Joel dragged his teeth over his chapped lip, scraping at the broken skin even as it stung, his eyes intent on searching her face while she avoided actually looking at him.  Hadley was rambling in such a way that Joel couldn’t follow her precisely, though he got the general gist of her point – that she felt silly and wished she could un-tell him what she’d already said.  He didn’t wish that at all.  

“It’s fine, Hadley,” he assured her.  “It’s no big thing.  Really.”

“Just look, go back to class, okay? I didn’t run out because of you.”

“Who said you did?” Joel asked.  That had been exactly what he’d thought, and he couldn’t quite read what she was getting at, but he shrugged anyway and went along with it.  “Why would you run out because of me?  We’re soul mates, right?  Best friends forever, isn’t it?”  He was smirking and he knew it, really hoping Hadley would lighten up about this.  Something told him that nobody would blame him if he had just let her run on and pretended this never happened – in fact, that was exactly what she was acting like she wanted him to do.  But Joel didn’t like the idea of this girl holding something against him – he wanted to be sure they were on good terms.  Besides, she’d told him about it, so she must have wanted him to know.  At least he could make it easy on her.  

"It was stupid."

“What’s stupid about it?” he asked.  Joel followed as she began to walk, no intention whatsoever of going back to class yet.  He already had a detention, and going back sooner than later wasn’t going to help matters.  “So your friends did the maths and say we’re meant to be.  Meant to be what?  Maybe we’re meant to do maths together forever.  That would be a tragedy, yeah?  You might see me cry if we end up like that, drowning in eternal numerology.”


JOEL WATKINS