The Geek Diaries

Chapter 6

Walking out of the bathroom, I dried my hair as I went into my room. I chucked my messy clothes into the washing machine and quickly went onto my laptop. I wondered if Cassie was on Facebook. Then it would be easier to chat to her without getting interrupted by people.

Logging onto Facebook, something I rarely went on, I checked my newsfeed which had hardly anything new. With a count of seven lousy friends, Facebook wasn't much of an addiction for me.

It was then I noticed that I had three new friend requests. Hoping one of them was from Cassie, I had a look and even though none were from Cassie, I certainly wasn't disappointed.

The first request was from Tyler, the guy who had walked up to me today before school. I felt pretty special that someone part of the popular group had wanted to become my friend, but even so. I didn't really want to be friends with someone who never liked me until I changed. I still clicked "accept" before looking at the next. It was from Isaac who passed me that note. I rolled my eyes, not knowing why I was going to accept but I did anyway. As I looked at the last, I realised it was the most friend requests I had gotten ever since I had signed up. The rest of my friends I had sent requests to, so it was pretty exciting to actually be the one to receive them.

The last was from Ashley, which made me grimace. I didn't want to stir things up by not accepting, so like the others I accepted and checked out her profile. I admit, it was because I was curious to see how many friends she had and if she was as mean online as she was in real life.

I couldn't believe it when I saw she had 748 friends. How could you have that many friends? I wondered. Her profile made her seem so nice and sugary sweet it was sickening, and her page had all these things like people saying nice things about her, or her saying how she adopted a homeless kitten or whatever. I knew she was painting this nice image of herself for people she didn't know, which made me feel sick.

"Alyssa! Dinner time!" I heard mom sing from the kitchen.

"Kay!" I yelled back, discovering how hungry I was then. I could smell something spicy coming from the kitchen, and my stomach grumbled.

I walked into the kitchen, getting greeting by a spicy curry on my plate.

"Thanks mom," I said, grinning. "It looks great."

She smiled as I took my seat. We were eating in silence until she cleared her throat and I looked at her.

"So are you going to tell me what really happened today?"

"What?"

"When someone 'accidentally' poured a drink over you today," she said, eyeing me up.

I looked down at my lap. "It's nothing," I mumbled.

I could practically see her raising her eyebrows. "So why were you covered in someone's drink?" I heard mom ask, sighing. "You really can tell me Alyssa."

It was like I caved in, because the whole story was suddenly pouring out of me, and I ended up telling mom everything. About how I was teased right from day one, and when I thought a makeover would make it better, it didn't. I got it worse than before.

"...And that's why Victoria spilled iced tea on us," I said, pulling a face at the memory.

I could see my mom's fists clenching, practically choking the fork she was holding. "Do you want me to tell one of your teachers about this? This-this girl," she spat out, "shouldn't be going around the school like she owns it."

I shrug. "In a way, she does."

My mom shook her head sadly then. "It shouldn't be like that. Why do the mean ones always have to rule the school?"