Mark My Words

10 | He Ain't Shit

Rosalie stood in the shower of papers, gasping in horror, and came far too close to kicking Sami in the shin. Sami looked just as mortified, only his horror manifested in a nervous giggle.

"You absolute mad man," Rosalie seethed. "Pick these up! Pick 'em up right now!"

The papers floated to the ground as Sami went on giggling as he got onto his hands and knees and began scraping up the papers. Rosalie sat against the lockers and pulled her water bottle out of her backpack. She sipped from it as she watched Sami make a fool of himself picking up the car wash flyers.

The bell rang not long after Sami scooted on his bum to sit beside her, flyers on his lap. Rosalie slapped a roll of tape on its four corners before raising her hand up and slapping it onto the locker behind her. "One down, thirty more to go," she declared as classroom doors opened, and students filed out.

They sat there until the senior who owned the locker behind Rosalie walked up and asked them to move. Rosalie pushed up to her feet with a grunt and pulled Sami with her. "I'm gonna be late for practice at this rate," she said.

"This is your first year as a rule-breaker. Embrace it," Sami said, splitting the stack in half. "You take one half and I'll take the other. We'll be done before ya know it."

"You're a lifesaver," she said, and he flashed her a thumbs up as he walked off to the men's restroom nearby. "A lifesaver!" she shouted after him.

She slapped a flyer on her locker as she passed it, and continued to hunt down the remainder of the soccer teams' lockers. She had a list of them in her phone for captain purposes, and her stack depleted significantly after finishing that. She found herself in the lunchroom, passing several of her teammates along the way. They helped spread the flyers around the lunchroom before taking an extra few to the locker room.

"I'll be there in a bit!" she promised, and hurried off into the women's restroom.

She taped a flyer between the mirrors, and another in the most popular stall. As she stepped out of the stall, the bathroom door opened, and none other than Harper Winters walked in. She looked just as perfect as usual, fluffy blonde hair pulled back into a half-pony, and button-up shirt tucked into her plaid skirt. Rosalie couldn't understand how one girl could make the school uniform 100% better than usual.

"Oh. Hey Rosalie," Harper said, pulling one strap of her purse off her shoulder. She rifled through her bag as Rosalie greeted her before going back to rolling tape around her fingers and pressing them onto the flyer.

Harper leaned in to one of the mirrors, lifting a mascara brush up to her lashes. "Lennie says Jamie's taking you to Homecoming," she commented, and Rosalie had to bite her lip to keep from grinning.

"Uh... yeah. It was kind of a spontaneous thing," Rosalie said, though internally, she was screaming. Jamie-Lee Berry told Lennie Pittmen.

"Yeah. Just thought you should know Lennie's pissed. Mostly at Jamie-Lee, so I wouldn't worry about catching his ire," Harper said. Hearing it aloud had Rosalie thinking back to sixth hour, the class she shared with both Jamie-Lee and Lennie. She had found it odd that the two of them hadn't talked once during class, and Dylan was surprisingly quiet, too. Teasing Jamie-Lee had ceased, and she recalled feeling a slight edge of discomfort sitting amongst them. Joanna wasn't any different than usual—sitting silently with her arms crossed, eyes forward—but it occurred to Rosalie that they were all ganging up on Jamie.

"Jamie's harmless. I don't know why Lennie could be mad at him," Rosalie said.

"I agree. He's just a knucklehead sometimes, you know?" she said offhandedly. "Just figured you should know in case Lennie mentions anything. You two seem to be on speaking terms now."