With the last two periods of the day done, the first day of school had finally come to a close. Thomas, having never been the most enthusiastic student to walk the halls of Amigos, trudged unwillingly across campus to get to his locker. He was unfortunate enough to have his sixth period next to the area where most of the upperclassman classes were, the furthest point on campus from his locker.
Not long after he had begun to embark on this perilous journey to the other end of the school, he received a playful poke on the shoulder. He turned to see Rosalina, as cheerful as she’s ever been.
“Hey, Thomas. What are you going on this side of the school?”
“I have Mr. Manning for computer science,” he groaned.
“Really? That’s awesome!”
“Awesome? Look how far his class is!”
“That’s because he also teaches twelfth grade English. I’m hoping to get him next year.”
He looked at her in disbelief. Her enthusiasm was almost disgusting. “Why?”
“He was one of my favorite teachers!”
“You have a favorite teacher?” he asked, still incredulous.
“Yeah! You learn a lot from his class.”
“He seemed pretty boring to me.”
“Were you even listening?”
“No.”
Rosalina sighed and stopped as they arrived at her locker. “He can’t teach you if you don’t want to learn. Of course, you’ll be bored if you’re not listening. Give him a chance He’s a really a really cool guy.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Thomas rolled his eyes. “You’re giving us a ride home, right?”
“I have to do something in the journalism room really fast I’ll call you guys when I’m done.”
“Okay. Bye.”
He walked off and Rosalina sighed again. She and Thomas were so different from one another. Rosalina had never been so unenthusiastic about anything before. Although she couldn’t relate, she still hoped that he would find something to be passionate about. Living without a purpose, without promise of a future, was barely a life at all.
Rosalina closed her locked and was surprised to see Nat standing right beside her. “Oh! Hi, Nat.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a crooked smile. “Did I scare you?”
“Maybe,” she said, returning a smile and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek as a greeting. “So how’d the rest of your day go?”
“Horrible. I have Mr. Adams for math.”
She hissed through her teeth. “You’re not going to enjoy that class.”
“I know.”
“Mr. Adams is strict and he’s bad at teaching. On top on all that, he’s just a mean guy overall.”
“Yeah. This isn’t going to be a fun year.”
“It could be worse. Wait until you’re a junior like me. Then you’ll know what it really means to be in a tough class.”
“Really? You seemed so happy earlier. I thought that being an upperclassman would be fun.”
“Fun?” she scoffed, raising an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me? Maybe when you’re a second semester senior. But as a junior, you get the toughest classes and the most work. The pressure’s on, too, what with college in mind and all.”
“College?”
“For everyone else I mean,” she said rather quickly. “That doesn’t make it any easier for the rest of us, though.”
Nat grunted in response as the conversation came to a screeching halt. “Are you ready to go? We’re going straight into rehearsals, you know.”
“I have to do something at the newspaper room, but it’ll be quick.”
“Can I come?”
“Sure.”
As they made their way towards the room, Nat put his arm around Rosalina’s waist and pulled her close. She could feel the eyes drilling into their backs and the whispers echoing though the halls. Despite the attention, Nat didn’t pull away, and Rosalina smiled; he must have been in a better mood than he put on if none of the attention made him feel self-conscious.
“So what do you need to do anyway?”
“I have to meet someone. It won’t be long.” She tried to hide her excitement, but failed miserably.
Rosalina’s eagerness made Nat curious. “A friend of yours?”
“More like my life saver. He- Oh my gosh!”
Her statement soon became lost in an overpowering squeal. In the blink of an eye, Rosalina had leapt into the room and hugged, practically tackled, the boy standing inside.
“Whoa. Easy there, tiger,” the boy said.
“How have you been? Look at you! You changed your hair! You got taller!” A dozen other painfully obvious observations later, she had finally settled down.
Nat stood at the doorway, his mind still trying to register what had happened. Hadn’t Rosalina been beside him five seconds ago?
He had never seen her like this before. She was usually much more composed and quiet, but she seemed like a totally different person while at school. Rosalina was influential, popular, and much more outgoing. It was a big change in Nat’s eyes, and even small things like this meeting took him a while to register.
Slowly, but surely, Nat was able to pull himself together in time to catch a glimpse of this boy that Rosalina was so excited to see. He was dressed in a slightly large, dark grey sweatshirt and somewhat baggy pants. A red hat sat backwards atop his head, covering his closely shaved brown hair. A short, clean-cut beard littered the bottom of his chin, making his seem older than he probably was. A small ring glittered from the piercing in his left eyebrow, giving him a sort of edgy look. His mahogany eyes were slightly angled, which gave his face a subtle, exotic flare.
In short, he was a very good-looking guy.
“Hey, Nat,” Rosalina called, waving him over.
Snapping out of his stupor, he walked over to where they were standing.
“You already know about Nat,” she said to the boy before turning to Nat. “Nat, this is Trenton Grace.”
“Call me Trent. I hate my full name,” he said with a smile, offering to shake Nat’s hand.
“Trent’s also a junior,” Rosalina began to explain. “He’s the one who covers for me on the paper every time we go on tour, and I’ve sort of appointed him as my co-editor this year since I’ll need him to take care of things when I’m busy with the band. I just came here to give him a spare key to the office. I didn’t think I’d get so excited about it.”
“Well,” Trent said, shifting his cap and placing it back on his head as a sort of nervous habit, “we haven’t seen each other in a while. We were both really busy and all.”
Nat began to zone out as the two old friends began to catch up. Trent seemed like a nice guy and he had done a lot for Rosalina, but Nat had a problem with him. Although nothing had actually happened that should have bothered Nat in any way, he felt uncomfortable. Trent was a good-looking guy who happened to be close friends with Rosalina, his girlfriend; Nat had a problem with this. He and Rosalina had been in a committed relationship for quite a long time now, and yet Nat still couldn’t stand her talking to another boy. It was strange to him because Rosalina used to be the one that always got upset when Nat spoke to other girls, even before they had become an official couple. The tables had been turned and there was no escaping it this time.
Nat Wolff was jealous.
