“Does this happen every year?” I heard Delcan ask, leaning on my arm occasionally while Haven helped me write down flash cards. I would laminate them after school today, then I would put them with the rest of my notes from last year. Haven knew about my behavior during this time already, the reason why she didn’t complain when I asked for her help. Delcan, on the other hand, probably considered breaking up with me.
Haven looked up from writing down calculus problems, and she smiled. “To be honest,” she told me. “Ezra probably won’t even glance at you for quite a few days. And then...it’s over, and all he wants to do is cuddle.”652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOPNl5vkZcg
I shrugged. “Grades are important.”652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡykOJ4aTU5B
“Grades aren’t who you are,” Delcan responded, hitting my arm again. I didn’t look at him, but I knew he was annoyed. “What does it matter if you can’t get into a good college? It doesn’t mean you’re a failure.”
For all I know, no college equals no future. “Maybe for some people, yeah,” I told him as I took a flashcard from Haven. “But not me.”
I felt him pull away from my arm, and the soft sound his sweatshirt made when he crossed his arms. “I hope that wasn’t personal,” he declared. I felt a grin tug at the corners of my mouth, but I glanced down at my notes and it went away.
“No, it’s not,” I told him.
Haven was examining her handwriting on the start of vocabulary words we would need to know for English. Her hair, which continued to get lighter, had fallen over her shoulders as she watched the flashcard in curiosity. “Do you truly need these, Ez?” she asked me. “Your vocabulary is stupendous.”
“Write them down,” I said. When she blinked, I realized how direct my voice had sounded. Delcan had gotten out of his slump, and now he was back to slightly touching my arm. “Please,” I added. She gave me an annoyed smile before proceeding to write down terms. Delcan was still touching my arm, although I didn’t really understand why. It was comforting, but there was no point in doing it.
After moments of silence, Delcan cleared his throat. “So...this for the entire week?” he asked. Haven smiled.
“Pretty much.”652Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp1uxsDVb1F
He sighed dramatically, and I heard his phone go off. A text message. I would’ve turned and made some jokes about his friends, but it didn’t seem worth the energy. Instead, I took the stack of periodic table notes from Haven’s left side and flipped through them.
Haven had always had better handwriting than I did, and she also had the weirdest ways of remembering things. When we were still together, she’d explain how she was able to remember 100 terms last year for our A.P. history class. She would use the names of television characters (mainly childish cartoons) to remember certain events, which I found strange. I had just written down the events and studied them to the best of my abilities.
She had received a perfect score, and I had missed one.
“Do we have to be so...serious?” Delcan asked. He shifted in his seat, and my eyes almost drifted away from the notes in front of me. “Ezra, I’m positive you’ll get into the best ivy league school in the world, and Haven...maybe, yeah. But it’s pointless to be so worked up about something. There are still two more years until we graduate.”
This time, I turned to look at him. Delcan was wearing the same gray sweatshirt from our date, which still made him look amazing. He had his arms crossed, and his eyes were almost ice blue. His jaw was tight when he looked at me, and his cheeks had a hue of rose-red on them. Even if he is angry, it’s not really my fault. “We all have different goals, Delcan,” I told him. He opened his mouth to respond, but I kept on speaking. “And two years isn’t a lot of time for some of us.”
He shook his head. “Nobody expects you to be perfect,” he said.
Clearly, that’s true. I watched Delcan as he tilted his head to the side, trying to see Haven as she wrote down more notes. I watched him, wishing that for once, I could know what it’s like to be free like he is. If I could even explain the feeling, it was like being in those dystopian worlds. You know you’re trapped, but it doesn’t feel like anything is dangerous about it. That is, until, a dash of color falls into your pond of gray, and now everything had double layers. Delcan’s like that dash of color, but he’s an entire ocean of differences. For once, it’d be amazing to feel so...reckless.
God, I want to kiss him.
I was snapped back into reality by Haven clearing her throat. She was watching me with her natural eyebrows raised as if I’d suddenly been caught in a lie. I shook off my emotions and focused on my studying again.
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