ANYTHING BUT ENEMIES

20. focus, cleo

"DAMN THIS STUPID poem!"

Ruby glances over as I stab my pen into the table before shooting up, hands flat to wood, breath coming out heavy.

"What's wrong this time?" She sounds like an exhausted parent.

"This thing—" it's a conspiracy, "is coming out all wrong. I've been at it for hours, and it's still garbage."

"Cleo, I don't think you're capable of creating garbage."

"Oh, don't flatter me, Rubes." I begin to pace back and forth, running over ideas and words in my mind. They roll like tides, crashing into each other before dissolving at the shore. "I can't focus."

"Something definitely happened the other day," she says, no trace of doubt in her voice. "The stairwell. Dane Anderson. You've been jumpy ever since."

Oh if only she knew.

"I told you: I'm fine. This has nothing to do with Doggy."

"Doggy?"

I ignore the question before plopping back down at my desk, snatching up my pen.

"Well, while you're having a mental breakdown I'm gonna go pick us up some breakfast, okay?" Ruby stands up from her desk, grabbing her wallet and adjusting her cardigan. "Burrito sound good?"

"God, yes, just tell them to make it extra bacon-y please?"

"You got it."

She's out the door in an instant, and I tug at my nearest curl, pulling it down until I can see the splotchy blonde at the end. My roots are starting to grow out and it's starting to look more and more ratchet. My pen trails over my poem, writing the word hair dye in big block letters before I can even process what I'm doing. "Frick."

I ball up the sheet, tossing it into the trash can before kicking my socked feet up onto the table and letting out the greatest sigh known to man.

All my drafts thus far have come out as vague expressions of envy. The typical green feeling, the glowering, want for power, money, adoration.

They weren't about anything I felt deeply about, and so they'd been irrelevant to me—meaning they'd ultimately gone to the bin. Except if all my poems kept ending up in the trash, I'd have nothing to turn in for the assignment. Nothing to let me rank on that leaderboard above Dane.

I flip to a new page of my notebook, mind wandering back to the room across the hall. Would he also be working on his poem?

Would he also be thinking about me?

A shudder runs through my body at the thought before I shake my head. Ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous.

"Who do I envy?" The words inhabit the silence of the room as I tilt on the back two legs of the desk chair.

People with the world at their fingertips, who are smart enough to plan ahead so they don't end up out of high school with nowhere to go like me, people who can easily make and keep friends, with so much confidence they don't second guess themselves in the face of others' uncertainty.

People who are good at writing.

Like Dane Anderson.

God, it always comes back to him, doesn't it?

At least I can say he's failing, much like me, in the other departments of my envy—except for maybe confidence. He has a little too much of that to be honest.

Focus, Cleo.

"So that's it then? I'm really going to base my poem on a guy I can't stand?" Even as I question it out loud, I know it's going to end up being the case. "I must be insane."