Five.

I hated to admit it, but my days were significantly less interesting without Madison Bell. At lunch, the Writing Workshop was empty. In class, there were no notes on the corners of my desk. Polly had started yearbook club and could only hang out on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Was I lonely?

It was late November when we were given our semester finals in Biology. We had a week to write a collaborative essay on a chapter of our choosing. I was aiming for cell structures or DNA replication - those were my forte. But there was a problem.

“You’ll work in pairs,” Mrs. Hancock finished just as the groans started up. No one liked group projects. “Don’t worry, though. This time you can pick your partner.”

There was a lot less groaning after that. I watched from the back of the room while everyone’e eyes darted around. Short, small hand signs confirmed pairings in the silence before Mrs. Hancock passed out the rubric. My eyes lingered to Madison against the window, who was pouring through the table of contents in her Biology book.

When the bell rang, everyone gathered to discuss their papers. I watched a girl hurry up to Madison’s desk - a short brunette with two clips in her hair. I couldn’t hear her over the commotion of backpacks being zipped. Madison smiled her usual smile and nodded over and over. I sunk into my seat.

Then, unexpectedly, Madison turned her head to look at me. For a single second, our eyes made contact. One second. Then my eyes darted down to my book and I started to pack up my things. I didn’t look up until I almost bumped right into Madison, standing with her hands behind her back and smiling at me.

“Wanna be partners?” she asked.

“Uh.” I looked around for the brunette. I couldn’t find her in the sea of faces.

“Oh, you don’t have to! I know after last time, I’m probably not the ideal partner. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, uh. Sure. Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I promise you won’t regret it!” Madison said as seriously as she could, which wasn’t very serious at all. I wasn’t sure how this girl made it through high school…

“Do you have a particular topic you want to do?” I asked.

“Oh, um.” I watched the exuberance slip away from her. She played with her fingers in front of her and the tops of her cheeks turned a rosy, soft pink. It was a cute color on her…

“No idea then?”

“Not really,” she admitted, smiling. It was that smaller, wrinkle-less smile from last time. Then I thought of the word for it. Forced.

“What about DNA replication?” I asked her.

“With the letters and the RNA and stuff? I don’t really get it. But if you want to!”

“No, it’s fine. What about cell structure?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” she said with certainty. I was starting to recognize the difference in her when she was sure of something. She was sure of this.

“I’ll tell Mrs. Hancock,” I told Madison. “And we can look up articles tonight and reconvene tomorrow?”

“Yes, let’s do that!” She waved goodbye and smiled that same smile again. Now that I thought about it, she smiled like that a lot.

I spent my uneventful lunch period looking up biology articles on the Writing Workshop’s computer. I found a few things that supported the stuff we talked about in class, and the textbook itself helped give me some big names to look into. By the end of the period, I had already found five sources on my own. By the next morning - Thursday - I had printed, highlighted, and copied the articles. I wasn’t going to be the downfall of another project with Madison Bell.

For Biology, we met in the library. The entire class period was allocated to discussing the project, picking a topic, and coming up with sources. Little did Mrs. Hancock know, I’d already done all that. When Madison came in, the bell had already rung. She snuck in without being seen: that sort of thing was hard to do in a classroom, but easy in a library. But something was amiss…

“I have a few articles here,” I said, handing her the copies I’d made for her. “They should give us a good place to start.”

“Me too,” she said, reaching into her bag and grabbing a few papers herself. She had four. They had sticky tapes on the edges with little arrows pointing to what she thought was important. And still, something just wasn't right…

“Alright, I’ll look these ones over and you can look those ones over?” She nodded and we traded papers. But after a minute, a quiet minute, I looked up at Madison. She had her cheek on her hand, reading through her glasses. Her eyes scanned slowly left to right, then flicked all the way back to the left again. I watched quietly for a while before I recognized what was wrong with this picture.

She wasn’t annoying me.

“Uh, are you alright?” I asked. Madison shot upright like I’d poked her with a needle. She turned to me with a bright smile and nodded her head.

“Of course! I’m sorry, I didn’t sleep well. I don’t mean to be antisocial.”

And though I hadn’t yet found a way to crack the code that wrapped around her words, her inflections, her tone, I had broken one code already. That smile. Madison was… lying.

What was I supposed to do now?

I went back to reading her papers and she went back to reading mine.

The bell rang at the end of the hour and the students started to file out of the room. Amanda waited by the library door for Madison. No one waited for me. But before Madison could pack up all of her books, I asked something I never thought I would ever in my life ask Madison Bell.

“Would you want to come over today?”

I think she may have been more surprised than I was. After all, we never really got along. Not really. Not until recently. And then this, after I’d turned down this exact invitation only weeks ago. Her eyes searched mine for answers. I didn’t have any to give her.

“Today isn’t great for me,” she said quietly, slowly: two words I’d never been able to use to describe Madison Bell. “Tomorrow?”

“Polly and I have plans.” Did we?

“This weekend?” she asked.

“You know,” I said with the shake of my head. “Never mind. We are all over this project; we can probably finish it at school next week.”

“No!” She almost cut off the last word of my sentence. I saw those same brown eyes, still searching for answers, well up with worry. They flickered side to side, like she couldn’t find which of my eyes she was supposed to be looking into. Until, finally, after the most awkward silence of my life, she managed, “Today’s fine.”

She fished out a scrap of notebook paper and wrote down her phone number. She pushed it into my hands and hurried out of the library without the usual spring in her step. I stared down at the paper. She dotted the ‘i’ in Madison with a heart.

Annoying, I smiled to myself.