Page 36 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

A girl sitting next to him cupped her hands around her mouth. “Yeah! Do you draw nerdy comic books too?”

I sneered at them both, and when they caught my gaze, they both slunk further down in their desks. Miss Piotte attempted to quiet them, but it was too late, the damage had been done.

“What?” Tristan said, pulling attention back to himself. “No. I didn’t draw this. My name’s just down there because I worked on the presentation. I just memorized what Hannah told me to say. I need that grade for football, you know. How else are we gonnasmackSouthwest next week?”

A few kids cheered and I watched as the light faded from Tristan’s eyes. Arden sighed behind me and whispered, “Jeez.”

Next to Tristan, Hannah nodded. “Yeah. We just got the pictures off the internet. I thought this one looked nice and easy to attach the info-nodes to.”

Miss Piotte frowned. “Oh. Well compliments to the true artist. It’s quite the masterpiece.”

It left a sick taste in my mouth to watch Tristan deteriorate after that. All the pictures that came up after that which were clearly drawn by him, he started to mock and laugh at them, with Hannah’s support as she continued to posit that they’d just ransacked some free-to-use image site. His speech got less intelligent as well, and he started to trip and stumble over all of the information, clearly on purpose.

He was lowering himself to meet the standards of the idiots in the back of the classroom.

Miss Piotte seemed to check out, and eventually Hannah and Tristan reached the end of their presentation. They returned to their desks with Tristan slinking defeated into his seat, and it just made me angry. What was the point? If it made him feel so shitty, he shouldn’t do it. Why deny such beautiful artistry? Why pretend to be less intelligent than he really was? Those weren’t bad things. He should be embracing them.

“Alright everyone. I’ll be grading the assignments over the weekend and your grades on them will be on the portal by next Monday, but overall I’m pleased with your collective performances. This is shaping up to be a spectacular year.” The bell rang and she waved her hand. “Go on, have a good rest of your day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You have a study period next, right Aria?” Arden asked.

I looked over my shoulder as I picked up my stuff and prepared to head out. “Yeah.”

“I’m gonna ask if I can join you. Can you help me with this calc? I’m struggling.”

I laughed at her. How an aspiring inventor struggled with math, I had no idea, but I’d seen her tinker and she really just threw things together until they started to work. She switched math with just forcing it.

I couldn’t entirely blame her for that.

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I have math homework to work on too, so we can get it done together.”

Arden threw her bag over her shoulder and sifted into the students leaving the classroom, and I fell in line behind her to follow her out. As I was passing Tristan’s desk, I looked down. He was so dejected from how the presentation had gone that he wasn’t even attempting to move. It broke my heart and made me angry.

I simply didn’t understand.

“You know.” I stopped and turned around to look at Tristan. He looked up at me, briefly lighting up at the fact that I was talking to him, but then noticed how frustrated I looked and deflated. “I’m sad for you. I don’t get how you can just stand up there and be ashamed of who you are.”

“I’m not as brave as you, Aria,” Tristan replied. “You have no idea what the fear of being ridiculed is like.”

I scoffed. “Ihave no idea?” I yelped. “Please, tell me, the fat, unpopular, debate dork more about the fear of being ridiculed. That’s something I’ve never experienced before.”

“Are you hoping to gain something here?” I looked up and Hannah was standing defensively over Tristan’s back. “What are you trying to do? Just leave us alone.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I snapped at Hannah. “You’re supposed to be his friend. I could see in your face that you knew those drawings were his and the stuff he was saying was his natural intelligence. If you really cared about him, you wouldn’t let him shove his real self down like that.”

Hannah frowned. “Don’t lecture me about stuff you don’t understand.”

“Aria, let’s just go.” Arden appeared next to me and put her hand on my back. “This conversation isn’t going to lead anywhere.” She glared at Hannah. “Trust me, I know.”

Hannah looked back at Arden as though she’d stabbed her in the face, but didn’t say anything. Tristan was staring at me sadly, but I struggled to find sympathy. It was clear that I’d developed a crush on him, but even if my standards didn’t make me leave behind someone who would publicly make fun of me, they definitely wouldn’t let me screw around with someone who was embarrassed of themselves. I’d spent too much time learning to love myself to deal with that.

“Bye Tristan,” I said. “I hope you figure things out.”

With that said, and my heart breaking more, Arden and I left.

14

Tristan

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