𝕞𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕓𝕖𝕥𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕟 || 𝚅𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚎 𝙷𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚛

22. "does that relax you?"

"Thank you, honestly. I wouldn't even be halfway done if not for you." I laugh as I start gathering my pens and papers.

"Oh it's fine. But you'll have to help me out in literature next time." Esther tells me, handing me my last paper. She's the closest friend I have at school so far. She's basically smarter than me in everything, except literature. That's my speciality. I'm not bad at other things, I just really struggle in putting my thoughts into words, which is why Esther helps me with religion, when we have to write about deep topics. She asks me questions, I answer and she makes my answers sound more artistic.

"Of course." I say as I get up from her bed. Her dorm is pretty organised on her side. She shares the dorm with a friend, who I've never met, but I'm guessing isn't as organised as her.

"Do you need a ride home?" Esther offers.

"Oh don't worry about it, I have to go out with my friends anyways, so they'll come pick me up now." I assure her. Gigi, Mia, Amira and I are going shopping this afternoon. There's really nothing I'd rather be doing on a Saturday. I think we're going to stay at The Hype House after.

I call Gigi to tell her she can come pick me up and turns out they just go into the school parking lot and they were ready to pull me out of the dorms.

"Did you guys miss me that much?" I tease as I enter the car, behind Mia, who's driving.

"No, we just want to go shopping." Mia says as she starts driving out of the parking lot. Gigi and Amira agree with her and I roll my eyes.

"Y'all could at least pretend." I laugh.

"Sorry, she's a bit of an attention seeker." Gigi apologises on my behalf and I lightly push her. Being Gigi, she turns it into something bigger and complains about how I hurt her the whole ride. Luckily the ride isn't too long, so we don't have to listen to Gigi for hours.

I've never been to this mall before, but I'm good at orienting myself if it's for shopping. We spend at least 2 hours in the mall and we ended up splitting up, so we decide to go back to the Hype an show ourselves what we bought. Gigi and I used to do that all the time. If one of us ever went to the mall without the other, we would always show the other what we got. Or if our parents got us something and we weren't sure how it could be of use, we would help each other style it.

It's 6 o'clock when we get to Mia's place and my legs hurt from all the walking. We stay in the living room, which is always noisy because of all the boys and their dumb challenges. We stay in a corner on the beanbags.

"Ok, I'll go first." I decide. I've got a lot of stuff, but I'm excited to show everyone. I think I made some good choices and I'm proud.

"So what do you guys want to see first: t-shirts, crop shirts, sweaters, crop sweaters, sweatpants, mom jeans, bucket hats, bracele-"

"Lena no one cares, just show us what you got." Amira complains.

"Why is everyone being mean to me today?" 

"Because you're particularly annoying today." Gigi laughs.

"Uhm, ok. That was mean." I reply.

"Lena just start!" Mia yells laughing and Gigi and Amira agree with her.

"Wow, you guys are mannerless. Anyways, I'll start from the t- shirts then."

And one after the other, every item I bought gets rated. They criticise most of what I got, but I can tell they're just joking. I guess they picked me as the center of their jokes today.

"Ok well that's all I've got. Sorry they all look like potato sacks." I mock them before I put everything back in my paper bags.

"Finally! You got so much shit and not even one doesn't look like it didn't come out of my great grandma's closet." Mia says as she gets up and pushes me to my bean bag.