The Beautiful Ones

17- It Was A Pretty Sassy Hibiscus

Alice

“My life is miserable.” Zoey groaned. “I don’t want to be here.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” I tried to assure my broken hearted friend. She won’t admit to being broken hearted, of course, but I think she is. Just because they weren’t dating doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a tad crush on the boy, and now he’s gone and I feel really bad for Zoey.

She turned and looked at me with a hint of a glare as we walked down the hallway. “What else is there to do?”

“Revenge, whining, crying, ranting, anything. Just stop beating yourself up over it. He’s definitely not worth it and you’re a shooting star so don’t let him shoot you down.”

That made Zoey laugh, which was good because she hasn’t laughed in the past 24 hours. “Is that a quote from somewhere?”

I shook my head proudly. “Nope. I just made it up and I think it was pretty darn cute, not to mention great advice.”

“Sure, whatever you say.” She sang as we continued walking towards our seventh period classes. “I’m going into art with you, because I do not want to see him right now at all.”

“Okay.” I agreed with her. “But only for today, you can’t run from your writing class all year.”

“I know.” She whined. “I wish that were the case, though, that’d be really nice.”

“Well, that’s not the case, so buck up.” I chirped teasingly, turning down the hallway to where my art class was.

“Ugh, I hate him so much.” She mumbled gruffly.

“He’s such a jerk.” I huffed in complete agreement.

“I know!” Zoey continued to rant as she sat beside me and watched as I began to draw a flower. We were given a free period since the art teacher, Mr. Roman, wasn’t there today so I decided to draw a flower. I offered to let Zoey draw with me but she declined to nobody’s surprise, she really can’t draw. We were both pretty artsy, just in different departments. We both liked to sing but I also liked to draw and paint whereas Zoey enjoys writing, and she’s really good at it, although she doesn’t really let me read a lot of what she writes, which is baffling, but it’s her business, I suppose. I like to show people my art, it’s freeing, I think. I paint my emotions, so when people see my artwork, they see how I’m feeling. I dunno, I just think that it’s kind of cool how that works.

“What are you going to do?” I asked her.

“I’m going to just stop talking to him, that’s it.” She declared, grabbing a piece of notebook paper and then she began to angrily scribble on the poor paper.

“That’s it?” I asked with raised eyebrows. “You gotta be at least a little sad.”

“I am sad.” She admitted with a slight frown with her brown eyes downcast onto the flimsy white paper on the table in front of her. “But I’m not going to cry about it.”

“I’ll get ice cream anyway and we’ll stay at my house tonight.” I suggested. “I think my Pocahontas DVD is getting a little dusty anyway.”

“You can’t solve everything with Disney movies, Ali.” Zoey chuckled, rolling her eyes at me.

I grinned innocently at her and began shading in the rough sketch of my flower. “Oh, but darling, I can try.”

She smiled softly and then jumped slightly when she realized that she was scribbling so angrily on the piece of paper that her pencil broke. With an effortless groan, she dropped the pencil onto the table and then looked over at my paper with the flower on it. “So what kind of flower are you drawing?”