Chapter 22 Melodia

I had not been looking forward to going to school the next day. Oh why couldn’t we have an extra Sunday just this once? I sat at the table and nibbled on my toast as Mom tried her best not to be overbearing and smother me. She wasn’t doing that good a job, but she was trying and that was enough for me.

“More eggs?” She offered for the second time while holding up a frying pan. I was about to say no when Arturo marched down the stairs looking like he had just conquered the world. Big steps, confident smirk and way too much shoulder movement as he came down the stairs.

Well, at least it stopped when he saw me.

“Melodia,” he broke out of whatever spell he was under and rushed down the rest of the stairs to sit next to me, “how are you feeling?”

“Like I want to trade in last Sunday for a new one,” I grumbled as Mom placed a plate of eggs in front of Arturo.

“You think maybe you want to stay home today?” I shook my head at his question.

“No, I think I’ll go. This week’s going to be a long one no matter what I do,” I informed him as I got to my feet to brush my teeth and finish getting ready for school.

“Melodia,” I turned around to see Arturo about to dig in. He had a weirdly serious look on his face, “you know how I promised to let you take care of things with those girls from school?”

“Yeah…?” I did not like where this was going.

“Next time something like that happens in front of me, I’m going to interfere,” Oh this was going exactly how I didn’t want it to. “I’m telling you ahead of time so you won’t be surprised when it happens.”

“So you’re breaking your promise,” I pointed out, expecting him to maybe back down. Instead he looked me square in the eyes without flinching.

“No, breaking the promise would have been interfering without warning you,” he stabbed into his eggs while keeping his eyes on me, “I’m not breaking the promise, I’m rescinding it.”

I groaned but one look at Arturo’s face told me this was one fight I wasn’t going to win. I grabbed my bag, cast a quick spell on it to make it only half as heavy, and headed for school.

School in general felt like it was taking way too long. I barely made it through my first few classes when I reached the safety of Ms. Calloway’s history class. All we had to do in this class was sit down and listen to Ms. Calloway talk. I never needed this class as much as I needed it now. Just me, a teacher talking to an entire class, and a single book.

“Okay so I’m going to start this class by apologizing,” Ms. Calloway announced as the bell rang and she closed the door, “at the beginning of the year, I told you that we would not be having any group projects in this class.”

Oh no.

“Well as it turns out, according to state guidelines, you need to complete at least one group project in order to pass this class.”

Oh no no no.

“So I’ve decided that in place of the usual homework, this chapter will have a group project.”

Please, anything but a big group that we pick ourselves with a presentation at the end. Anything but that.

“I’ll be putting pieces of paper in this hat. On them is a letter and the topic of your project. The person with the matching paper will be your partner. Make sure you keep your paper, it’s going to have the instructions for your project on it.”

Okay, so the universe still had some mercy left in it. We all lined up and I looked around the room and tried to figure out who would work best for my partner…

Boy this close to the end of the year and I still barely knew anyone in this room. Still, I knew enough people to know there were at least two bad options for me.

The first was Rashell. I probably didn’t have to explain why she would be a bad idea. The last time I had seen her, she had stood there silently while Anna yelled at me. Not the kind of thing that leads to working well together.

The other bad option was a boy named Ray. He was one of those popular people who got along with everyone. He was also one of the players on the school’s football team…

Normal football not the American kind where people threw the ball while wearing padding instead of kicking it.

The point was that Ray was well liked by people, so why was he a bad idea?

Because he was also considered super cute and a huge chunk of the girls in his classes had crushes on him. I wasn’t one of them, but Anna was. And I’ve already done enough to make her mad at me, so no reason to make it worse.

One by one we went up to the hat and picked out a paper that would decide our fates. Each person would pull out their paper and then go back to their seat.

“Okay when I call out the letter and project, raise your hand,” Ms. Calloway announced as she started reading off from the list. My luck smiled on me as soon as we started. The first pair were Rashell and some boy I felt bad for not remembering the name of. With the first danger out of the way, that just left Ray. But I was pretty sure my odds were still pretty good that I’d avoid getting him too.

“Raise your hands if you have the D paper,” oh that was me. I raised my hand and looked for my project partner. Sitting in the corner of the room was Ray with his arm in the air. Looked like the universe hated me after all.

“Okay so group D is Melodia and Ray. You two are going to be doing the Inca Empire.”

So this is what it felt like to want to die. You would think I would have felt this after fighting a doll, but no, it was this. I could feel a few eyes fall on me as I tried to stare a hole into my desk.

Ms. Calloway went through the rest of the list but I was barely bothering to pay attention at this point. How was I supposed to deal with this? Would Anna come after me even more now? Did she like him enough to get jealous or something and attack me the next time there was a doll fight?

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A sudden clap brought me out of my parade of petrifying possibilities.

“Okay, everyone know your partner?” She looked out over the class and took our silence for a ‘yes’, “okay so I’m going to give you the last five minutes of class to talk to them. Take this time to figure out how, where, and when you’re going to work together.”

I mean, that normally would have been a good idea, but boy was it not right now.

The rest of the class all moved around as the partners met up. I glanced up from my spot to see Ray watching me hesitantly. Our eyes locked and for a little while, neither of us moved for a second. After what felt like an eternity, he finally walked up to my desk.

“So… do you want to meet at the library after school?” I gave him a simple nod before the two of us sort of stood there awkwardly until the bell rang. I got to my feet, grabbed my bookbag, and left as quickly as possible.

I noticed Rashell giving me the stink eye as I went out the door. I spent the rest of the day in dread. I kept expecting the other three girls to corner me or something. I was so nervous, I almost forgot to text my mom I was going to be staying at school a little later today.

By the time I made it to the library after school, my knees were shaking. I found a table near a corner, set my bag down, and almost melted into my chair.

Well at least this place was mostly empty. South Palm Middle kept its library open for about an hour after the final bell rang. The idea was to let some kids who had to wait a long time for their parents work on their homework or projects.

In practice, no one really used it. You had a couple of people who checked out books, and a few who used the library as intended, and that was about it. I sat around for a few minutes before reaching into my bag and taking out my world history book.

I turned to the chapter in question and couldn’t help but smirk at the subject we’d ended up with. Everyone had gotten a Native American civilization, and I had ended up with the one I was pretty sure I was descended from.

Okay so maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. I’d probably have to ask one of my parents or Arturo about it later.

I started reading through the book when I heard the door of the library open again. I glanced over in case it was Ray.

It was. He looked around the library for a second before spotting me and walking over. He took a seat next to me and pulled out his own book. The two of us sat there for a little bit, staring at our books.

“So,” I glanced up as Ray finally broke the silence, “how do you want to split this project?”

Okay, that was a simple question. All I needed was to give a simple answer.

“Half,” I managed to plainly say after a few seconds, “okay?”

“Sure but which half?”

Well this was slightly more complicated. Ray gestured towards the page Ms. Calloway gave us and I pulled out my own copy. It was the list of things that needed to be done for the project. To my utter joy, I didn’t see anything about having to present in front of a crowd. I’d already had to eat one zero this year from that. The last thing I needed was a repeat.

Still, the list on this thing was pretty long. Splitting it between two people would make it way more manageable… but I didn’t see anything I’d hate working on. I also didn’t see anything I’d love to work on either, but that wasn’t as important.

“You pick,” I managed out as Ray took another look at his page.

“Okay then… what about we split them like this…”

He split the tasks around so we both had an equal amount of hard and easy looking topics. I looked over the list and found no issues.

“Okay, you want to start on this now?” He gestured towards the rest of the library. “The sooner we start, the sooner we can finish this. Plus we’re already here, might as well use the books right?”

Well he had a point, and we still had pretty much a full hour in here before it closed up. I nodded as we both got up and headed to the history section. The paper Ms. Calloway gave us said all of the books in the library about the Incas were good for the project. We grabbed a few from the shelves and took them back to the desk.

“Okay, so let’s get this started,” Ray flipped the first book open as I got out some papers and pencils, “which one do you want to start with first?”

Instead of saying anything, I pointed at one of the topics on the paper. He nodded and the two of us got to work. We made some good progress in that one hour. Several of the topics were easier than I’d been expected, and I could have finished it tonight if I wanted.

“Well that went well,” Ray picked some of the books off the table, leaving the ones we had decided to check out. Well, the ones he had decided we would check out and I agreed to. He placed the other books back on a tray labeled ‘please return books here’ as I picked up the rest and took them to the librarian at the front.

“Sorry dear, we have a limit of two books at a time,” the elderly librarian gave me a patronizing smile as I put the four books in front of her.

“Not… just me,” I managed to say right as Ray showed up.

“Oh the other two are mine actually,” he explained as the librarian nodded.

“Oh, that’s okay then,” she started scanning the books and handed them back to us with the due dates printed on the little card in the back. They were set for way after the report was due, so we were in no hurry.

Ray thanked the librarian and I nodded to do the same. We left the library with a few minutes left before it was supposed to close. I placed my bag on my back and looked around for an empty place where I could reapply the spell I used to make it weigh less. Maybe the hallway over there?

“Hey Melodia, can I talk to you about something before you go home?” I stopped as Ray called out to me. He followed me into the hallway and suddenly I was grateful for the lack of anyone else for different reasons. “I guess I wanted to apologize,” my eyes flew open at his words. This was not where I thought this was going to go.

“You see… I’m not blind. I know a lot of the girls have… feelings for me. And that they think I’m… cute and stuff,” oh my god he was actually blushing. For the first time in a long time, I was glad that my face froze up at times like this or I’d be forcing back laughter. “And when I saw how you were acting around me… I thought that maybe you were one of them too.”

I flinched back like I’d been slapped. Why would he think that? All I did was constantly look away from him, act nervous around him, have trouble talking to him…

“Makes sense,” I grumbled out, “but no.”

“Yeah I noticed that after a while,” I tilted my head to the side, “you’re not like everyone says. You’re not some loner, you’re just shy, aren’t you?”

Wait, people talked about me? I knew Anna thought I was the kind of person who thought she was better than everyone else, but did everyone else think that too?

Oh wait, Ray looked like he was waiting for me to say something back.

“Yes,” I told him as his words fully hit me.

Someone knew. Someone at school knew the truth about me.

“Yeah I figured when I noticed you talking more and more the longer we spent on the project,” he smiled and for a second, I understood why so many girls in this school saw him as the perfect boyfriend.

“Someone knows,” I whispered to myself as I felt something weird on my face, “someone knows the truth.”

“Whoa are you okay?” He freaked out for a second before I wiped whatever it was off my face.

“I’m okay just… happy,” I actually managed a smile on that one.

“I guess you would be, must have been pretty lonely having to deal with this on your own,” he chuckled a little nervously before sticking his hand out. “Well, what do you say, friends?”

I stared at the hand in front of me. Was… was this what I thought it was? Did this mean what I thought it meant? Well there was really only one way to find out, wasn’t there? I took his hand with both of mine and shook it up and down.

“Friends,” Ray’s smile went wide, letting me know I made the right choice. I couldn’t help but give him one of my own. We made plans to meet up after school tomorrow at my house to work on the project more before and split off after that. I almost skipped my way home.

I had a friend! A friend I was going to meet up with after school. How long had it been since I’d had that? I couldn’t even remember the last person to come over to our house. Even Arturo didn’t bring any of his friends home.

And here I was, inviting someone over.

Without telling my parents ahead of time.

And making sure he had permission from his own parents.

Oh and it was also a boy my parents didn’t know on top of all that.

I landed my foot at the corner of a sidewalk and froze. This… was going to be complicated.

Maybe I could go to Arturo for help? Yeah, I was sure he’d know what to do. I ran all the way back home and did my usual routine before waiting for him to make it back home. I heard the door open and almost started shaking as he walked into the dining room and…

“Are you okay?” I nervously asked as Arturo almost melted into the chair across from me. Instead of answering me, he pulled out his phone for a second before looking up at me.

“Okay, we have a few minutes before Mom and Dad come home,” he informed me as he got to his feet again. “There’s something I need to tell you and Pickati.”

I got out of my chair and followed him when he went up the stairs.

What the heck happened to him at school today?