Will POV

I walked back into my English class the next day and tried to tell myself that it was fine, that this wasn't that big of a deal and if need be I would do the project by myself and there was nothing to worry about. Then again, I was sort of afraid of presenting and speaking in public in general. Not that I was shy, I'm not. I suppose the word for it could be insecure, there was just something about standing in front of a group of people and talking and watching them stare back at you with their board and judgmental faces that's just the perfect amount horrifying.

The worst time it happened was in 7th grade, I ran for president of NHS at my middle school, I was so nervous my voice cracked at least 5 times, and it probably made it sound like I was crying even though I wasn't, and it was all kinds of embarrassing. In case you were wondering, no I did not win either.

Aside from that, public speaking and giving presentations is a horrible experience and whoever decided that students should have to do it on a regular basis is a truly evil person. But at least when you are presenting with a friend or a decent person in general, you can look away while the other person is talking and not have to see everyone staring at you or the teacher taking notes on everything you're saying.

The problem with Nico is that he won't talk unless it's a sarcastic comment, and I am going to be going up to the board to talk about Aphrodite of all things, and it will be exactly like Frank's presentation last time we had to do this and he awkwardly waited for a solid minuet for Nico to come up with him before realizing that wasn't going to happen and that, quite honestly, was the most second-hand embarrassment that I have ever felt or someone in my whole life. Even if while describing it, it doesn't sound so bad, everything is made 10 times worse when 30 teenagers that you see 5 days a week and will continue to see 5 days a week for the next few years are watching you and you can feel your teacher knocking off points on the section of the rubric that talks about being, prepared.

Anyway, I sat down in my seat next to Nico who was already there, even though the bell hadn't rung yet.

"Nico," I said, hopefully sounding like I had a lot more confidence than I really had. "I'm not going to put up with you sitting here doing nothing while I do all the work and you get a grade for it. Either you can help, or you can..."

"Okay." he interrupted.

"What?" I asked surprised, I had an about 4 minuet speech prepared to get him to do something, and he just agreed like that!

"What do mean what? You said you have to do something, I said okay."

"What happened to you?" I asked, unsure.

Nico narrowed his eyes, "Huh?"

"Frank couldn't even get you to write your own name on the paper, why are you suddenly willing to help? Something changed."

"You've only ever heard me say a few sentences in your entire life and you sit here pretending to know me!"

"It's kind of common knowledge that you..."

"That I'm what?" Nico sked insulted, "Lazy? Barely passing school? Stuck up rich kid?"

"That's not what I was going to..."

"Save it." Nico said now extremely irritated. "You're not exactly acting like your normal self either."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"Where are your thousands of followers and friends, aren't you supposed to be popular? One of those annoying loud people that talks really loud about pointless topics, very dramatic about everything, and has half the girls in the school trying to get with you?"

"That's not what I do!"

"Can you just shut up so we can start working then?" he said just as the bell rung and the last few kids jumped into their seats before as the teacher walked in.

"Fine."

"So what's the assignment again?" Nico asked.

I pulled out the rubric and handed it over. I had scribbled down the name of the god we were assigned at the bottom.

"What is this supposed to say?" he pointed at Aphrodite's name.

"That says Aphrodite, that's the god we were assigned."

"You have horrible handwriting." He paused, "So, do you know who Aphrodite is?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I?"

"Oh I just thought that popular kids like yourself don't know Greek mythology because they don't read unless they have to, and sometimes not even then."

I was really started to get pissed off by this kid. Who did he think he was? "For the last time, I am not a popular kid, and we are also reading the Odyssey in this class so it would be kind of hard not to know these things." I accidently raised my voice.

"You talk too loud."

"Do not, and I can say I am surprised you know who Aphrodite is considering..."

"Considering what? That I'm dumb?"

"I was going to say considering you always seem too busy sleeping during class or maybe all the time you stare into space doing nothing gets in the way of doing productive things like reading."

"Will, could you repeat what I just said?" Mr. Blofis asked. When I couldn't say anything, he continued, "Class started two minutes ago. I've never had to call either of you out for talking in class, hopefully this isn't the start of that."

"I'm sorry." I apologized humiliated.

"Just don't let it happen again. You all can start working on your projects now, you'll have the rest of the hour to do so."

Looking back at the rubric it seemed impossible to get this all done by Friday, and I knew Nico wouldn't be interested in meeting up after school to work on it. We got a somewhat decent start on it but not as much as I would have liked. We had to take multiple breaks from working to argue about stuff that didn't even matter.

The next day class went by similar to this, the end of the hour was getting close, and we weren't even half-way done. I decided it couldn't hurt to ask and if he said no, then so be it.

"Nico, we should probably meet up after school today to work more."

Nico rolled his eyes, "Perfect, now I can't even get away from you outside of school."

I chose to ignore that, "So, does your house work?"

"My house?! You're not coming to my house. I'll go to yours if we have to do this."

"Are you sure you want to come to my house?"

"Want to? No. Have to? Probably."

I gave him my address and we made a time for him to come over.

A feeling of dread came over me as I realized someone from my school would be at my house. If I was lucky, there wouldn't be any problems today, but what were the chances of that?"

I pulled out my phone as the bell rung and pulled up Austin's contact. I sent him a quick and kind of desperate text explaining that Nico would be coming over after school and I was definitely going to need his help.