Nobody Told Me That I Would Be Learning To French Kiss HIM in French Class! [`13]

Hiccups. Hm, haven't had that for a while.

My hiccups though, came in the form of squeaks. High-pitched squeaks that turned heads for all the wrong reason. People probably thought I was so stressed out with school that I was starting to turn crazy. But the truth was that I was turning insane because of these silly hiccups.

And the worst thing about this was...

"Presentation time!" boomed Mr. Curtis. He was looking jolly and 'jiggly' (as Belinda put it) like usual, only his nose was red.

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. Oh no, I had a sudden image of Santa Clause speaking in French. Mr. Curtis slash Clause?

Lined up in front of the class were the small scales of architecture that we sent in. Some, like Matthew's, you could say was a work of fine art. And the rest looked like someone threw in sticks into a box and poured glue inside it before shaking it vigorously and taking it out aaand...

...voila.

If you looked closely enough you could even see some glue dripping off the sticks and to the surface of the table.

I slumped back against my chair, my hand was still over my mouth. These hiccups were starting to hurt my throat.

Maybe it was Matthew, a sudden ridiculous thought popped into my head.

Maybe he had some kind of a radioactive-obsessive-congenital-infectious-hiccup disease that somehow got transferred to me and thus altering my chromosomes (since it was so radioactive) when he kissed me.

Shut up, Hannah.

"You sound cute," someone whispered behind me. For some reason this time my heart was doing some funny thing inside my chest when I heard his voice. I removed my hand from my mouth and pressed it tightly against my chest, in fear that I might get a cardiac arrest.

I felt jittery.

"HIC- do you know what to - HIC! - say? HIC?!"

"I do," he said with a fake hurt expression. "I'm not that stupid."

"I didn't say you were stupid. You said that yourself," I said, a smirk on my face before it broke because I erupted in a chain of hiccups.

Matthew leaned further against his seat, practically whispering to me conspiratorially. His eyes darted left and right before saying, "I'm beginning to think that maybe you're a bit too nervous today. If you screw it up, can I have your CDs after you commit your glorious suicide."

"After I kill you, sure," I said, shrugging casually as I turned my attention back to Mr. Curtis. I smiled to myself, intertwining my fingers together. It was then I realized they were cold, almost numb.

I spaced out.

I remembered the day that my nerves got the best of me. I regained a bit of my confidence back after therapy. Yes, you heard me right, T-H-E-R-A-P-Y. It was when I was still 9 years old. I was at the state spelling bee competition, my hair held up in pigtails, wearing braces (I had pretty bad teeth back then) and...

...er well, just being a nerd.

"Catastrophe," the judge with the strict tortoiseshell spoke, loud and clearly. Well, thinking back I thought the tortoiseshell was a bit cliche. But back then I didn't even know what 'cliche' was.

The overly-bright spotlight was focused on me. I didn't know why I was sweating so much. My heart was thumping, I thought I was going to have a cardiac arrest. The audience eyes were on me, some were smiling, some looking bored to death and some was snoring their way through the competition.

So not knowing what to do, I took my uncle's advice. I imagined the audience in the underwear.

And the sheer visual of it made me scream hysterically on stage. They thought I was possessed. I kept pointing at the audience in horror when the emcee tried to calm me down. Heck, they even called an extortionist.

"Hannah?" Matt's voice came, shocking me out of my reverie. Everyone was looking at me. I didn't even realized my hiccuping was getting outrageous.

Matt grabbed hold of my hand, squeezing it gently as he gave me an assuring smile. I looked him nervously in the eyes. "Matt," I whispered. "I'm scared. I haven't done this presentation thingy for a while now. In other classes I just make the presentation and let others take over from there but--"

"These are our friends," he told me, rolling his eyes a bit playfully. "It's not like they're going to eat you whole."

I just stared at him dead in the eye.

"Showtime. Just trust me, alright? I'll take care of you."

I knew being super-glued to my seat for the entire period wasn't a good idea, so I got up with him and we walked in front of the class. "If you're still nervous," he muttered under his breath. "Just focus on that bug thing sticking at the back of the class."

I wheeled around, searching for that bug.

"What's a huge caterpillar doing in the class?" I asked.

"Hello Mrs. Zachary!" I chirped happily. Rosa Zachary was a petite woman with dark brown hair and a pair of green eyes. Her skin was fair and tanned, and there were freckles scattered across her nose. Even for her petite figure, there was this twinkle in her eyes that implied that this was probably not the woman you wanted to mess with.

"You must be..." she trailed off, her eyebrows furrowing.

"Hannah Miller," Matt said, looking appalled.

Her face brightened up in recognition. "Ah yes, yes," she nodded, gesturing us to come in. "My son have been talking non-stop about you."

"Mom!" Matt said, pouting and I couldn't help but smiled at how childish Matt was being. She snickered, wiping her hands on her apron. "I'm glad to have you here with us, Hannah. If it weren't for you I don't know how this guy over here would ever get anything short of a D in his French."

I heard Matt muttered something along the lines of, "it's not like you even know how to speak French too."

"Oh, I just helped here and there," I said, blushing. "Matt's a really talented guy, after all. Kind of annoying to work with most of the times," I said. I couldn't resist adding that last part in.

Mrs. Zachary chuckled. "Ah, well at least you two got an A on your French project."

Suddenly there was a commotion in - what I presume to be - the living room.

"Matthew? An A? Fuh-rench?! The world is going to end after all!" said someone.