The Songs in Our Hearts: A Young Adult Romance(56)

I waited for what felt like hours for Micah to text me, but he didn’t. I was tempted to send him a message, but I didn’t want to seem clingy. I didn’t want to scare him off with the million questions building up in my mind.

I tried to distract myself by watching a movie on my laptop, and surfing my Facebook feed for a while. By midnight, I knew I had to give up and just go to sleep.





“Hiding My Heart”

Adele





I STARED BLANKLY AT THE test in front of me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Micah.

I snuck a glance in his direction as he answered the questions I should have been focusing on. Mrs. Tenner had decided to give us a pop quiz on our monthly vocabulary words. Despite my love of reading, I’d always been pretty terrible at memorizing words and definitions. Sometimes, I’d try to find letters in the word and discover clever ways of matching them to their meaning, but it rarely ever helped me on the quizzes. This one was no exception. Looking down at the test, I regretted my method of so-called learning:





I was going to fail. So badly. On cue, the bell rang and Mrs. Tenner tapped her desk.

“Bring up your quizzes! And remember, your projects are due before Thanksgiving break!” I reluctantly gave her my almost-blank sheet.

“You look a little under the weather, Charlie,” she remarked. “It’s not like you to not finish a test.”

“Yeah, I’m not...feeling the greatest,” I admitted.

“I hope you feel better.” Mrs. Tenner patted my hand tenderly.

I stopped at the door, deciding to wait for Micah and walk with him. Despite the few words we exchanged on the bus earlier that morning, we had barely spoken since Saturday. He had pretty much stayed to himself. The twist in my gut told me something was wrong. Micah regretted it. He totally regretted kissing me.

“Hey.” I tried to smile warmly as he came out of the classroom. He adjusted his backpack and gave me a nod. “How do you think you did on the pop quiz?”

“Eh,” was all he said. Together, we started down the hallway.

“Is everything ready for today?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going. I felt as though Micah just wanted me to leave him alone. I was tempted to do just that. If that’s what he really wanted.

“Yeah, as far as I know. We just have that one scene, and then I think Marshall and I are going out to a Halloween party afterwards.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. He looked at me, skeptical.

“Not exactly your kind of fun.” His eyes narrowed slightly.

What was that about? We paused as I arrived to my math classroom.

“I guess I’ll see you later,” he began, but I cut in.

“I need to talk to you.”

But he disregarded this, and walked away, toward his next class. I stood in the doorway, feeling stupid and hurt. What had I done wrong? This was exactly what I was afraid of. This was why I didn’t want to get involved with him.

Giving up, I turned and went into my class. I sat down with a sigh and bit the inside of my cheek to distract myself from the nagging pain in my chest. Rachel came to sit beside me, and passed me a note once Mr. Harvey began the lesson.





What’s wrong?





I scribbled back to her.





Micah won’t talk to me. Something happened and he’s being super distant with me today.





While Mr. Harvey wasn’t looking, I slid the note back to her, and watched as she carefully unfolded it and read it behind her desk. She looked at me and wrote back.





Wow. What happened?!





I glanced at the note, uneasy. Should I tell her?





Things just got complicated. I think we had a misunderstanding. But he won’t talk to me now.





Rachel passed the note back to me again.





That doesn’t make any sense.





It made complete sense to me. He was a stupid boy, thinking it would be fine to kiss a girl who had apparently been hanging out with him for too long. He must have thought it was fun, until it wasn’t anymore.

I shrugged at Rachel, deciding not to write anything back. I wanted to tell her about Micah and the kiss, but I didn’t feel comfortable putting it on paper. I didn’t want to chance my note falling into the wrong hands. The last thing I needed was my written confession of my first kiss being found by someone else.

After class, as she looked at me with empathy in her eyes, I told Rachel the whole story.

“I’m so sorry, Charlie. Boys are weird,” she said, shaking her head. We walked together. “I wish I had a better explanation, but I don’t get it either.”

I looked down.

“It’s probably better for you to just distance yourself now. I wouldn’t want you to get any more hurt than you already are. Good thing you’re done filming the project after today. You don’t have to see him anymore. Things can go back to normal, if you want them to.”

“What is normal?” I asked her. “Go back to what, exactly?”

“I guess the way it was before…Micah. Are you sure you can’t just talk to him?”