

“Hi, I’m Lindsay. But most people call me Linds,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

“Oh… Hi, Lindsay. I’m Violet. It’s nice to meet you.”

I try to keep the confusion out of my voice and just act friendly. I’m not socially awkward or anything, but I’m also not usually approached by people. Especially people who look like her.

She looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Her auburn hair is perfectly straight and has threads of golden blond so fine that it’s difficult to say whether or not they came from a salon.

She lays one of her perfectly manicured hands on top of mine and smiles warmly at me.

“I know this might be strange,” she starts, “but I’ve seen you around campus lately, and I thought to myself, that girl knows fashion, and her hair is so cute! I need to be friends with her.”

I look down at my ripped skinny jeans and my Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, then run my fingers through my hair, which was just destroyed by the wind. Now, I’m generally a pretty trusting person. The glass is always half full, yada yada.

But I know that this girl, Linds, and I do not walk on the same streets. Something is fishy here, but I’ll play along for now.

“Oh, really? Well, I was planning to go shopping this weekend if you would like to come!”

A complete lie.

A look of disgust flashes across her face, but she quickly recovers with what I now know to be a fake smile.

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