Page 84 of Withered

Tyler seems to know; he crosses his hands and smirks at me. Ava and Emily stop talking and stare at me.

“Uhm, I came to school with him today.”

“What?” Kristy, Ava, and Emily shout at the same time.

Ava and Emily start squealing, and Kristy looks around the parking lot and says, “Oh my gosh. Your Mercedes isn’t here. How did I miss that?”

Tyler speaks, “There he is.”

I turn and see Jake walking toward us. Ava and Emily are still squealing.What the hell?

“Calm down, you two. You’re acting weird,” I tell them.

Emily comes to a halt as Ava rolls her eyes. Kristy begins to laugh at them, and Tyler simply shakes his head in amusement.

Jake joins us, and Tyler goes, “Man, you’re late.”

Jake sighs. “That chemistry dude won’t let me go. He assigned me this task.”

Tyler breaks into hysterics, and Jake glares at him. “Fuck you, man.”

I hit Jake’s shoulder. “Be nice. That’s your friend.”

He touches the spot where I smacked him, pretending to be hurt. “Yes, ma’am.”

Kristy is all smiles, but Ava and Emily start squealing again.

“C’mon, stop it, you guys.” I glare at my friends.

We wave goodbye and leave. Jake opens the door for me like he did in the morning and I get in. He gets into the driver’s seat, and off we go.

That same English rock music is playing in the comfortable silence.

Jake turns off the engine when we get to my house and stares at me.

“Come to my house in an hour. We need to work on our biology report.”

“Nice idea. Thanks for the ride,” I say, and then get out.

Mrs. Rivera asked each team to submit a report on each experiment we perform. We are already done with two experiments and have yet to begin our report.

I freshen up and change into comfy clothes. I quickly grab something to eat while calling Kristy, who picks up after a few rings.

“Finally, I was waiting for your call,” Kristy says.

“I knew you’d do it. So, what exactly do you want to know? Let me take a guess… everything?”

“Hell yes!” Kristy screams.

I tell her everything, as it’s pointless to hide anything from her. I told her how Jake left, how I found him, how I helped him, our physical intimacy, and how he spent the night at my house.

“You slept with him? Jake Henderson?” Kristy yells so loudly that I had to remove my phone from my ear.

“I did not. Well, I did. Wait, what?” I say, but I confuse myself.

“Listen, I slept in the same bed with him. But we did nothing,” I explain.

“You do realize we’re talking about Jake Henderson, right?” Kristy asks.

---