"Look, Dan. I'm not into you, and I don't care how many times you ask. Leave me alone, will you?"

I ran my hands through my hair, noting that it was gradually turning from dark brown to a lighter shade at the tips. I sighed and sat down in front of the mirror.

"Now why can't I say it to his face?"

I knew the answer, of course. I didn't like making people sad. He was really a nice guy, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. However, it had to be done. Whipping out my phone, I opened the search engine, typing in 'How to turn down a guy' for the tenth time.

Wikihow - no help
Some romance site - hella no help
Some sex ed thing - pfft no

Closing that disaster - the Internet does not know everything - I instead texted my friend Alex.

October 17 4:53 pm

Hey Al.

What's crackin Boo?

Ugh
Life.

What about?

Dan.

Oh you poor baby, a boy is into you.

But I'm not into him!

I'm no better at boys than you, so instead we can focus on my problems, how about that?

And what are your problems?

Boys.
Specifically boy.
More Specifically Davis.

Lol. Gotta go, see you at school tomorrow.

"She's not usually helpful, but she's a good distraction in times like these," I thought. Now for the real question - whether or not to ask a boy about the boy problem.

After a lengthy debate in my head, I settled on yes.

October 17 5:02 pm

Hey Davis.

Fight

Did I wake you up?

Yes

but it's five o'clock at night.

Fight

Ding

🌚

Okay but really, I need help.

With what?

Dan

October 17 5:28 pm

No reply? Really?

October 17 5:34 pm

Okay then.

Turning off my phone, I flopped onto my bed and picked up a pencil from my side table.

Davis was a dick sometimes, I decided as I worked on my math homework.

"If only boys were as easy to figure out as logarithms," I muttered as I wrote out log of 8 divided by log of 3.7 to eight decimal places. Mrs. Mbriwa had said four, but a few extra couldn't hurt.

Moving on to german, I texted Alex again.

October 17, 5:47 pm

Hey Al. Did you get number three on the German worksheet?

What do you think?

I'll let you know if I figure it out.

Kk, thanks. I used my last euros yesterday.

I chuckled. She went through them so fast.

Then again, so did I. Reaching over for my pencil case, I pulled out three of the plastic coins, turning them over in my hands. I wondered if I could buy some online to cheat the system, but Herr Martin would probably notice. He wouldn't care, he doesn't usually care if Alex or I break the occasional rule, but he'd notice.

Putting the fake euros back safely, I studied the worksheet again. What does liefern even mean? These instructions never made sense.

Too lazy to google it, I continued on to the actual exercise. It was simpler than I'd thought, you just had to conjugate the verbs, apparently.

Pausing for a second to inform Alex of this, I finished the sheet in less than a minute. Wissen was one of the easier strong verbs, at least for me. No unnecessary umlauts for me, please and thank you.

And finally, I had finished my homework. Well, not vocab, but I always do that in homeroom anyway, so it didn't matter.

I was about to go downstairs to watch TV when I heard the door open. "Hey mom!" I heard a muffled reply, which I assumed was a return greeting, and went back to my room to play on my phone. Screw television if it means socializing.

Eventually I went down to eat dinner, after which I went back to my room on the pretense of homework, not quite a lie since I hadn't done my language arts work, but sort of a lie because I didn't plan to.

Bored of my phone, I pulled out The Complete Sherlock Holmes and continued to read for about an hour.

Busying myself with cleaning for an hour after that, reading a different book for a while, and listening to music for another half hour, I didn't notice the time until it was nearly ten.

I got ready for bed, preparing myself for another typical Tuesday to begin when I woke up.

Looking back, I have one word for myself.
"Ha."