You're the newest popular gossip. And you hate it.

They were all staring at you as you walked down the halls.

It was incredibly awkward. You could feel their eyes peering the back of your skull as you put your school stuff away in your locker.

"Hey, it's that guy that Tiffany's dating now." You heard some girl whisper from behind.

"I wonder what she sees in him..." Her friend replied back.

"I heard she's just dating him to make Zeke jealous, though."

"Well, couldn't she choose someone more good looking? I mean... He's kind of lanky, in my opinion."

"YOUR MOM IS LANKY!" You screamed back at the girls behind you with the most well thought out and epic comeback in the world.

Actually, you didn't. You silently kept that in your head and pretended to ignore them as you walked to the cafeteria. You'd rather not lash out and make yourself look like an idiot in front of everyone. Aauuugh, you really hate high school drama...

"Hey John!" An entirely different girl cheerfully waved at you as she walked past. "Remember me from yesterday? I came up to talk to you during lunch!" She asked.

You remembered her face, but you had no idea who she was.

"Uh..." You awkwardly mumbled.

She continued on as if she didn't notice your obliviousness, "Sorry to hear you're getting wrapped up in this Tiffany and Zeke nonsense. It's all everyone seems to be talking about this morning." She offered her condolences, "Unless you actually have the hots for Tiffany, you should probably just break up with her and let her deal with her own problems. It's not worth the headache when it comes with her."

"Right, thanks... I definitely know what you mean..." You sighed, "But it's complicated... Don't worry about it too much. This will be over soon, hopefully."

"If you say so." She shrugged, before walking ahead, "See you later in lunch!"

You waved back with an awkward smile until she left. Then you realized you completely forgot to ask what her name was.

You facepalmed and sighed again.

It's been like this the whole morning. The majority of the students here who didn't know you before all this happened were now talking about you as if you were some sort of infamous legend. People kept staring at you everywhere you went, trying to judge what kind of person you were. Some thought you were some kind of hero for stealing Tiffany away from Zeke, some thought you were a villain who was purposely ruining Tiffany's and Zeke's popular relationship, some found you underwhelming, and some actually knew the real truth behind behind what was going on and were taking pity towards you.

On the flip side, there were some genuinely okay and nice people who didn't seem to care too much about the whole situation, and were actually sticking up for you. They happened to be the same people who you met up with yesterday in the cafeteria, plus a few others from different classes. They were doing their best to help stop this stupid rumor mill from getting out of hand, something you were really grateful for. You barely even know any of these people, but they were going out of their way to make this whole thing much easier on you.

You seriously needed to learn all of their names and get to know them as friends.

For now though, you just wanted to fill your stomach with something. Even the glop that your school provided would probably do the trick...

After entering the school cafeteria, a few students noticed you and whispered to their friends. Slowly, the majority of students in the lunchroom now had their eyes squarely on you.

It was an incredibly uncomfortable feeling.

You saw Zeke in the corner of your eye, glaring at you from his table. Unsurprisingly, Tiffany wasn't with him like normal. He muttered something to his friends, and they started snickering and giggling like a bunch of morons. Zeke smirked triumphantly, as if he just won some points over you in his invisible contest that only existed in his mind.

Despite how stupid it sounded, it still reaaaaalllly pissed you off.

You clenched your hands and ignored him, walking through the room to get your lunch. Everyone continued to stare at you and started whispering amongst themselves, and you managed to hear a few sentences here and there.

"So he stole Tiffany away from Zeke, huh? Damn, I'm jealous..."

"Omg, he's sort of hot... I wonder if this will turn into a Ménage à trois?"

"I can't believe this asshole has the gall to ruin Zeke's relationship!"

"I thought it was just a feud, but I never expected her to dump Zeke and move on so quickly..."

"Guy is being used like a violin, poor sucker. Hope he wakes up from the titties and realizes Tiffany's just manipulating him."

You. Hate. Highschool. Drama. So much.

You considered it a miracle that you managed to stay sane despite all of this, as you walked to your table with a tray of foodstuff in your hands.

Thankfully, some of the students that you actually liked walked up and sat down next to you with friendly smiles. They greeted you warmly and took your mind off the whole situation with pleasant conversations.

You even heard a few whispers that tried to dispel any of the more harsher rumors floating around.

"Dude, just stop, okay? You don't even know him."

"Come on, he's not that bad. It's just a misunderstanding."

"And how do you know for sure he's doing this on purpose, huh? Did you see him actually do it yourself, or are you just saying what you heard from other people?"

"If anything, this is more Zeke's fault. He tried to record Tiffany without her permission. Isn't that more creepy?

It wasn't nearly enough to outmatch the ones that were spreading the rumors... But it was the thought that counts.

You were able to calm down considerably as you got to know the new friends in your life.

Time passes and lunch period was nearly halfway done until the next bell bring. You were in the middle of an engaging topic about The Matrix movies, explaining how everything technically made sense after you finished watching the trilogy about twenty times.

"See, now here's the thing... Technically, Neo isn't the actual Chosen One that everyone assumed. That was a secret red herring that nobody realized. The real Chosen One was actually-"

"Agent Smith, yeah." One of the friends in your group interrupted.

You blinked, before asking, "Wait, what? You already know?"

"Yeah, there was this guy who made a video about it on YouTube. He did this, like, months ago man."

"Oh." You frowned, "Welp, I don't feel special or smart anymore... Twenty times watching the same three movies over and over again, foiled by some guy in YouTube video."

The group chuckled, and one of them lightly slapped your shoulder in a joking manner.

But you weren't laughing. You were sad for reaaaalsies.

The conversation got interrupted when you received a text message.

Opening it up, you saw a new chat message from Tiffany Brian.

TF: Let's hang out for a bit. See me on the rooftop like yesterday?

"Hold on, guys. I need to respond to this..." You said distractedly, texting back a quick response.

JD: Something wrong, or is it the plan about Zeke?

TF: Nothing wrong, but yeah, I had a good idea to make Zeke jealous. I also kind of wanted to talk a little too, maybe.

JD: Talk about what?

TF: I dunno. Anything you want, I guess.

You raised an eyebrow at that, but replied without giving it much thought.

JD: K. I'll be up there soon.

"Hey guys, it's been fun talking to you all." You gratefully told them, pocketing your phone away and picking up your lunch tray, "I got somewhere to go though. Hope we can all hang out like this again later!"

You got up and left, your whole group waving goodbye before resuming The conversation without you. You threw away your disgusting glop and hurried to the stairs that lead up to the rooftops.

______

You breathed heavily once you reached the rooftops, bending your knees as you tried to catch your breath.

Fuck, you really needed to get in shape. How were you able to round after round of nonstop sex without a sweat, but going up a few flight of stairs caused you to almost feel like you were dying?!

Ugh, whatever...

You caught your breath and looked around to find Tiffany.

You saw her in the corner of your eye, her back turned as she looked out in the distance.

"Hey, Tiff." You called out to her, "Sorry if I took a while to-"

The moment she turned around to look at you, you swore you felt your heart stop beating just for a second as your breath got hitched.

She blushed when she saw you, a brief moment of embarassment flashed in her eyes before she looked away and awkwardly brush her hair.

You don't know if it was the angle of the lighting or if she was wearing some sort of special makeup or whatever, but...

Holy shit, she was amazingly hot. Like, I mean, you already knew a lot of people considered her attractive, and so did you at some point, but... Woah. You never realized it before, but she was freaking cute. Amazingly cute.

So cute.

What the hell is this feeling? It was like... Your chest kind of hurts just looking at her. It reminded you of the time back when you used to have a crush on her in middle school. Back when you used to be obsessed with her for months...

You haven't felt this emotional since then... Why was it suddenly flaring up now?

Whatever came over you made you flustered for a bit, before you shook your head and calmed down. As quickly as it appeared, the feeling was suddenly gone like it never even happened.

Although, your eyes still lingered on her face for a bit. Seriously, something about her today was just really cute...

She coughed nervously, before waving at you, "Hey, John."

"Yeah. Hi..." You greeted back. "You called me up here to talk, right?"

She nodded. Then she picked up a lunchbox from the floor and took out her phone. "So, I have a few good ideas I wanted to discuss about how we can get Zeke to freak out over us. While we're doing that though, I want you to feed me food in a romantic way while I take pictures of us acting cute together."

...

"but why tho" You asked dumbly.

"So that I can post them on Facebook and brag about having an awesome boyfriend." She said simply.

You stared at her blankly, slowing taking in what she was suggesting. She was gonna take pictures of you together, acting like a couple, and then post them on her social media account?

That sounded stupid.

...

"Eh, alright." You shrugged. It wasn't like doing this was gonna drive the rumor mill any crazier than it already was. Plus, if it was going to make Zeke pissed off and jealous, then you might as well go along with it.

Also, and you sort of find yourself crazy for it, but the idea actually sounded kinda fun to you.