Haley leaned against Michelle’s locker door.

“No, seriously, what’s the deal? Did someone lose a bet or something?”

Perplexed, Michelle scowled slightly and nudged her arm.

“Huh? Hey, quit blocking me. I need to get my stuff.”

Haley relented and stepped to the left, so that she could watch Michelle open it. “You can tell me, you know. I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Tell you what? I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she replied, yanking the locker door open.

She rifled through the messy heap of textbooks and binders that were thrown all over each other. Her calculus textbook seemed to have gone missing.

“You and Caledon, duh! You can’t tell me you’re actually dating. Are you?”

“We are,” Michelle insisted. “I don’t even get what you’re saying!”

Haley shifted her books from one arm to the other. “There’s no one else here. You can tell me.”

The fact that Haley was making it sound like she was guarding some secret was not lost to her, but only thing Michelle could think to do was to stare blankly back at her.

“Whether we’re alone or not, I’d be saying the same thing. It’s not like we’re keeping it a secret that we’re dating!”

With a frown, Haley brushed a lock of her brown hair over her shoulders. “That’s not the secret that I’m talking about!”

“Then what is?”

“Are you guys really together?”

Finally finding her textbook, Michelle pulled it out from under the mountain of books and shut her locker with a slam of the door.

“Yes! Man, what’s everyone’s problem today? First Autumn, then Sylvie, and now you! Are you going to send Carter next to ask me the exact same thing? You guys are so weird!”

“We’re weird?” Haley looked like there was more she wanted to say, but then the bell rang.

“Look, I gotta go. Stop asking me strange questions, okay? Later!”

With a quick wave of her hand, Michelle turned and sped off to her next class.

In between lessons today, all her friends had seemingly taken turns to ask her about her new relationship status in the most roundabout ways possible. It was the most bizarre thing she’d ever encountered in her life so far.

This relationship was her chance to finally stop third wheeling on group-outings-turned-triple-dates. There was no way she was giving it up—they’d have to pry it from her cold, dead hands.

---

“Michelle!”

Upon hearing her name being called out by a semi-familiar voice, she looked around in the crowd for its owner. “Huh?”

Her last class of the day had ended, and everyone else around her had just filed out of the classroom. The hallway was clogged with human traffic.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, causing her to whirl around.

She came face to face with Caledon, who had a smile on his face.

“Yo,” he said. “Did you hear me calling you?”

“Yeah,” she said, caught off-guard by his sudden appearance, “I did. ‘Sup?”

Caledon had asked her over text what her last class was, but when she answered him, he hadn’t responded to her question of why he was asking. Again, as she watched him brush his floppy brown hair out of his warm brown eyes, Michelle wondered why he was waiting for her outside her classroom.

They began walking together. “Are you going home now? I can walk you home.”

She frowned. “What? Why? That’s pretty random.”

As he dodged out of the way of a student who was running past them, Caledon shrugged. “No reason. It’s a boyfriend thing, I think? My friends do that sometimes. Unless you don’t want me to walk you back?”

“Sounds nice,” she said, turning down into another hallway towards the clubrooms. “Wait, do I have to that too?”

She didn’t mind having extra company on the way home, but going out of the way herself to walk him home sounded like a bit of a hassle to her. Wasn’t that troublesome to him?

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen their girlfriends walk them home. But you can if you want to do that.”

Michelle raised her eyebrows, considering the idea.

“Hmm. Maybe when I’m free.”

“So do you want me to walk you back today?” he asked again.

“I’m not going home,” she said. “I have to go to the drama club today.”

“Oh. Should I … walk you there?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“Okay, then.”

They lapsed into silence after that, and Michelle couldn’t think of any topic to mention. Neither she nor Caledon were the talkative type. Even during their overlapping shifts at the café, they only talked to each other when they needed help or something interesting had just happened at work.

He spoke first. “So, you’re in the drama club.”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s cool. How come I’ve never seen you on stage during those school plays?”

“Oh, I’m more of a backstage helper,” she said. “I help with making the props and stuff like that. Sometimes I help with the lighting.”

“Is there a reason you haven’t gone up on stage?”

“I have, though,” she said. “It’s just that they’re usually for minor roles, like a side character who delivers maybe three lines.”

“You mean you’ve never tried getting any of the bigger roles?”

“Oh, I did, in the beginning when I first joined the club at least.”

“And then you lost interest after that?”

Michelle considered the strange logic behind his question. “Wouldn’t it be weird if I stayed in the club after I stopped liking it?”

She could read the plain-as-day curiosity in his brown eyes.

“That’s true,” he said. “Unless you just really like making costumes?”

That made her laugh. “Nah, it’s not that. I still think acting is fun, but there are a lot of other people in the club who are way better and more passionate than me about it. They can spend forever practicing their lines and perfecting their delivery. It took me joining the club to realize how seriously others are taking it. They go all out even during auditions.”

Caledon looked pensive. “I get what you mean. I have a friend who’s like that about soccer.”

“How about you? Are you in a club?”

His expression was solemn. “I’ve been considering joining one since all my friends got a girlfriend.”

She paused. “I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a joke or not.”

His loud sigh hung over them as he ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair. A small lock fell right back into his eyes.

“I wish I could say it was. Hey, is it fun making props?”

Michelle couldn’t help snorting. “Are you seriously considering joining us?”

“I wouldn’t be if my friends were still single,” he grumbled.

She laughed. “That’s the worst reason to join a school club, ever!”

“Is there actually a bad reason for joining one? I thought clubs would just be happy to have another member.”

“Do you like acting?”

“I’ve never thought about it before now.”

“Well, if you ever think that it could be fun, maybe you could consider joining us,” she said. “Okay, we’re here.”

They arrived at the open door of her clubroom, and Michelle stepped through the doorway. The room was already semi-crowded with other members, who had probably come here right after the bell.

“Michelle! You’re here!” Nicole, a girl whom she got along well with, waved to her from the corner of the room.

She grinned at Nicole before turning her head back to Caledon. “See you. Uh, thanks for walking me here.”

“No problem.”

He flashed her a casual smile and left.

Michelle made a beeline for Nicole, ready to get to work. They were holding the next school play in the fall, and she was looking forward to it as always.

Her friend paused from the cardboard shrub she was painting and asked, “Who was that guy you came with?”

“Was that your boyfriend?” Clarissa, another friend, called out from the center of the room.

Due to Michelle’s vocal nature, everyone in the club knew all about how single she was—or had been, anyway. Most of them enjoyed teasing her or pointing out guys that she should go for. According to them, she should do something about it instead of complaining incessantly. They didn’t understand that Michelle merely wanted her friends to remain single rather than for herself to get a boyfriend.

Well, this is still better than being a perpetual third wheel.

“Yup!” she called back.

“Really?” Nicole’s dark eyes grew wide.

“What? Hey guys, did you hear that? Michelle finally got a boyfriend!” Bridgette’s voice resounded in the room, which exploded into simultaneous loud chatter from various people.

“Wow, congratulations, Michelle!”

“Nice!”

“Oh, finally! I thought we were gonna have to hear her complain about it until graduation.”

“No! I thought we were forever alone buddies! How could you do this to me, Michelle?” That was Barnaby, a guy who had been single for as long as Michelle had known him.

“Congrats!”

The sudden attention was startling—almost everyone had paused in their task to grin at her. Regardless, a smile was already tugging at her lips.

“Thanks, guys!” She raised a thumbs up sign into the air. “Goodbye, singlehood! It’s the end of third-wheeling for me!”

A few people snorted and a few others sniggered.

“Oh yeah, that was your priority,” one of the guys said.

She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “You know it!”

“Congratulations.” Nicole waved the large paintbrush at her. “You’re finally not single anymore!”

Michelle brought her bag up to her chest to shield herself. “Hey—don’t splatter paint on me. But yeah, thanks.”

“When did you two start dating?”

“Yesterday.”

Before settling down beside Nicole, she checked her phone to see she’d gotten a message from Caledon.

See you at school tomorrow.

He texted her just to say this when he could’ve just said it earlier? Boyfriends seemed to have to do a lot of unnecessary things. She wondered what kind of texts her friends sent to their own boyfriends.

Yeah, see you.

“Details, please!” Nicole shifted from her kneeling position on the floor to a cross-legged one. “How did it happen?”

Eager to share it with her friend, Michelle began narrating, “Well, it started at work…”

Hopefully, Nicole would at least be more supportive of her than her best friends had been today.