Cellphone Swap

Annoyed, I opened the door of my locker and stuffed my books into the locker. Politics had been against expectations the horror and for this week I had unfortunately not yet got it over with. Quite the opposite. It was just Wednesday! But I would find a way to pass the time until the weekend in the best possible way. At that thought, the touch of a small smile appeared on my lips and I leaned slightly against the doors of the lockers next to my own.

While I was driving through the dark brown hair with one hand, I let my gaze wander over the other students passing me through the hallway. A few of them rushed around, but most of them strolled around and talked extensively.

As I looked down the hallway, I couldn’t help sighing. Just at that moment, Ashlyn Phillips turned the corner. She had tied her blonde hair to her typical, for my taste much too high, ponytail and wore her red cheerleader uniform. Behind her, I recognized the other girls from the team, who were rather her lackeys than her friends and I could not resist a contemptuous eye roll.

As soon as Ashlyn came closer, she discovered me at her side, to my regret, and a condescending grin appeared on her lips. I pressed the jaws together but did not avoid her gaze. I had just never been like that before. At least she didn’t bother to stop, but still won’t let me take her eyes off me and then demonstratively stroke her uniform with a gloating smile.

With this gesture, she pursued an exact goal. About two years ago, embarrassingly, I had tried to apply for the school’s cheerleading team and had not been accepted. Ashlyn knew this exactly and used this information since then, hoping to diminish my self-confidence. The fact that I didn’t join the team at the time bothered me, but not for a long time. Rather, I was now grateful for my failure to save myself from a terrible mistake.

But in order not to give her the feeling that she was superior to me, I shook something out of her sleeve that I knew would get her mad. As a reaction to her, I just started grinning amusedly and then tapped my forefinger twice on the tip of my nose before winking meaningfully at her.

A displeased expression appeared on her face and a triumphant smile spread across my lips. Angrily she clenched one hand to one fist as she covered her nose with the other and stormed off. The other cheerleaders followed her with confused looks.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t resist a little smile. Because although it was certainly mean, it felt good. According to the motto “Who digs a pit for others, falls in himself”. That she had tried to have a nose operation done, but no doctor at this age had wanted to do it, was simply too easy to find out. Anyway for me.

When Ashlyn had finally disappeared from my field of vision, I let myself sink against my locker. Unfortunately, this was much more fun than it was good. But too late. The good feeling had already spread inside me and I couldn’t wipe my unmistakable, broad grin off my face anymore. It just felt too good when it paid her back with the same amount, although that didn’t necessarily make me any better than she did. Maybe I should just ignore it, pretend nothing was wrong, but I just wasn’t like that. She should see that she couldn’t just go on with me like that. Although that had never really worked. But it would certainly take a damn long time until she noticed that.

But the hated shriek of the school bell ripped me out of my triumphal thoughts and reminded me that the next lesson would start in a few minutes. Annoyed and groaning, I turned back to my locker to grab my books and then leisurely make my way to the classroom. I would be late anyway. Punctuality has never been one of my great strengths.

Since it suddenly began to vibrate several times in my pocket, I pulled it out to look at the variety of unanswered messages I had, to see who was so good this time and kept me from teaching for a few more seconds.

So I scrolled and wiped around on the glass pane until I came to a standstill with Nathans and my chat. There was a small two popped up, which had not been there an hour ago. Interested I opened our common chat and read interested the two messages which my best friend had sent me.

Nathan: Hey, Leila - Bear.

Nathan: Surely you have time for me this afternoon, don’t you?

When I read his message, I had to laugh. I secretly loved the way he kept coming up with new nicknames for me.

Leila: Hey, I’ll try to dig something up for you in my diary.

In reality, I hadn’t planned anything for today, so I was more than happy that he asked. Besides, I would always take time for him, my best friend and the person I trusted most of all.

I was so focused on our digital conversation that I didn’t even notice the person approaching me. Only when we banged firmly against each other did I become aware of what was in front of me again. But too late. I had already collided with the person, my mobile phone had slipped out of my hands and fallen to the ground. “Shit”, I cursed angrily and went to my knees to pick up my smartphone before any other idiot could trample on it.

I paid less attention to what I was grabbing, however, and instead looked at the person who caused the accident. He was a boy who seemed all too familiar to me. He seemed to be a few inches taller than me - but that was hard to tell from down here - and the dark brown hair fell into his forehead, but didn’t cover his eye, which was emerald green unlike my own and had no brown mixed in. But for Jaden Canady’s appearance, I had no eye at that moment.

“Man, can’t you watch out?” I asked angrily as soon as I got up again and checked whether anything had broken on the mobile phone - luckily there was no obvious damage, otherwise, this idiot would have been happy to pay for it.

“He sounded indignant, but I only reacted by shaking my head. He couldn’t seriously think that it was all my fault.

“You’re the one who was so fixated on her cell phone that she didn’t even notice what was going on around her,” he added after picking up the other cell phone. I hadn’t even noticed that his had fallen either.

“Oh and you have no eyes of your own in your head, so you couldn’t avoid me yourself, or what?", with a challenging look, I looked at him while I held my arms crossed in front of my chest. When he replied nothing more, but simply made a sour face, a winning move played around the corners of my mouth and I wiggled slightly with my eyebrows: “Oh, so you were just as distracted as I was and thus just as guilty as I am. Interesting. Now it was his turn to cross his arms and narrow his eyes to slits.

But this confirmed my theory even more. He takes a step towards me and only now I noticed that he was a little bit taller than me: “That’s not true. YOU ran into me.”

Although he built himself up quite in front of me, I tried not to move back an inch in front of him. I lifted my chin a little further so as not to give the impression that I was even a little afraid of him. Because I didn’t have that. Instead, there was something else that irritated me. Something like a tension in the space between us that he had noticeably reduced. A slight shiver ran over my back and the grip around the mobile phone increased slightly.

“Oh, just say what you want. I’m not doing this to myself now”, with these words I pushed myself past him and set myself in motion to disappear into my class after all. The main thing was that I could end this super unnecessary discussion. But I thought I could feel his stupid grin on my back as I walked away. Stupid idiot!