"What's up with you?"

You turned to the side, just as your friend swung his arms around your shoulders. Stumbling a little, you tried to shrug him off. "Nothing's up with me," you grumbled.

He held on though and walked down the sidewalk with a soda in his hand. "Really? Then why do you look like you just got rejected by another boy?" he asked, pinching your cheek lightly.

You weren't up for his teasing at the moment. All you wanted was to rush home and mope in bed but that meant confronting your mother, too. "Stop that," you said, swiping his hand away. "I'm fine."

He took a good look at you and scoffed. Your eyebrows creased in frustration. As if your day couldn't get any worse, why was he here to rub it all in? "You don't look fine to me."

"Really, I'm fine." You turned and gave him a brittle smile. "See?"

"Right." He looked over his shoulder at the school, where there were crowds of people signing up for clubs at the front door. "Are you going to join any clubs this year?"

You shot him a glare though his eyes blinked innocently. "No," you muttered through gritted teeth.

"Why not?" His arm unhooked itself from your shoulder and it wasn't until then that you realized you had been leaning on him. You jerked back until you were walking along the very edge of the sidewalk. "I thought you were all proactive about stuff."

"It's a dumb reason," you said, looking at the cement underneath your feet. You didn't want to tell him how much your mother considered you the baby of the family. He would probably have a good laugh about that.

"Mmm, let me guess."

You sighed. "Go ahead."

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him tapping his chin. "The cute new boy in town is in all the clubs and you're scared that you're going to make a fool of yourself if you joined any of them."

"No. How do you know about the new boy anyway?"

"You told me," he said with a shrug while you rolled your eyes. "Okay then, your crush from last year decided that he likes girls who aren't involved in school so you're changing for him."

You stopped walking and it took a while for him to realize that you weren't beside him anymore. When he turned around, you were even more irritated by the calm look on his face. "Why do you always assume that my life is dictated by boys? And, for your information, my crush from last year is from last year."

He stuffed a hand in his pocket. "So you don't like him anymore?" he asked, walking towards you.

"No, I like...I like somebody else now." You bit your lip, carefully keeping in the information that you were about to spill out. It was hard to do since you told him almost everything. He was just so easy to talk to.

He stopped in front of you and looked as if he was studying your face. You thought he was going to ask you who you liked, like all the other times when he would ask nonchalantly. But he seemed to have dropped the subject. "So why didn't you join any clubs?"

You huffed impatiently and walked around him. "Because my mom won't let me, okay?" Your fists were balled at your sides as you stomped down the sidewalk with him quietly catching up to you. "She thinks I'll be staying out too late and I'll get mugged or something. I don't know. She cares too much."

Like you expected, he laughed but it wasn't as hard as you thought it would be. "That's cute."

"That's not cute. That's annoying," you mumbled before making a quick turn.

"Well, now you know you won't get mugged, right?"

"People still get mugged during the day," you retorted.

He chugged his drink until it was empty and then crushed the can in his hands. "Hey, at least there's one thing good about getting out of school this early." You waited to hear his reason as he ran to the recycling bin and then back. "You get to walk with me," he said with a wink.

He kept walking while you stood there, trying not to make a big deal out of his words. But your heart was fluttering and the heat in your cheeks was becoming unbearable.

"Hey," he called when he reached the crosswalk. "You coming?"

You skipped over, blushing madly.

---

august went by really fast omg i didn't even realize this request was sent in a whole month ago ;-; sorry for taking so long!