The Great Pretender

14: Sexy & 17

Dammit! He had told himself that her change was only physical and that she would still be as unbearable as she had been before. He was wrong. She smiled more often now, and not the pinched, forced smiles she had been so reluctant to give out before. It was normal now for her to split her lunch hour between the cafeteria with her friends and behind the school with the guys who ate there.

She had even made friends- Cherish McKinley, the girl who had burst into a rant in her homeroom class about not needing friends because they pulled you down. Or so he had heard. She had stopped dressing in that generic 'I want to disappear into the background and be overlooked' kind of way that she used to dress. Now she dressed up.

Cigarette pants with cuffed hems or high waists in different shades of blue and black, and even red! She had even shown up in a skirt once, tight and cut right below her knees. She was still always as covered up as she had been before, long sleeve shirts and button up blouses worn under plain cardigans. And though she still wore her sneakers, she wore heels a lot now. Moreover, she walked so well in them he supposed she must have been born in heels. She took the time to do her hair and to apply makeup, and however minimal it was, it was still noticeable.

The worst part of it though, was that he wished he could have said he hadn't noticed it on his own, but he had. He wished he could say he hadn't noticed her curves and how she was the hourglass figure that not many women were today. He wished he could say he hadn't noticed her pillow mouth and how it slid into a sexy tilt when she half smiled. He wished he could say he hadn't noticed her hands, small with beautiful, slender fingers that he wished he didn't imagine running through his hair. But he did. It was hard not to when he spent all his time watching her.

-.-

Running a hand along the wall, Cherish walked quietly down the hallway. She couldn't believe she had forgotten her assignment in her locker, but was glad for the break from her dragging French class. The class was incredibly boring, crawling along at a snail's pace, and most of the students butchered the language past the point of recognition. As she descended the stairs, she thought of dropping the class. Only she didn't want to- it was an easy grade for her, and one less thing she would have to focus so hard on in her current confusing life.

The door opened with a faint whoosh when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Since everyone was in class, it was silent in the basement- eerily so. She didn't notice them till she almost stepped on them. With a step to the side, she went around them, neither of them having noticed her yet. As she passed, she examined the couple. Seven- that was a straightforward one, considering his easily discernible appearance- and..... Joana?

Cherish spun her locker combination, three lockers down from them, and yanked the door open. She watched from the corner of her eye as the scraping noise her locker door made, caused the couple jump apart. Well, jump would not be the word; Joana jumped, startled by the sound, and Seven all but shoved her off him.

Cherish could not help the smirk she wore, closing her door and pretending to have only just noticed them. "Oh! Hi guys!"

They both glared and though she tried not to, she laughed, "Don't let me interrupt your, uh... discussion."

As she made her way back to class, chuckling all the way, she was well aware of someone following her angrily. When she slipped into her seat, dropping her work onto her desk, Seven burst into the room looking pretty, well, disheveled.

"Bonjour, Monsieur. Que c'est belle que vous pouvez nous rejoindre!"

He glanced at Madame Maizareau, grunting his reply as he stalked across the room to his desk. His hair was no longer neatly in place as it had been that morning in Biology, instead it was mussed and lying in a state of disarray. The black shirt he wore was un-tucked and looked to have been re-buttoned in a hurry, considering the hem was at two different lengths. Cherish took one look at him and broke into peals of laughter, snorting as she tried to catch her breath.