“Red!”
I ignore Anthony as he calls my name from behind me and I continue walking.
“Red, stop!” He calls again.
I’m on my way to the dorms where Stella and Mason are meeting me so that we can change into our dance outfits for the dance competition which is tonight. Penn and Jamie let everybody out early today so that we can prepare for the competition, so it’s only five and the competition will start at six.
“Are you fucking deaf?” He demands when he catches up to me and grabs my elbow in his hand. It doesn’t hurt, but I stop walking and turn around anyway.
“I’m not going to talk to you,” I tell him.
“Yes you are,” He says. “None of Stella’s other friends will.”
“That’s probably because we all hate you,” I supply.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Anthony insists. “Stella said that she thinks that Gianna cheated on me but I don’t see how that’s my fault even if it’s true.”
“So, you’ve been treating your sister like shit for three years but when she starts treating you the same way, you freak out?” I wonder with raised eyebrows. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Don’t pretend like you know what happened,” He snaps at me. “You’ve only heard her side to it.”
“I’m going to leave now,” I say to him. “Let go of my arm.”
He just squeezes tighter and I start to get annoyed. “Stella said that I should talk to you about Gianna,” Anthony finally says.
I realize that if he did talk to Stella, she’d tell him that because I am the only one with proof that Gianna cheated on him. With a long sigh, I pull my phone out of my pocket and poke at the screen until I get to the picture of Gianna kissing Taylor and I hold it up for him to see.
“How do I know that you didn’t Photoshop that or something?” He demands, glaring at my screen.
“Messing up your lives isn’t a priority for me like fucking up my life is for you and your friends. You can believe whatever you want, I don’t really care, but if you don’t let go of my arm in the next second and a half, I’m going to make your nose bleed,” I inform him, putting my phone back in my pocket.
He releases my arm and before he can say anything else, I rip my arm away and walk in the opposite direction, towards the dorms. When I get there, Stella and Mason are in the midst of getting dressed in our performance outfit.
“You’re late!” Stella informs me when she sees me come in.
“Yeah, Anthony found me and wanted to have a conversation or something,” I mutter, grabbing my outfit from my top bunk and starting to get dressed in the room with them. We are working on the idea that we’re all girls and we all have the same parts, so we can get dressed in front of each other without it being a big deal.
“Anthony?” Stella repeats, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “My brother?”
I nod. “That’s the one. He wanted proof about the thing with Gianna or something.”
“I knew he wouldn’t believe me,” She mutters. “What do I care though? I don’t care at all. He’s an asshole. I hope she broke his tiny little shriveled heart.”
“Stell,” Mason sighs. “That’s really mean.”
“I don’t care!” She shrieks, obviously still aggravated about the whole Anthony situation. “I could at least understand it a little bit when he turned against me for a girl that he thought was a good person but when in reality, he was so desperate to get away from me that he turned against me for a girl that is just as terrible as I thought she was and that’s so terrible of him.”
“Good point,” Mason agrees with a nod. “Are we all ready?”
“No!” Stella shakes her head. “We need to do our hair. We have ten minutes to do our hair.”
We’re all wearing the same exact outfit- those sequin shorts that Stella showed us online a little bit ago, a long sleeved black t-shirt that cut off just an inch or two below our boobs (I could sound more proper if I say ‘breasts’ but I really don’t like that word), and black brogue shoes that are easy to dance in. It was a pretty revealing outfit, so Stella also ordered these matching black trench coats that look really mysterious.
We all straighten our hair so that it looks the same and then we tease it just a little bit so that it doesn’t look too orderly.
“Let’s move, and let’s kick ass!” Stella cheers once we’re done with our hair and the intense makeup she had us do exactly the same.
Mason and I both laugh and then we all leave the dorm room to go to the auditorium that everybody here called The Arena, which made it sound very intense. When we get there, everybody is there, dressed in their dance outfits. We look almost out of place in our thick and mysterious trench coats. There are some volunteers guiding to the auditorium area and telling us where to sit in the rows of inclined seats. Jamie’s class on the right side and Penn’s on the left.
When the time strikes six o’clock, the room is full of excited chatter, including Mason as she repeats the dance to us again, even though we’ve been practicing it all week and we have it down. We know it like the back of our hand. We amuse her anyway though, and go through the dance over and over until somebody steps onto the stage and starts speaking into a microphone.
“Okay, people, let’s calm down now,” He says. He’s older, probably around 40 or something, but he looks like he’s a friendly guy. “If you don’t know who I am, my name is Mr. Lynch and I’m one of the dance instructors here during the normal school year. We’re going to get started soon with the competition that you guys have been working so hard for in the past week. We’ll start with Penn’s class. We have all of the groups written on a piece of paper and we’ll draw them out one at a time to determine the order. Our judges will be your two instructors, Jamie and Penn, and then I will be judging along with my colleagues Miss. Gormella and Dr. Roth. If you don’t know those two people, they are also dance instructors here during the normal school year. That’s five judges in total if you can’t count.” He says that last part as a joke so people laugh.
Somebody else that I don’t recognize- probably Dr. Roth- brings out a small jar with about ten slips of paper in it and then Mr. Lynch pulls one out and unfolds it.
“The first group is Teagan, Aimee, and Wyatt,” He announces. “You guys are on in five minutes.”
For the next twenty minutes, we watch in our seats as people go up to the stage with their groups and they do their dances. One girl actually falls on her face and another group isn’t in sync at all, so that immediately eliminates two groups. I don’t know when I became so competitive- maybe Stella and Mason are seriously rubbing off on me or something.
When Mr. Lynch reappears on the stage and calls our names, my heart starts pounding in my chest with an evil mixture of nerves and excitement. When we’re walking up to the stage, I see Penn sitting in the front row with Jamie and the three older teacher people who are acting as judges.
Things have gone back to normal between us after the fiasco last weekend. I don’t mean normal as in late night fountain dives or having friendly talks with Just Penn. I mean normal as in only associating with Penn the Petrifying, like it was at the beginning when I got here. I’ve gotten over what happened last weekend, I guess, but now the only time he talks to me is to critique something or to say something about the dancing, which is exactly how I want it. I don’t like having to try and decipher which Penn I’m talking to. If it’s Just Penn or Penn the Petrifying or maybe Guilty Penn. Now, whenever I talk to him, I know that I should be scared and intimidated, because he is always Petrifying. It’s easier that way.
When we get onto the stage, we stand there in our black trench coats and wait for the audio guy to signal to us that he’s ready and then Stella nods at him and the music starts.
It’s kind of an alternative rock song by The Maine called My Heroine. It’s really kick ass and bold. Right when the first chord strikes, we throw our coats off all at the same time and there’s a few wolf calls from the guys in the crowd, which actually kind of make me giggle.
I'm feeling pretty dirty baby
Forgive my sins.
I get the feeling you can save me honey,
My heroine.
We swing our hips and flip our hair and flip and stretch. It’s a pretty badass and promiscuous (but not slutty or anything) song, but it’s also so much fun to dance to, thanks to Mason’s amazing choreography. The crowd starts to cheer, which is something they only did for one other group, so that makes me grin as we continue to dance to the song.
You're my heroine, just suicide
If I let you in you crawl inside.
Oh you save my skin
She can't wait to sink in
My heroine
After the song ends, we all land in our final pose and my hair is going crazy because of all of the flipping and twirling I’d done along with Stella and Mason. Everybody claps for us, including all five of the ‘judges’. We bow, grab our coats, and then leave the stage for the next group to go on.
It takes another hour to get through all of the groups including Jamie’s class and then when everybody is finished, Mr. Lynch returns to the front of the stage.
“Good job to all groups and I want to congratulate every single one of you for performing tonight,” He begins. “The winners will be announced on Monday and the competition between Jamie’s winners and Penn’s winners will be next Saturday. We have food and music and all that fun stuff set up in the ballroom next door if you all want to travel over there for some teenage partying and whatnot, that’d be nice. Have a nice summer everybody.”
Everybody applauds and then they start to empty the auditorium. I wait with Mason and Stella until everyone is out and the doors in the back of the room aren’t flooding with people and then we leave. We leave our coats on the coat rack inside of the lobby because I don’t feel like carrying mine around and it’s too hot to wear it.
“I think we totally rocked it,” Stella grins. “Mason, you are seriously such a genius.”
“We are all geniuses,” Mason defends bashfully. “It wasn’t just because of me, you know.”
“You’re right,” She concedes. “We look freaking sexy in these outfits. You’re both welcome.”
I laugh and follow Mason and Stella to where Brian is standing with two other people who are holding hands. Those two are his partners for the dance. Brian and his group was pretty good tonight too, but the girl was kind of offbeat so I don’t think that they’ll win.
“Hey,” He greets when he sees us, but he’s really only looking at Mason.
She grins at him and they wrap their arms around each other. It’s such a long hug that I feel like I should look away because it’s a form of PDA and it starts to make me uncomfortable.
“Right, well we’re going to go dance,” Stella informs them, taking my hand in hers and she leads me away from Brian, Mason, and the couple that I hadn’t met before. I mean, I’ve seen them around, but I haven’t talked to them at all or anything.
“They’re cute,” I comment, referring to Mason and Brian.
“They’re the cutest,” Stella giggles. “But they don’t think that hugging makes things weird even if it’s for a century, and they’re wrong.”
“That was a long hug,” I agree with a laugh. The music isn’t too loud because it’s a ballroom and if it was super loud, it would echo for days. It is loud though, but I don’t have to yell over it like I do at the bonfire.
“If they weren’t so cute, I’d probably gag,” She says. “Anyway, aren’t you so excited for Ada and Darren to come back on Monday?”
I scrunch my nose in distaste. “It’s already been two weeks? That’s disappointing.”
“Very disappointing,” She agrees with a nod. “What’s even more disappointing than that is that gremlin coming over here.”
I look in the direction where she’s looking and I see Gianna marching in our direction with a very angry look on her face. She stomps over to us and stops right in front of me before screeching, “You are ruining my life!”
I blink at her a few times, trying to figure out if this is real life or not and then I look at Stella, who is laughing, and then I look back at Gianna. “Um… I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Okay,” She laughs hysterically for a moment before glaring at me again. “You fucking told him. I told you specifically not to tell Anthony what you saw, yet he still just broke up with me. And earlier today, I got a call from my mother saying that she got demoted!”
“Not my fault and not my fault,” I tell her unblinkingly. “Anthony probably broke up with you because you cheated on him… that’s just a thought though.”
“Whore,” Stella coughs conspicuously.
“Right, what she coughed,” I agree with a nod. “Anyway, your mother got demoted because she tried to get me expelled without any good reason for it except for the fact that you are throwing a hissy fit because you don’t like me.”
Her cheeks puff out in aggravation. “You are not going to get away with this, bitch,” She snaps.
“Oh, my gosh,” Stella shrieks. “She just called you a bitch. The wit this girl has. The wit!”
I bite my tongue so that I don’t laugh. “So, now that we have all of this cleared up, I’d like you to leave us alone now please,” I tell Gianna in the most calm voice that I can muster.
“I’m going to-“ She starts to grit her teeth at me, but before she can finish her sentence, she’s interrupted.
“Are you serious?” Penn demands.
I look around and see that everyone around us is watching us and I also notice that she has her hand raised into the air, so she was probably about to slap me.
“What?” Gianna snaps at him.
“How many times am I going to have to break up an almost-fight between you two?” He asks rhetorically.
“She started it,” She whines, motioning towards me.
“What are you even saying?” Stella cuts in, glaring at Gianna. “You came over here and started rambling about your miserable life, not the other way around.”
“Shut up. All of you,” Penn states before turning to look at Gianna. “You’re not in my class, so I’ll talk to Jamie about you, but you-“ He looks at me and his annoyed glare really does make me crumble. My knees go weak and my heart starts racing and my throat closes up. I lock my knees though, so I don’t like, collapse or anything. I’ve never seen him so aggravated and so up close before, and it was truly petrifying. “I’ll just deal with you later.”
He walks away and Gianna soon follows suit, walking away too.
“That would have been a lot more intimidating if he wasn’t talking to your boobs,” Stella whispers in my ear with a small laugh. “And what was all that about? ‘I’ll deal with you later’? He must be a grumpy pants today.”
I shrug, not really listening to her because I’m so shaken up. I know that Penn’s anger is probably about something other than the fight between Gianna and me because it wasn’t even a fight. Penn takes his anger out on innocent bystanders, I’m noticing. I’ve been that innocent bystander twice now. However, I think some of my PTSD is kicking in or something, because I’m freaking out on the inside about how angry he looked just then.
“I’m going to go get some air,” I mutter. I don’t even wait for her response before I’m pushing my way out the door so that I’m in the lobby of The Arena. I sit down on the floor and I close my eyes, thinking about my home in Georgia. I wonder how my mom and Jo are doing and I hope that they’re doing okay without me there. I hope he isn’t hurting Jo more because I’m not there. I hope that I made the right decision running for help. I don’t see what other options I had though, because it’s not like I could just stay there in that house and watch the only two people that I cared about get harassed and tortured every day, living every day in fear. I can handle myself for the most part, but I just can’t sit by and let it happen to them.
“I didn’t mean to scare you in there,” Penn’s voice makes me jump.
I don’t stand up, but I do open my eyes and look up at him leaning against a pillar that’s a few meters away from me with his signature pose- his arms crossed over his chest. I stare up at him for a moment and then blink a few times just to make sure that he’s real before I try to think of something to say. “Um, you didn’t,” I lie.
He laughs and rolls his eyes at me. “You shriveled like a dead oyster.”
“I just have a lot on my plate,” I defend with a breathy sigh.
“Okay then,” He mutters. “You did really well tonight, by the way, with that The Maine song.”
I’m surprised that he knows who they are, and maybe some other time, I’ll ask him about it, but right now, I don’t feel like talking about music or anything really. “Thanks.”
“So you’re still mad about last weekend, I take it?” He wonders with one raised eyebrow.
I shrug and close my eyes. I have too much on my mind to try and decipher which Penn I’m talking to right now and I don’t even want to try, so I just kind of ignore him as best as I can until he hopefully goes away.
“Come in early on Monday,” He says. “Let’s say six.”
“What for?” I mumble softly with my eyes still closed.
“For almost getting in a fight with Gianna,” Penn reminds me.
This time, I open my eyes and glare up at him. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know that, unofficially,” He nods. “But officially, Jamie is doing the same thing with Gianna, so I have to be fair.”
“Well, you officially suck,” I tell him.
He steps forward and I flinch. I don’t mean to, but I’m apparently really skittish right now considering I’ve been sitting here thinking about my home life and that just makes me skittish like an abused puppy or something. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t know how I can escape this situation. I just hope that he didn’t notice that flinch. “What do you think that I’m going to do, Red? Kick you?”
I look down at the floor and don’t say anything.
“You sure do know how to throw a tantrum, I’ll give you that,” He sighs with a nod.
“I’m not throwing a tantrum,” I tell him softly. “I’m just not in the mood to socialize.”
“If you think that I’m going to listen to Gianna again and try to sabotage you or something, you’re wrong.”
“I don’t think that,” I mumble. “Because we both know that I have more power than her anyway and even if you tried to kiss me again, it wouldn’t do any good considering my uncle is a firm believer in true love.”
“What?” Penn wonders with a small laugh. I’m not sure if I’ve heard him laugh before, but it’s a nice laugh.
“I believe his exact words were ‘this jerk instructor, if you like him, I will allow you to see him’,” I mimic my uncle the best that I can. “So that kind of takes away your leverage or whatever.”
“Well, that’s nice to know. Useless though, considering you still hate me,” He sighs and then pauses in his train of thought. “He really called me a jerk?”
I nod and I can’t hold back a small laugh. “Yeah, he did. Well, I said it first, I think, but he agreed.”
“So, you called me a jerk?”
“Oh, I’ve called you a lot worse than that,” I assure him. I can feel myself starting to lighten up a bit, which is the first sign that I’m talking to Just Penn, so that’s nice.
“Okay, I guess I deserve it,” He nods.
I nod too. “You do.”
Just when I think that I am back to normal with Penn, he decides to redefine the definition of normal once again and make things confusing all over again. There is only one thing that I can say about Penn that I’m absolutely sure about. He. Is. Exhausting.
_______________________________
Hey there! So I have something to say and I guess it's going to be a rant but yeah, here it is [WARNING: I KNOW THAT IT'S APRIL FOOLS DAY BUT THIS ISN'T A PRANK OR ANYTHING IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY SERIOUS AND NOT A JOKE]
I know that people say that to be a good writer, you should be able to take criticism and that's cool and all but I'm not trying to be a "good writer" I just so happen to like writing. With that said, I do not take criticism well. I do okay with it most of the time but for the past few days it's been really messing with me. Like, so much so that I was actually considering just deleting a few stories or just deleting my account (which I won't do!) but it just seemed nice. Like, just scrolling through my newsfeed, 80% of the comments are criticizing something about my stories. Writing is really the only thing that helps me get through the day so I'll either just stop posting new stories or just stop reading comments alltogether. Neither of those two ideas appeal to me at all though. I know that I can't tell you what to comment if you want to comment anything at all, but please do not:
- Point out spelling/grammar mistakes
- Point out things that don't make sense. It's fiction anyway!
- Tell me that you don't like the way that the story is going
- Tell me that you're going to stop reading (I mean, if you wanna stop reading, that's your decision, I just don't want to hear about it)
- Yell at me for my character's opinion because I am not my characters
- Tell me to update (because I will update on Sundays and Thursdays no matter what)
- Tell me how my story should go
Maybe you're just trying to help me become a better writer and I appreciate that, but please just don't right now. I just really can't deal with it at the moment.
If you read this, then thank you for reading that and please take it into consideration <3
Even if you didn't read my rant, thank you for reading! Vote maybe? <3 :D