Heading to class. If you’re learning German, get all the good curse words. And then how to say I want to lick your breasts.
As soon as I send it, I realize that this is a bad idea. I don’t want Charlotte asking anyone about sex over there. What if her tutor is a guy and thinks she’s coming on to him?
Scratch that. Just the curse words. English is fine for me. I know a lot of ways to say I want you in English.
(1/2) ROFL. My tutor is a Swiss Miss. She looks like she belongs on the package of those horrible hot chocolate drink packages that had the dried marshmallows. Remember those? Why do I love those so much?
(2/2) She’s actually not teaching me anything because I’m still in the testing stage so basically she just has me reading. I’m supposed to call her Frau Kielholz but since she looks like she might only be a few years older than me she agreed I could call her Sandrine.
The bell rings. I try texting and running into the building.
“Ask her if Sandrine is hot,” Nick says waving his phone at me. Charlotte is texting us both at the same time. He speeds off toward his class, and I run up the stairs for Advanced Comp. “Because Sandrine sounds sexy as fuck.”
Is she hot? N wants to know
Please. It’s like hot genes barfed all over here. Everyone is hot. Even the 90 year old grandmothers are hot. It’s depressing. Never come here Nate. Promise me.
Promise to find no one hotter than you
Lame. Luv Ux1000
Luv U
When the noon bell rings, I lope down to the entrance, taking the stairs two, three at a time. Near the bottom, I use the railing and catapult myself past three sets of slowpokes. As I’m adjusting my backpack after the vault, I feel a shove against my shoulder. More like in my pectoral area than my shoulder. Looking down, I see the angry face of Charlotte’s friend Greta.
“Whoa there. You drunk this morning?” I straighten her by her shoulders and set her out of my way. I hear the click of a camera phone. It’s another girl whose name I can’t ever remember. Sarah, Susan, Shelly. One of those. I don’t really care though, so I just continue to walk past them until Greta’s next words stop me in my tracks. “Your girl off to get her abortion?”
Over the blood rushing to my ears, I hear my father’s voice repeatedly telling me to respect the other gender, to be cognizant of my size and how it can be used to intimate without meaning to, how I should treat women in the manner I would want my mother—or Charlotte—to be treated. With his admonitions in my head, I manage to bite back the word bitch and say evenly, “What do you want, Greta?”
She smiles, but there’s no affection there. Not for Charlotte at least. “Just kidding. I know she’s having treatment. She okay?”
I wonder at their closeness if she’s asking. Wouldn’t she have heard from Charlotte if they were friends? I never really paid attention to Charlotte’s female friends. They didn’t interest me. And she has no close male friends; if any of the sausage holders tried to kiss up to her, Nick and I made short shrift of them.
“She’s fine.” I’ve had enough of the conversation. As I turn, the camera shutter sounds again. “What the fuck?”
“Sorry, Nathan,” another girl mumbles and looks at the floor. Seela. Her name pops to the front of my memory bank. Her father is a tech venture capitalist, and Seela has all the latest gadgets including camera-embedded glasses. They aren’t allowed in school, however. Reaching over, I pluck the frames off her head. Behind me I sense Nick coming up for support. As Seela attempts to grab her glasses from me, I toss them to him. He squeezes the camera apparatus between his fingers until it cracks.
“Looks like your camera is broken.” Nick smirks as he hands back the lenses. “You’d think they’d be able to make those a little less fragile after all these years.”
I give him a chin nod, and we take off.
“What was that all about?” Nick asks when we are driving to a nearby restaurant for lunch.
“That was about Greta being a complete asswipe. How good of friends are her and Charlotte?”
Nick shrugs. “Not real close. They were on the same competitive gymnastics squad and my guess is that their friendship is more of a frenemy thing.”
“Frenemy?”
“Yeah, like they compete but are teammates.”
I let that thought marinate for a few moments. “Charlotte asked her for condoms, so I figured they were like best friends or something.”
“Nah. Charlotte probably went to Greta because her older sister is in college.”
“Got it.”
It made sense now. Charlotte and Greta were friends of convenience. This didn’t excuse Greta, but it did explain a little why she was trying to get her digs in.