[10] The Tortoise And The... Porcupine?

When I return to the table I pick at my food, barely eating anything. My stomach is practically growling as loud as my dog does by the time everyone goes to dump their trays. I'm almost drooling just thinking about the contents of my packed lunch.

As we walk toward the trash cans, Jack bumps into my shoulder and leans over my tray to inspect it commenting, "You barely ate anything."

I just shrug and reply, "Had a big breakfast," hoping that will be a satisfying enough answer for Jack.

He bumps into me again, "What?"

"I had a big breakfast," I repeat, louder this time.

I didn't.

Jack bringing it up makes me feel even worse about wasting food and lying about the reason why. I honestly do hate to throw away perfectly good food, but I didn't want to force myself to eat this stuff and then throw up or something. That would be embarrassing. Lord knows I've already had enough humiliating moments today.

Jack keeps his shoulder in contact with mine for a second longer than seems necessary. I dump my tray and as I turn to get away from the shameful situation he grabs onto my forearm and pulls me toward him.

Although he's only about 6'1, the couple inch difference between our heights makes me feel like a small child being scolded by a big grown up.

He leans in close, his breath tickling my ear. Goosebumps rise all over my neck and spread down my body to my arms, where Jack has a firm grip on me.

"Not so fast Mr. Sunshine," he chuckles lightly at his nickname for me, sending shivers down my spine. "We need to solidify our plans with Max," he explains in a low whisper. Him breathing on my neck is making me feel uncomfortable in more ways than one. I turn my head away from him, hopefully hiding the bit of color rising on my cheeks.

"O-oh okay," is all I can muster in a voice that I try to make sound confident but resembles more of a small squeak.

I realize that even though Jack has loosened his grip on me, I haven't moved away from him. The sensation of his hard body up against my back stirs feelings deep inside me that I'd rather ignore. But... he hasn't moved away yet either.

Although I can't say that I'm necessarily hating this, it's not quite what I had imagined when I planned on 'pushing Jack and I together.'

This is very different.

As he loosens his grip completely and his hand falls down it brushes up against my hand, surprising me. This skin to skin contact sends tingles through my body and squeezes the air out of my lungs. Apparently, there was a breath in there that I didn't know I was holding in.

He steps away and I barely feel more relaxed now that he's exited my personal bubble.

I manage to squeak out a few quick replies to set up the meeting with Max after school, then dash off around the corner. I don't necessarily know where I'm going, but I know I'm getting away from Jack. I look at my schedule for the room number to determine where I have to go to get to class, referencing the map of the school provided on the back of our schedules.

Yes, I'm a senior and have attended this school for three years. But it's a big school! Don't judge.

Anyways, next up is trigonometry with Mr. Vanark and I'm relatively excited, not because I adore the intricacies of trigonometry but due to the fact that I can finally eat.

I walk into the classroom and choose a seat in the middle so I'm hidden enough to eat my lunch, but not so far in the back that I can't read anything on the board. I have awful vision, even with glasses. I guess that makes me a blind turtle.

At least turtles have long life spans.

...I mean, probably not when they're forced to interact with porcupines like I am.

I must remember that turtles and porcupines don't mix.

They exist in separate ecosystems for a reason. Forcing them to try to coexist will result in a most definite disruption to the natural course of evolution. There's no way to even comprehend what type of impact it would have in the natural selection of the species and that's just in a controlled experiment! Doing it in a diverse and unpredictable high school populous is practically asking for an evolutionary disaster!

Focus, Spencer, focus.

You need to eat. You're getting hrazy.

Hrazy is a term I came up with for when I get hungry and go on crazy conspiracy-like rants.

As I open my bag to remove my lunch, the prickly quilled devil himself walks in.

I seriously have the worst luck. Or turtles do. It doesn't matter, all that matters is that now I can't eat my lunch because he's here. I'm going to have to survive another hour without eating. When I'm hungry, I can't think straight or focus. Great. Just perfect for my first day of school.

As my tummy starts to rumble, I try to think of some positive spin on this- sharing another class with Jack.

At least it's not a class where any talking is involved, because the grating sound of nails on a chalkboard is a delicate flute quintet compared to the infuriating noise of arrogant stupidity that exits the mouth of Jake Summers.

I might be being a bit extra, but I'm hangry.

Don't judge.

I angrily stuff my lunch into the bottom of my bag and pull out a notebook and pencil instead. The bell rings and those that were still standing shuffle into their seats as our teacher walks to the front of the room.

"Hi, guys, I'm Mr. Vanark, if you couldn't already tell," he's speaking to the class while leaning up against the whiteboard with his legs crossed casually.

He continues his thought, "in which case I would direct you to the sign on my door or the one on my desk or the spot on your schedules right in front of you which all display my name."

I now know that he's the sarcastic, dry humor type.

I love it.

"And if you still can't figure it out, yelling 'teacher' usually works but it lets us all know that you're an incompetent fool, so I strongly advise you just learn my name."

Although no emotion can be detected on his stone cold face, his relaxed demeanor allows the room to feel comfortable enough to allow a few laughs to escape at his humor.

"I'll skip most of the boring stuff. I don't really have a set list of rules, but that doesn't mean I'll just let you do whatever you want. All my 'rules'- it's just common sense stuff. Don't be an a-hole. Don't cheat. That's about it."

Makes sense to me. Yet for many of my peers, those two rules are almost impossible to follow for some reason.

"We're going to start out today with a little pre-assessment. I will be checking them, but it's not going in the grade book. I just want to see where everyone's at and what sliver of knowledge remains from last year. So it will mostly be review."

He starts passing out the pile of pre-assessments. "Don't stress over it, but try your best."

As the paper gets spread around and everyone begins to glance over the problems, I hear some people next to me boast about how ridiculously easy the problems are. I also hear quite a few complaints about how they don't remember any of this at all.

Two guys to my right bet on which one of them can finish the sheet the fastest and I start to feel my competitive side take over a bit. I'm not cocky enough to join in on any bets of course, but when I lock eyes with Jack it's like I make a mental bet with myself. I bet that I will be better. Maybe not the best, but better than Jack. I notice a shift in his demeanor that makes me think he's thinking the same thing. We are competing against each other and it's on.

I will beat him in this metaphorical race. Because if it was a real race, he would definitely win. I can't beat him when it comes to football, or being cool, or gaining Max's favor, but maybe I can beat him when it comes to shape-related equations. This is something I might have a chance in.

I'm no math genius, but I'd say I'm slightly better than average. Plus I guess I usually have an edge above everyone else. I'm determined as hell. I always look for a creative way out, an alternate solution to plug in, a way to manipulate the equation.

Now I just need to focus on the sheet in front of me. I scan the problems in front of me and I set them up; my pencil starts to draw in the missing marks in the diagrams. I reach for my calculator and start plugging in some of the numbers. I glance up nervously at the clock on the wall and then my eyes drift over to Jack as I try to gauge whether he's ahead or behind me on the worksheet.

I pull my attention back to the numbers in front of me and chew on my lip as I try to remember what my next step should be. It takes a bit for the lightbulb to go off in my head. But once I have that moment of realization of how to proceed I hurry to finish the problem and move onto the next one with efficiency.

My leg bounces under the table as I continue to work my way through the sheet. The noises around me seem to be amplified and the tick-tock of the clock only adds to my anxious nerves.

I flinch when I hear the first person to finish stand up to turn in their paper. I'm nearing the bottom of the sheet, hastily scrawling out my work in messy handwriting. I usually would be more careful with my work but I don't find myself capable of that type of patience at the moment.

After entering a few more things into my calculator I scribble down the answer to the last problem.

I'm done.

I'm finished and no one else has gotten up since that first kid so that means I was the second person to get done.

That's when I hear someone else push their seat away from their desk and I lock eyes with Mr. Pokey Evil Dude.

Yikes. That's definitely not my best nickname but whatever, I'll come up with a better one later.

Jack and I stand up from our seats simultaneously and stare at each other for a moment before racing to turn in our papers.

It's a bad time to be a turtle.

We're both speedwalking toward Mr. Vanark's desk, rushing to get our sheet in first. We reach his desk at the same time and I try to conceal the fact that I'm slightly out of breath.

Mr. Vanark simply holds out both of his hands to us, collecting our papers at the same time.

"Thanks, boys."

Jack seems slightly out of breath as well, which is a victory for me. We may have technically 'tied' but he had to work for it, which is winning the race in my perspective. I don't care about the math ability part; I care about the mentality behind it.

The ability to get under Jack's skin.

To unnerve him the way he unnerves me.

My mind is filling with hundreds of creative new ways to do so.

I smirk.

This is going to be fun.

-----

AN:

Hi! I'm writing a bit more (a bit being an additional thousand words) per chapter than I had originally planned so I'm going to change it from an average of 1,000 words to average around 1,500 words. I think changing the range to 1,000-2,000 words is more reasonable.

I really hope that this hasn't gotten boring or not worth reading because even though I've realized some mistakes that I've made in writing the story, I'm attached to the characters and idea of the plot.

Tell me what you think:

What types of torture is Spencer planning for Jack?

What is he going to do to "get under Jack's skin"?

Love,

Leah