Popularity Rules

Chapter VIII

       The commotion in the room quickly died down. I craned my neck to see who/what had this placating effect. It wasn’t surprising that Avery was standing there, her eyes totally blood-shot and flashing. Everyone was cringing away from her as if they thought she’d pop out a gun and kill us all.

       They had no reason to worry though; she was staring at me, her eyes flashing. I gave the girl beside me one futile push before she stormed over to me.

       “Move,” Avery said threateningly, her voice dangerously low.

       The girl pulled briefly away from me and glared at Avery. “Do you mind?”

       “Yes, I do. I don’t appreciate you slobbering over my seat,” she said sweetly, a kind of sickly sweet way, making her sound dangerous. “Now move.”

       The girl seemed pretty rattled and disentangled herself from me. Avery sat, not hiding her disgust. Everyone was still staring at Avery although not directly. Obviously news had spread quite quickly and almost everyone was weary of her. Mr. Pierce came back all smiley and ignorant of the tension in the room.

       “Listen Avery – “

       She gave me a look so chilling I shut up immediately. The instruments were passed around the room and my eyes met the same girl fixing her lip color. If she was doing that then it meant that she was wearing some before and that meant that my neck and shoulder was probably a barrage of pink color. I looked down and pulled my shirt slightly away from my shoulder, I groaned in frustration, her lips made so many imprints on my shoulder that it appeared as if someone had stamped my skin repeatedly.

       Something cold, soft and wet hit my cheek and I then realized that Avery had thrown a wet wipe to me. Her expression was still the same and I briefly wondered why she was emitting so much anger, she wasn’t even my girlfriend. I peeled the wipe of my cheek and scrubbed my neck, eager to rid my skin of whatever germy thing she’d left on it.

       “Your girlfriend isn’t even out for a day,” she snarled, snatching a test-tube from someone so forcibly it almost broke.

       I sat the wipe on the table before yanking the powder out of the person who was passing it to me’s hand without checking their expression. “Why are you even this interested?”

       She pulled her hair back and snapped on her goggles. “I told you, I like Gina,” she replied in a harsh whisper.

       “Yeah right,” I retorted, snapping my gloves on so hard that they pinched my skin. “If you did like her you wouldn’t have broken her heart like you did.”

       Avery scoffed indignantly. “You broke her heart, you idiot,” she whispered loudly, shaking the powered substance vigorously into a test tube.

       I stirred my mixture around forcibly. “I don’t know what your problem is.”

       “My problem is you, moron!” she shouted making almost every head in the classroom turn, giving us wary looks. “My problem is you,” she said again, now whispering.

       I slowed my furious stirring of the chemical and tried to calm my nerves. I didn’t know why we were even getting so worked up over nothing. Avery and I knew nothing about each other, I tried to tell myself. Maybe I was trying to convince myself of something and I was failing miserably.

       “I’m sorry,” I said after a minute, not meeting her gaze.

       She didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Gina.”