PICS and IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

09. The Context

I get off my car and start walking towards my school while looking at my phone.

The class duty week is over. I saw Frank for only two days in the train. He really had too much faith in me, saying "see you tomorrow" the last time I saw him.

Turns out my alarm clock was no match for me after all. Just as I predicted. I turned up late for the rest of the week. Not late enough to get in trouble though.

I start scrolling through the feed in my phone. Last night I found Frank's social media.

Frank and I never exchanged contacts. So I snooped around the internet for a little while to find his online self.

I stop walking and position my thumb over the follow request button. I'll be able to send a message to him once he accepts it.

However... will it be too much? Sure we had a vibe going on, but it's not like he explicitly showed interest in me. I don't want to come off too eager.

Should I send the request or not?

My phone is suddenly gone.

Grunting, I look at Raylan before me. He's with Tony and the others. Focused on my phone, I must not have noticed them ambush me.

"Who's this? Your secret crush?" Raylan says, looking at my phone that he'd just snatched from me.

"He's someone who does not make me want to kill him and dump his body deep into the ocean where even the sharks can't find it," I say.

"He seems like a Mr. goody two shoes. Sure you can manage him?" Raylan says.

I grab back my phone and tap on the send request button in front of him.

He looks displeased. Good.

"Where does he go?" Tony asks, deviating my attention from glaring at Raylan.

"Lincoln."

"Our year?"

"Yeah."

"When did you meet him?"

"Last week wh- hold on, why the heck am I answering all this for you? Mind your own business. Stay away from my personal life," I say to Tony.

Raylan laughs. "Personal life? Even if by some chance you guys end up dating, I bet it won't take even a day for him to break up with you after learning about you and your boring personal life."

"He already finds me interesting enough to treat me coffee each morning I saw him."

Raylan's jaws clench. He's not happy my social life is booming. Who knows one day I might surpass even him and become the most popular kid in our school.

"Getting coffee from strangers you barely know - I didn't know you've become this desperate to find a boyfriend," Raylan says, making me angry.

At least I'm not desperate enough to throw myself at boys in parking lots is what I want to say, but my friends are here.

"What's going on?" Becca says.

Raylan just turns away and leaves. His friends leave with him.

Later, at lunch, in the cafeteria, Tess says, "Why didn't you just threaten him with the photos?"

"He just riles me up and runs away even before I could remember about the photos. Also, it's kind of tiring to threaten him with those pictures for every little thing. Why won't he just back off and leave me alone?"

"You both will drop dead if you can't pick a fight with each other at least once a day. It's been the same since kindergarten," Becca reminds me.

That's right. The hostility between Raylan and I go way back. We were small. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. We were just kids in the same pre school.

It all changed on that fateful day when Raylan picked up my pet stone, Grubby.

I'd been keeping that stone safe with me and playing with it for a few months then. One day I was building a sandcastle with the stone next to me.

Suddenly this boy ran over to me. He took the stone and ran away. I ran after him. We reached the compound wall. There was a ball stuck on the tree close to the wall.

He threw the stone at it. The ball fell. He merrily picked it up and ran away, while I was left traumatized watching the edge of the wall from over which Grubby was thrown into a cruel world.

I started crying.

I kept crying.

A search party was sent by the teachers into the world outside, looking for the stone. I gave the best description I could have of Grubby.

The adults found a lot of stones. But Grubby was not one of them.

Raylan was forced to apologize to me.

He said sorry. Then he called me silly for keeping a stone for a pet.

I charged at him, grabbed and pulled his hair.

He cried out and pulled mine back.

We were separated before there was any blood shed.

There we were, at the opposite sides. In tussled hair and crumpled clothes, glaring at each other.

That's how it all started.

I now glare at that same boy across the cafeteria. Grown up. Too strong for me to pull his hair and get away with it. Too popular to bully. Too much of everything, including in bothering me.

To this day I can never understand why he picked Grubby. There were so many stones on the playground. But he crossed them all, stepped into the sand bed, walked towards us and picked up Grubby who was hanging there close to me.

That evil dragon, taking away others' precious.

My phone pings. I look at it. Frank had accepted my request and has sent me a message. "Your user name is Grubbye3, and you have a stone for a profile photo. No wonder I couldn't find you, Ellie."

I chuckle. After accepting my request he can see my photos and found out it's me.

"It's in the memory of my late pet stone Grubby," I text back.

"Late? You managed to kill a stone?" He texts back right away.

"Not me. An evil dragon I know."

"Need me to slay the dragon for you princess?"

Giggling, I bite my lower lip. When I look up I see my friends mischievously smiling at me.

I wink at them and look back at my phone. "No. I managed to imprison it for now," I send with a smile.

I look up towards Raylan's table, and am surprised to see him staring at me. He quickly looks away and resumes eating his food.

That's right - Although things may not have changed much since that day at the playground, this time I did manage to tame the dragon a little.

You just watch from the heaven, Grubby. I'll get our revenge.

End of chapter