Popular Nerd

Chapter Eleven// History Project

"Alright class! For this month's project you will have to pair up and choose a period of history we have been studying. You need to create a model of how life was like in that era and write a paragraph to explain your design. Is that clear?"

The class murmurs an unenthusiastic response, mostly of grumbles and sighs. Mr Davis claps his hands together and grabs the attention of the half asleep class. Almost in every class we are all half asleep.

"You may choose your parterres," he goes onto saying. "But no more than twos."

That brings up the spirit of the class. Whenever we got to choose who we work with, there is a much more positive attitude. Because I will tell you now, getting paired up with the guy who 'apparently' drinks water out of the toilet isn't the kind of person who you want to work with.

Rumours are rumours but you can never be too careful.

But now the struggle that I face is finding someone to work with me. Lacy isn't in my history class. I turn around in my chair, at the front, and scrutinise the whole class. My eyes suddenly land on Nathan and a light bulb sparks in my mind.

"Hey Nathan," I approach his desk and smile down at him. The whole class is out of their seats and I don't want to be left stranded, alone.

"Hi Paige," his smile releases butterflies in my stomach.

"Would you like to be my partner for the project?" I am mentally crossing my fingers, hoping no one has already asked him. Being poplar and smart, I assume he is on the top of everyone's list to do the project with at the moment.

Maybe making him popular was a bad idea because otherwise I could have him all to myself. I mentally stutter at how wrong that sounds.

"Sure," his eyes sparkle. "I'd love to."

Yes! I silently cheer. Gosh, why am I getting so excited? I take in a deep breathe to calm my beating heart.

"Wait, Nate, I thought you were going with meeee," whines Jenny Kein from the desk behind him. She pouts over exaggeratedly with the batting of her eye lashes. I give her no pity with the roll of my eyes.

"Sorry Jenny," Nathan says to her as she pushes out her lips even more.  "Paige just asked me. Maybe some other time?" Jenny huffs and storms out of her seat, probably to go bitch about me to one of her cheerleading friends. I don't give a shit. I was telling the truth to Bailey at dinner that we don't get on, but now with me stealing her hot partner away I think that is more so now.

"So, what do you want to do the project about? I was thinking-"

"Paige!"

My head spins to the left in the direction of the cry of my name. Sure enough, Josh strides over and laces his fingers briefly with mine. A pleading expression masks his face.

"You want to pair up?" He asks. Oh, so I don't hear from him all weekend, he ignores my texts, doesn't take any interest in me but as soon as we need to do school work, he acts like my boyfriend again. Ugh!

"Sorry Josh, I'm going with Nathan," I say blatantly, not even accepting his eye contact.

His hand leaves mine and shoves it into his jacket pocket. "Oh," our eyes connect for a second and his lip curls. "I'll go work with someone else then." He walks off with the shake of his head, not turning back. I don't want him to.

"Well that was cheery," sarcastically remarks Nathan, trying to shift my flat lips into a smile. It works.

We start off planning out what we are going to do. Nathan's idea was the Tudors and I happily agree.