Nobody Smiles That Much

Temper

“Temper,” Jared greeted as he took his usual position, rolling a joint out of sight of prying eyes. “Might need something to dull the boredom of first days.”

He offered me a puff before his gaze followed mine.

Grayson, my irritatingly perfect stepbrother, and his new girlfriend, Hope Parker. His arm was draped across her shoulders, marking his territory like a dog pissing on its favourite tree. Of course his favourite tree was Little Miss Sunshine herself.

There were a lot of basic people at this school. Too easy to figure out, too simple to bother wasting thought on.

Not her. Not to me.

Something about Hope Parker had always... fascinated me.

Maybe it was because I’d never even seen her side-eye someone, despite there being more than enough idiots here to deserve it. Or because she somehow ran half the clubs and events at school with energy the sun couldn’t possess. Or maybe it was the fact that, after years of swearing off every guy who tried his luck, she’d spent the summer dating my stepbrother.

But mostly, it was the smile.

I’d seen her concentrate, eyebrows pinched together as she scribbled notes in class. I’d seen her roll her eyes and laugh when someone said something stupid. I’d even heard her complain.

But I’d never seen her lose it.

Never properly angry. Never properly upset. Never anything she couldn’t smooth over a second later with that ridiculously happy smile.

“Well aren’t they a cute couple?” Jared mocked, as I stole the joint from between his fingertips. “This year is going to be insufferable with them two swanning the halls like royalty.”

“You were supposed to wait for us!” Jules exclaimed as she and Evan joined our little corner where the rest of the school didn’t bother us. This area was carved out for the students no one wanted to deal with.

Jared, Jules, Evan and me. What a hopeless fucking group. I mean, they were the best people I could ask for around me, no faults there. They didn’t care in the way I didn’t care. They just got it. Like I got it. Like everyone else here didn’t get. And if they weren’t here, I don’t know who I would have been. Maybe that same freshman kid who punched the crap out of everyone who even looked at him funny. Smoking helped. Jared put me on it at first. Thought it would take the edge off. It did, and now, even though I felt like I didn’t give much of a fuck about anything, it was better than feeling angry about it all.

“You know, my mum is getting obsessed about where I’ll end up next year. All summer. All of it. She even had a go at me this morning for what I’m wearing,” Jules said as she twirled, showing off her usual non-conservative outfit that definitely didn’t suit the Langford family brand. “I’m so definitely getting a tattoo of something she wouldn’t approve of in a very noticeable place.”

“My brother just chose his major in Engineering at MIT so join the club of unreasonable expectations,” Jared replied. “I think I’ll opt out of college just to spite them. They think I’m completely useless anyway.”

“They don’t,” I muttered through another inhale of smoke.

“Says the man bound for Yale, a legacy. Daddy must be so proud,” he gleamed back, pushing himself off the wall. I looked at him disapprovingly. He knew I hated this topic. “Anyway, best go to class and piss off some teachers with our inattention.”

We headed to collect our class schedules for the year and parted ways when we all had first period in different classes. I strolled the hallways, rather to casually considering I had already missed homeroom and we were already into first period by a couple of minutes. If there was anything that could dull my senses better than the weed, it was certainly first period Biology with Mr Reynolds.

I glimpsed Hope from the corner of my eye, in a separate corridor, rushing around and stapling posters to a noticeboard. Of course. I wondered why she cared so much about school, and clubs, and doing everything. Did she have an ego she needed to feed where she wanted so much attention and praise? She always appeared so humble when she undertook anything.

“Mr Whitmore, please stop loitering outside the door of your class and actually take a seat to learn,” Mr Reynolds barked.

I gave him a charming and sarcastic smile before taking the last empty bench. The bench seated two, and everyone else had seemingly found their buddy for the year. There were pros and cons to being alone for Biology. No one to nag you, rely on you, irritate you in class. But you were left to do all of the work on your own. And I enjoyed pawning off my homework. It was too easy; everyone hated working with me so would just do it all themselves.

Just as I had accepted my lonely reality for the year, the ball of sunshine hurried into the classroom with an endearing apologetic smile and rushed into the seat beside mine.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, sir. There was a mishap with the printers and the posters for Student Body elections needed to go up,” she chimed. The teacher nodded his head and didn’t reprimand her one bit. Just began the lesson.

I felt as though someone like her should annoy me. But she doesn’t. She never had. Not when she sent me this glowing smile when she finally settled into her seat. Not a polite smile where she secretly wanted to roll her eyes at the fact she’d have to be my partner all year. A genuinely pleased smile. I didn’t get many of those.

We’d spoken a few times before, over the years. We had a lot more over the summer, when she’d appear at the house with Grayson. But nothing long or below surface level. She probably thought I was an asshole, especially since every time I saw her I’d say something along the lines of, ‘how’s the perfect princess doing?’ in a mocking kind of way. Her replies rarely matched my own tone exactly, but they weren’t out of place. She’d begin with some sarcasm and transform the interaction into something positive. It was always as though even if I tried to suck the energy out of my words, she’d find a way to give them life. It should have infuriated me. But it made me laugh.

“So, how do you want to split this up?” she asked with a bright smile. “I can write the hypothesis and introduction, or do you want that?”

I smirked at her lazily and retorted, “I’d rather not doing any of it, sunshine.” She waited expectantly, as if I hadn’t answered at all. Which somehow pressured me into saying, “but whatever you want to do, I’ll do the rest.”

She beamed and I scolded my lack of restraint. She started listing off everything I needed to do, and explained her parts. I leaned into my palm on the table and shut my eyes.

“I know you get good grades.”

My eyes reluctantly opened.

“So what?”

“So, you’re not just a pretty face,” she joked. “You can’t keep pretending you don’t care. People who don’t care don’t bother thinking about their GPA.”

“Oh, I don’t. Those grades are my natural intelligence, gift from God, what can I say?”

“Well then, I will put that gift to good use this year.”

“You will?” I leaned towards her slightly with a sly smile. “How do you propose to do that?”

“I have my ways,” she said. “I can be persuasive.”

I studied her face for a moment, her brown eyes glinting with mischief, her lips forming a knowing smile. I believed her. I’d seen her charms work on the whole school. Now, she was so close to me, and I could already feel her voodoo working.

“Are you going to cast a spell on me to do your bidding, sunshine?” I chuckled casually.

“You’ll have to see.” She tucked the shorter front piece of her hair behind her ear and focused back on her notebook with a shy smile.

The teacher continued to drone on for the rest of class, but I’d conspicuously steal glances at her to figure her out, even slightly. It’s hard to describe why she fascinated me. But potentially it was from lack of stimulation of my brain elsewhere. No one else could see it. The fact that there were things she did that never made sense. Jared thought she was just another boring popular spoiled girl. Jules said she hated those kind of girls, that they lived in some kind of fantasy world where everything just magically worked out and fit. Evan didn’t give a shit.

I never worked out what Grayson thought before they started dating. Everyone had an opinion on her; she was one of the girls that came up when thinking about anyone at school. I knew what they all thought of me. I’m exactly who they think I am.

I carried on through the rest of the morning tuning everyone out and focused on organising my assignments. I felt pathologically prepared sometimes, because even though I didn’t care much, I still did the work I needed to do without complaint. I didn’t even have to do much. Jared teased me as he thought I was secretly heavily invested in my academic goals, and college. Something had to be next. Something had to happen after this year. I was glad of the safety net my admission to Yale afforded me, despite resenting the topic of conversation.

“Ms Peterson said I was ‘giving up on myself’ at the end of class. Are teachers even allowed to talk to you like that?” Jared exclaimed as he clumsily dropped his lunch tray at our table. I pinched a fry from his tray as I laughed at him.

“I thought you agreed with that statement?” I questioned.

“Yeah, but she’s not meant to agree with me,” he exasperated. “She said I wasn’t destined to go anywhere next year. Even mentioned how my family would not be impressed. As if that fact would motivate me, at all.”

“It is a bit harsh.”

Jules started to complain about the girl next to her in class, and how she kept talking across her to her friends as if Jules wasn’t there. I caught sight of Hope out the corner of my eye and noticed her usual table of idiots had expanded, with the addition of Grayson and his jock friends. It was as if being able to throw a football made you the greatest human to have walked the earth. I was almost disappointed that it had worked on Hope; I expected more.

“Why you staring at the prom queen?” Jared nudged me with a scoff.

“She’s my lab partner in Bio.”

“How’d she end up so unlucky?” he chuckled, while Jules and Evan looked unimpressed.

“She was late and, of course, I was the last one without a partner.”

“You must see her at your house a lot now. America’s dream couple,” Jules jested, rolling her eyes towards them.

Grayson sat ridiculously close to Hope, sending her his best dazzling smiles he could. I’d noticed he was trying incredibly hard with her during the summer. Maybe she gave him a chance because she felt bad. It’s not like I couldn’t see why she’d chosen him. He was ‘perfect’. The football star. The perfect grades. The golden boy. Even my father loved him, and he was a difficult man to please. And she was ‘perfect’ too. I guess they worked on paper, and in everyone else’s eyes. But I’d seen them interact. And I wasn’t convinced.

Or maybe it was my bias. Because I fucking hated him.

“They were in my English class this morning, mooning over each other. It was insufferable,” Jules commented. “And nobody smiles that much.”

She was surely right. Nobody smiles that much.