3 | Challenge Accepted
______________
Reign wearily looked out the window when her mother's car came to a halt, brakes squeaking to a stop as the engine hummed impatiently. She couldn't think now that her mother turned down the radio, watching the other students walk across the street toward the school.
"I can't believe you're leaving me here." She muttered bitterly.
Her mother, Maeve, rubbed her face and sighed. She killed the engine and sat in the thick silence thumping around the beat up car, eyes scanning her daughter's attire.
"No pink today?" Maeve asked.
Reign watched her breath fog the window and shrugged. "Not Wednesday."
"Ah." Maeve licked her lips, holding the steering wheel tightly. "Well, I think you look great today."
"Thanks, Mom." Reign's voice was quiet, her eyes turning red as she fought off the urge to cry.
The woman watched as students dragged their feet toward the school and melted into their friend groups on the front lawn. There were plenty of kids attending the local high school, and secretly, Maeve was grateful one of them was her older sister's daughter.
"I'll be back soon."
"I know." Reign swallowed the lump in her throat. "He's not coming back with you this time, is he?"
"Rei." Maeve sighed. She turned her upper body and rubbed her daughter's back. "Don't worry about him. Worry about you. This is your year. We can look at colleges and peek at cars when you get your license."
"I told you I didn't want to go to college." Reign turned to face her mother. "I want to stay here with you."
"You..." Maeve nodded. "We can talk about that when I get back."
"Right." Reign pressed her lips together. "And how long are you going to be chasing Dad down for before you're both coming back?"
"I'm not bringing him back." Maeve reminded her. She could see the pain in her daughter's eyes. "But we'll be fine. You'll be fine. We do not need your father in our life to be successful. We've proved that before and we'll do it again."
"You're right. I'm fine." Reign looked off in the distance and unbuckled her seatbelt. She slipped a heavy exhale past her dark purple lips. "We're just fine."
"The fresh air will feel nice, Rei baby." Maeve leaned over and turned her daughter's face, holding her under the chin and rubbing her cheek with her thumb. "Go make me proud, alright? Good grades and you tell Janis I said hello. Don't worry about your Dad."
"Alright. 'lo. 'lo." Reign pulled her head away and nodded. She reached for the car door and grabbed her book bag between her legs. "Be back by the end of the month, please."
"I'll try my best." Maeve whispered.
The woman watched her daughter climb out of the car. She didn't dare roll her eyes, knowing how to respect her parents enough to avoid being punished. She knew if this was another adult or one of her friends, it would have been different. Maeve should be grateful her daughter had manners and more respect than that Regina girl she insisted on hanging around, but it did nothing but cold her heart in the situation.
Reign forcefully closed the door, though didn't let it slam shut. In fear it might fall off, as well as anger her mother. She shuffled her backpack over her shoulders and stared off toward the school. How could this place be filled with people she's known since middle school, yet she felt like her only friends were people that didn't want the best for her? At least, not all the time.
This whole situation with her father's addiction was getting out of hand. Reign didn't feel comfortable talking about it with anyone besides maybe Regina. Though she was a bitch, she knew her blonde queen of a bestie would keep her word until they reached limitations.
There was always a limit with Regina George. Once they hit it, there was no telling what secrets would leak from her luscious lips. Same with her other friends. She couldn't even trust Janis and her friend Damian to keep their mouths shut.
In this world of social media and miscommunications through text, Reign couldn't live her life knowing there were blinding secrets hiding behind her thunder thighs and beautiful hair.
"I used to think I would spend every second I have right where my story began." Reign stepped off away from her mother's car, watching it drive by out of the parking lot. She ran a hand through her hair and sighed as the old SUV disappeared in the distance. "I'd be happy here. Every day, month, year of my life."
Reign strolled through the parking lot and watched families drop of their children. She smiled weakly when she spotted a few freshman best friends prepping for another day at the daunting school together, not knowing what they were getting into.
"But now I'm wishing for whatever comes after goodbye." Reign ran a hand through her hair. "On every star in the sky. I'm dreaming of what I could become."
She looked across the street and tilted her head seeing Gretchen jog toward Karen in excitement. The girl shoved her phone in their friend's face, showing her something that carried laughter across the road where Reign stood.
"This is where home will be. As long as my lungs can breathe." Reign's smile slowly fell. "But my heart is dying to leave 'cause I know there's more to me. I don't wanna live with 'what ifs, might haves.' 'Could have been if I had only tried, not held back..."
Reign licked her lips and nodded to herself. She stepped across the street after a bus zoomed by–always looking out for those mother fuckers–and shook her head in the wind blowing behind her.
"Oh no, that's not a part of my plan." Reign raised her chin and walked across the street, listening to the thumps of her boots. "That's not the me that I, that's not the me that I am."
The tall junior walked past the cliques around the front lawn and gazed through the mass of teenagers. She smirked to herself when a few people moved out of her way, eyes holding on her longer than appropriate.
Fuck. Did these kids have no self-esteem? Reign hated every minute they would look at her like some sick role model. Her friends may have enjoyed it, but there were only little perks to being a Plastic.
And Reign had a hard time finding them.
"Welcome to A.P Calculus!"
Reign played around with the camera in her lap as Mrs. Norbury began her lecture. She never really needed to pay attention in class. Despite her place in the Plastics, Reign had always received great grades. She kept it to herself most of the time, but it wasn't unknown by most of the school. No one dared to question her.
"Congratulations." Mrs. Norbury clapped her hands together. "You know more math than 85% of Americans. But you will not rest on your laurels this year. I plan to push you."
The camera beeped quietly as Reign sneakily turned it on. She sat up and leaned forward, using the back of the body in front of her to hide the device.
"So let's get started." Mrs. Norbury turned around toward the smartboard. "Chapter One, Limits and Their Properties. What the heck are limits, you say? If I write out the equations the limit as x approaches two of [x+1] the function is what we're taking the limit of. I don't expect you to know how to–"
"The limit equals three."
Reign looked up as she heard the new girls speak from behind her. She spared a quick, unseen glance in Cady's direction before scanning over the problem to confirm if she was correct or not.
She was.
"That's right." Mrs. Norbury smiled. "Let's try another one. Find the value of K for which the following limit exists."
Before Reign had the chance to answer, Cady's hand shot up again. She didn't wait to be called on before speaking.
"K equals negative three." She answered.
"Damn, girl!" Kevin whistled, leaning up in his chair with a flash of excitement. He shot Reign a cocky smile when their eyes met, winking at the dark eyed girl.
"Wow." Reign cocked her head and slowly turned around in her chair, raising a brow when Cady's eyes widened in surprise. "Are you trying to make the rest of us look dumb?"
"No, I..." Cady gulped as Reign very obviously glanced Cady up and down. "I-I'm not trying to. It's just, uh, happening."
"Oh, okay." Reign scoffed. "It's like that. Alright, well, um–"
Cady eyed Reign's hand as she reached out and rolled her nails across her desk in a rhythmic warning. She dragged her gaze up and met her deep brown eyes.
"Challenge accepted."
Reign raised a brow when Cady continued to stare at her silently. She glanced around before rolling her eyes and turning back in her seat, leaving Cady to glance between her and Regina's ex-boyfriend directly beside her.
Throughout class, Reign could feel Cady's eyes on her. She knew it wasn't ugly Aaron. Sometimes he tried to get her attention, but he knew who's side she took after Regina broke things off with him. He was a nice guy at times, but Reign had no reason to be some fake nice girl when she never even liked the guy to begin with.
The silence that buzzed around Mrs. Norbury's lecture was broken by a pen clacking on the floor to Reign's left. She looked down and frowned, glancing behind her when Cady smiled at her.
"Did you just throw your pen on the ground?" She asked, frowning slightly.
Cady's face flushed. "N-No. I-I, uh–"
"Right." Reign leaned down and scooped it off the ground. The pen clicked as she placed it on the desk, narrowing her eyes. "Be more careful. You're interrupting my class time, Mamas."
"Yeah. Yeah." Cady nodded, face a bright pink. "Right. I'm so sorry."
"You should be." Reign slowly turned around, holding eye contact for a bit longer until she looked away entirely.
Cady stared at Reign and slowly looked at Aaron. She gulped, glancing between the two popular students as she toyed with the edge of her pen between her teeth.
And before she knew it, the urge to sing poured out of her mouth as she watched Reign look over photos on her camera.
"When I was nine, I fell in love. This Peace Corps guy." Cady laughed quietly. "I waited hours. Inside his tent with flowers, which made him laugh, which made me cry."
Cady looked down to try and focus on her notes, but her eyes slowly floated back up to observe the waves of Reigns hair.
"By 13 I gave up trying. I decided I would be A mathematician." Cady sighed softly when Reign raised her hand and answered a question correctly. "'Cause math is real. I memorized a lot of pi. Because addition And subtraction and division. Would never make me feel. So stupid with love."
"Miss Akana?"
"The limit is four." Reign answered again, barely paying attention to the problem.
"And the next one?"
"Two."
Cady bit her lip as Reign threw her hair over her shoulder and focused back down on her camera.
"I didn't get it. I didn't get it, somehow." Cady slowly leaned side to side. "Smart with math But stupid with love. I didn't get it. I didn't get it till now."
"Mr. Samuels?"
"Uhh, twelve?"
"Bore. It's one." Reign rolled her eyes, side eyeing her best friend's ex-boyfriend.
"So thank you, math For being there." Cady giggled nervously when Reign looked over her shoulder and sent her an odd look. "To bring me joy. And thank you, math. 'Cause now you've brought me this cute girl."
Reign smiled down at a photo of Gretchen and Karen she took during the beginning of summer. She brushed her thumb over the background, missing the days they would act like best friends and actually hang out to have fun more than talk shit about people.
"She's like someone from TV. She's like that girl who dances all those songs to music." Cady watched Reign stand up halfway through class to sharpen her pencil. She wasn't paying too much attention to the lecture, yet Cady just knew Reign knew every answer. "Her clothes, her grooming."
Reign sat back down in her desk and sent Cady an odd look when she caught her staring. She leaned closer and raised a brow. "Is there something in my teeth?"
"No." Cady gulped. "You have...good teeth. Nice mouth."
Reign blinked. "Right...." She slowly turned around and rolled her eyes at Cady's behavior. "Homeschooled kids. Jesus."
"And she's a foot away from me." Cady reached out to touch Reign's hair, but pulled back at the last moment when the junior brushed it to the side so it wouldn't be in Cady's way. "With swoopy hair and shiny eyes that I could swim in. She's live and in the room!"
Reign looked up and frowned when she thought she heard Cady sniff her hair. She turned her head to glance over her shoulder, only to find the homeschool girl smiling with her eyes closed and a pen toward her nose.
"Hey, do you know the answer to problem twelve?" Reign asked, tapping her cheek with her pencil.
Cady looked up at the board and nodding quickly. "It's six."
"I know." Reign smirked when Cady's eyes widened slightly. "Just making sure you're not in this class to make our average go down. Highest A.P class gets a pizza party from Uncle Bo's and I do not play when it comes to my stuffed crust pizza. We clear?"
"Clear as rain." Cady nodded. "I'll make sure to pay more attention."
"Great." Reign forced a smile. She dropped it in a second, turning around and focusing on the lecture.
Cady sighed, sinking her cheek into her hand. "And I'm stupid with love. I want to get it. I want to get it, but how? Smart with math But stupid with love. I want to get it. I didn't get it till now."
The bell rang loudly, startling Cady from her focused state. She watched Reign grab her bookbag and throw her hair over her shoulder with no difficulties. It was lunch time now, so she was bound to see her somewhere in the cafeteria.
Maybe this would be a good thing? She's had one person she knew that might invite her to sit at their table.
The only issue with that plan was Cady's nervousness to approach Reign as the girl grabbed two baskets of cheese fries while talking to a senior boy. And that's exactly how Cady found herself sitting in the bathroom stall closest to the wall, balancing her food tray instead of building up the courage to find her table.
A sharp knock ruptured the silence Cady sat in, lowering her apple back to the tray.
"You okay in there?" A voice asked. For some reason, it sounded like a boy...in the girls bathroom.
"Uh, yeah." Cady called toward the two sets of feet outside the stall.
"Cause you've been in there a very long time. We're concerned you're either doing drugs or having a toilet baby."
Faced with the choices the school would no doubt learn soon if she didn't stop the rumors, Cady unlocked the stall and pushed it open to find two faces from her earlier classes standing outside.
"Hi." The girl with a nose ring waved. "I'm Janis."
The black boy pretended to throw hair over his shoulder. "And je m'applle Sasha Fierce."
"This is Damian." Janis chucked. "He's almost to gay to function."
"But I push through. I manage!"
Cady smiled slightly when the two exchanged an amused look.
"Hi." She waved.
"We've been watching you all day." Damian confessed. "You're a mess. So we volunteer to amplify your lunch experience."
"Yeah, what Damian is saying is we will help you, Caddy." Janis slapped the edge of the stall door.
"Thanks so much." Cady winced. "Um...it's Cady?"
"Yeah." Janis smirked. "I'm gonna call you Caddy."
"Get out of the toilet!" Damian snapped his fingers and waved the girl out into the open.