Chapter 7
The next day everyone was staring at me, either laughing silently or outright in my face. Trying my best to ignore it, I made my way to first lesson all the while praying Cole wouldn’t show up. I think luck wasn’t on my side because he sauntered in with Barbie. I didn’t dare look at him but I could feel him looking at me as he passed by me to the back of the class. Nicole snickered and just like that my anger had made a comeback.
I had prepared myself in the morning to face this; Cole, Barbie and the looks I was currently getting, one or two actually looked at me in pity. I didn’t want pity; I was going to get Cole back for humiliating me. But as Nicole stood before me still sniggering, I felt a weird emotion: hurt. Internally, I was debating on why I was feeling this when Nicole spoke up.
“Don’t worry, Freak. The Coke actually made you look uglier than you already are.” Once again the whole class laughed except for Jess who had her lips pursed in anger. It was like déjà vu from day one here at Hell hole.
I took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. I made no response and I didn’t even look up at her. Seeing as I wasn’t going to reply to her, I felt her presence leave. I sighed.
“Why didn’t you say anything to her?” I looked at Jess as if she was crazy. Me? Talk back to Barbie in front of a whole class? Jess continued, “You’re stronger than even me, you know you can stand up to her. So, why didn’t you?”
I think I was a little shocked to say the least because she was bang on about me being able to stand up to Barbie. What she didn’t know was I would stand up to her, eventually. So I just shrugged at her and focused on the lesson.
English couldn’t have been any worse. I was sitting like a statue and Cole kept staring at me. I couldn’t focus on the work as my skin started to prickle after a while from his gaze. Glancing at the clock, I still had five minutes of the lesson left. My knee was bouncing up and down and I stared at the clock as if that would make it go faster. One more minute. When it finally did ring, I ran out as fast as I could.
By the end of the day, I was practically ready to pull out my hair. The laughing, the bullying had all gone up a notch. It was like just glancing at me was the funniest thing ever and it would set off laughter amongst the student body. Sitting in my last period, I mindlessly drew random circles on my book. I had no idea what the teacher was saying but I think even she knew why everyone was laughing at me but I was thankful of her to not call me out as I wasn’t paying attention. As the bell rang, I hurriedly put my stuff in my bag when Mrs. Stevenson stopped me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, Nina?” I sighed and nodded. Walking up to her, I realised she waited for the nosy people in the class to leave before actually starting to talk to me again. I looked up to see the last person pass by me and I froze. Cole? All this time and I didn’t know he was also in my Marketing class? I saw him looking at me so I just gave him a glare. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion but he didn’t say anything and walked out.
“Nina, you’re last assignment wasn’t of my expectations from you and I don’t think you were happy with it either. So here’s what I’m going to do. I will let you redo it because I know you are capable of doing more. Also, whatever is distracting you shouldn’t let it affect your grades. Just ignore them.” She was talking about how everyone laughed at me whenever I passed them. I pressed my lips tightly together before nodding and walking out.
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Right now I was in my bed munching on some popcorn and watching Bridesmaids when my bedroom door burst open. I jumped at the sound and scowled at Ali who was huffing. She practically dragged me out of bed before standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and let me tell you, she did not look happy. I cleared my throat.
“What was that about?”
“What was what about?” I asked trying to play dumb.
She huffed. “You know what I’m talking about,” she said, referring to the Coke Incident.
I sighed and sat back down on my bed. “I don’t know.” Ali raised a brow at me in response. I think my face showed I didn’t want to talk about it because she got comfortable next to me and we watched the rest of the movie in silence.
“I’m bored,” I said looking up at my cream ceiling which had some kind of swirly design on it. I had to give it to Mom because she had a good taste in design. Ali sighed beside me.
“So, what am I supposed to do about it?” she replied in the same bored tone.
“Let’s prank someone!” I said excitedly, jumping up from my bed. Ali sat up and looked at me weirdly.
“And who may I ask, are we going to prank at… half eleven in the night?” she asked looking at her watch.
I tapped my finger on my chin. How could I prank at this time of the night? I wanted to prank someone for sure; I mean I was just so bored! But who? Everyone is probably asleep. I sighed in disappointment. But then I didn’t need a person to actually pull a prank.
“I know! I know!” I said jumping up and down. Ali looked at me curiously. “Ali, I need you to get me some help, a lot of cotton wool and I mean a lot of it. I will get a few bottles of water and then we’ll set off.”
“Okay…” Ali said slowly. “First question, why do we need help? Second, why cotton wool out of all things and finally who exactly are we pranking?”
I smirked at her. “Cole. We’re pranking Cole.”
Ali looked at me in surprise. “You do know that it’s late at night and he’s probably in bed and we have no means of getting into his house to pull any sort of prank on him.”
“Who said we were pulling a prank directly on him?”
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