HBIC: Head Barbie in Charge

30 - Pay Your Dues

"MELROSE MESSENGER! MELROSE MESSENGER!"

Two geeks bombarded Bunny at the open gate with flailing newspapers in their hands. She came out of her daze, snatched one of them from the redhead on her left and kept pressing. Bunny never read the paper because it had never been worth a damn. Nobody cared about what was going on in Drama Club or when the next Mathletes match would be. All that mattered was that she and her Barbies stayed out of it. She glazed over the front cover and quickly jammed it into her bag.

She was already in a bad mood because a certain someone had been avoiding her calls all weekend. Max would not have ignored so much as a whisper from Bunny, let alone countless messages. Tell me this fool didn't chicken out, Bunny thought to herself as she sifted the campus looking for him. Her Geometry grade had gone from a lowly C- to a B+ because of him. After all the effort he had made to get back into Bunny's good graces, it would have been a shame for him to fall short now.

She didn't even realize how far she had walked when she noticed all of the stares in her direction. As a fly and fabulous Barbie, it came with the job, but these were not stares of jealousy, admiration, and desire. These were awkward stares of disgrace. Bunny instinctively turned her head and looked on the back of her jeans. It wasn't nearly that time of the month, but stress had caused her cycle to be quite irregular. She expelled a sigh of relief to find that there was nothing there. She went to check the time on her cell phone and finally caught a message from Max. "I couldn't do it," it read. Bunny wrinkled her nose in confusion until she turned toward the gate and noticed Ally stomping in her direction, pulling Max behind her. The hell? Bunny thought to herself. Ally took note of the strange look on Bunny's face and by the time she turned her head toward him, he had already jammed his cell phone back in his pocket.

"Hello, Bernice. I hope you're enjoying your Head Barbie status."

Bunny's eyes turned to mere slits as she yanked onto Maxwell's arm with one hand and crumpled a school newspaper in her other hand. "How could I not? It's the title I was meant to have from the beginning."

Ally nodded slowly. "I'm glad to hear that. It seems you have everything you could ever want." Bunny narrowed her eyes. "You're happy, right? I mean, after all that you've done and the number of people you have stepped on to get where you are, you couldn't possibly still be unsatisfied."

Bunny switched her awkward gaze between the two of them. She tried to keep her cool but Ally was too hard to read. They knew something she didn't, but because Max had waited an entire weekend to tell her that he hadn't yet dumped Ally, she was out of the loop and unprepared for what was coming next. "What's it to you?"

Ally laughed. "I'm just trying to remind you of what you have. It seems that no matter what you get your hands on, you're never satisfied. That's an awful trait to pass on to the other girls." Bunny frowned at the thought of Ally trying to tell her how to do her job. "You should be teaching them to be grateful for what they have in life. You never know what you've got until it's gone." She clinched Max's arm even tighter, causing him to wince in pain. "I've got my someone special and he would never ever take me for granted. Right, Maxwell?"

Max cowered underneath her glare. "Yes, Ally."

She released the tight clenching of her teeth and turned back to Bunny. "See, Maxwell's got a good thing and he's hellbent on keeping it. I would suggest you do the same thing if you know what's good for you."

Bunny and Ally fell into a stare off so deep that they didn't even realize they had drawn a crowd. They turned and looked at all of the staring faces. "Can we help you?" Ally barked at them all before taking off with Max, dragging him behind her. Slightly embarrassed, Bunny quietly took off the other way and headed to class.