TAG, YOU'RE IT!
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"NO WONDER YOU don't have any friends!" The girl's blonde ponytail swung as she spoke to the red haired girl, the stall door being the only thing to divide them.
"What is it, Greta?" A voice that spoke like smooth silk said from inside the dirty stall. "Am I a slut, or a little shit? Make up your mind."
Arianna smiled at the sound of the girl standing up for herself. There was one thing Arianna hated, and that was bullying. She believed that people should treat others the way they wanted to be treated.
"You're trash." The bully's blonde ponytail swung behind her as she began to take steps back from the stall, a smirk growing on her bubble gum-stained lips. "Guess we'll just have to remind you."
And the events that followed after made Ari's blood boil. Arianna shockingly watched two other girls drag a trash bag full of some type of a liquid and poured all of it onto whoever was in the stall. Arianna clenched her fists at her sides as she felt her ears steam.
The girls all burst into laughter, seeming to enjoy what they had done. "Let's go, girls." The bully told her friends and they all started walking past her, but Arianna put her arm in their way and stood in front of them.
"What the heck is your problem?" Ari asked, furrowing her eyebrows at the girls.
The bully only let out a laugh and turned her head to look at her friends. "Do any of you see a problem?" Her friends shook their heads in response.
The bully turned her head back to the brunette who was confronting them. "Oh, that's right - my only problem I've got is the bitch standing in front of me."
Arianna's jaw slightly dropped, letting a small chuckle out in disbelief. "How dare you speak like that? And, what you did to that girl," she gestured toward the stall, "was wrong!"
The bully ignored what the brunette said and only thought of how good she'd look in their group of snobby, stuck-up teenaged girls. "Oh, you're that new kid from science? Yeah, last period."
"You are completely ignoring the reason why I'm even talking to you!" Arianna squinted her blue eyes. "What did that girl do to you?" She asked again, demanding an answer as she crossed her pale arms.
The bully let out a laugh again. "Listen, honey, I don't think you understand. You see, that girl in there, is Beverly Marsh. She's the school's biggest slut, so I'm treating her like one. Somebody's gotta show her what happens to tramps like her. I'm Greta Keene. This is my school; I own it. I can do whatever the hell I wanted."
Arianna couldn't believe how Greta was speaking about this so-called 'Beverly'. Girls are supposed to be kind and support other girls; not bully them. "I don't see your name anywhere, Greta," Arianna spoke, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "You're not so popular yourself, considering I didn't even know who you were before now. Did you, uh, write your name yourself on the wall with your crayon to convince yourself you were better than everyone? Or-" She sarcastically spoke, but froze when Greta slapped her cheek.
"Come to me next time when you can fight - you seem to be all talk, newbie." Greta smacked her gum loud into her face and that was all Arianna needed to hear before she had had enough.
Before she realized what she was doing, Arianna shoved the girl on her chest, making Greta fall to the ground. Greta gasped, her blue eyes looking up at her friends in shock. Arianna's jaw slowly dropped as well, for she was never the type to throw a punch at somebody, but she chuckled to herself with surprise, trying to hide the smile that grew onto her lips.
"What are you looking at? Get her!" Greta ordered her friends like she was some damn queen, but they all ran out of the bathroom. Greta's jaw dropped as her friends left her, and she frowned. She stood up from the ground, taking a step closer to Arianna and whispered into her ear, "This isn't over, kid." before harshly bumping her shoulder and marching out.
Not caring much about the girl's words, Arianna rolled her bright blue eyes and walked over to the stall, where she knew 'Beverly' still was. "You can come out, now." She kindly told the anonymous girl in there, and after a few seconds, the door was slowly pushed open.
Arianna's lips curled up into a smile at the girl in front of her. Beverly was beautiful. She had long red hair that was tied into a ponytail, she had bright, round blue eyes and freckles that scattered her pale face.
Beverly didn't dare to lift her head, ashamed as she shook her backpack, trying to shake the trashy water out of her green backpack.
Arianna watched as she did so, feeling bad for the girl. "Hey." Arianna kindly smiled at her, continuing to watch the girl shake her backpack.
Beverly looked up at the brunette, the corner of her lips going up into a soft smirk. "Hey. Thanks. For, you know... you didn't have to do that." She barely spoke above a whisper.
Arianna waved her hand and smiled birghtly. "It was no problem at all." She held up her hand in front of her, the other grasping onto her pink backpack strap. "I'm Arianna."
Beverly smiled more at the girl's kindness, accepting her handshake. It felt rare to the girl, for no girl had ever been nice to her before. "I'm Beverly. It's nice to meet you, Arianna."
"Nice to meet you, too." Arianna smiled. "Well, I should probably get going. My sister is waiting for me outside." Arianna explained, and Beverly nodded.
The teenaged girls quickly said their goodbyes, and Ari happily walked out of the bathroom. The exciting thought of the chance of making her first friend was left onto her mind as she walked through the school hallways with a smile on her lips.
●●●
Arianna walked out of the school, glad that the school day was finally over. This was her first (and last) day. She wasn't too happy about having to come to a new school on the last day, but her parents insisted that she and her sister did. Arianna's eyes landed on Sydney, her unidentical twin, who stood by a bush.
She wasn't hard to spot. She looked similar to Arianna with just a few facial differences. Sydney had brown, curly hair that reached her chest, had blue eyes, and was small. She wasn't very tall, for she reached Ari's lips. Arianna thought of it as hilarious; everybody thought Syd was in the seventh grade, but she was in the ninth grade. That was just one of the many things she teased her about.
Arianna had long, straight, brown hair that reached her belly button, and had bright blue eyes. Arianna was tall, but not too tall for her age.
"Hey, Syd." Arianna greeted her twin as she walked up to her.
"Hey." Sydney grinned at the sight of her sister. "What took you so long?"
"Oh..." Arianna trailed off, her eyes slightly widening at the recent events that happened in the school bathroom. "Well, uhm, you see..." She spoke with a nervous smile, starting to fiddle her fingers. "I sorta, maybe, kinda, accidentally pushed a girl in her boob?"
Sydney turned her head to her sister to give her a bewildered look. "Pardon?"
"Hey, it's not my fault!" Arianna quickly defended herself. "The girl was picking on another girl, she called her names, and her friends dumped some garbage water on the poor girl." Arianna counted with her fingers. "So, I couldn't just do nothing about it."
Sydney let out a sigh, shaking her head. "Let's hope Greta doesn't remember the girl who pushed her in the boob."
Arianna rolled her blue eyes with a small smile, pretending to punch Sydney in the chest, making her laugh. "How was your day?" Sydney suddenly asked. "Well, besides the punching part."
"Horrible." Arianna groaned, sighing. "Thank God it's summer - although, I made one friend named Beverly. She was the girl I stood up for."
"That's cool," Sydney nodded. "I made a friend, too."
"Who?"
"His name's Ben. He's new here, too." She explained, only for Arianna to wiggle her eyebrows at her. Sydney playfully hit her arm. "Absolutely not! He's a friend!" Sydney scolded her, and Arianna sarcastically nodded.
Sydney was the older sibling, as a matter of fact, by two minutes. As the youngest, Ari was always teasing Syd about the little things that bothered her. Ari claimed herself to be 'fun'.
The sister's quieted down and looked around themselves, taking in the noticibly gloomy sight. If there was one thing Arianna noticed about Derry, Maine, it was that it had a strange, dark feeling everywhere you looked. It seemed as if somebody, or something, was watching your every move. It was as if there were mysteries to be unfolded from the depths of every gloomy sight.
After a couple of minutes, Arianna heard a small gasp from Sydney, causing her to look at her with furrowed eyebrows. "What?"
"Look." Sydney responded, and Arianna followed her gaze toward the front of the school yard.
There stood three tall boys, probably seniors, who were teasing a couple of boys who looked the girl's ages. All of the boys looked familiar, for Arianna had seen them all at least once during the long school day.
As a matter of fact, she had bumped into the boy who wore huge glasses at lunch. "Sorry!" Arianna had apologized as she grabbed onto the boy's arms in surprise. The boy didn't respond, only a shocked expression crossed his face as his jaw dropped, holding onto the girl in surprise as well.
"We've gotta help them." Sydney spoke, and Arianna agreed.
The two started making their way to the scene. As they inched closer to them, one of the boys shouted something at the bully as if he were standing up for his friends. Arianna watched as one of the bullies took steps closer to the boy and she feared that he was going to beat him up.
Before the bully could reach the boy, Sydney hurried in between them, standing face-to-face with the taller boy. Arianna froze for a second, scared that the bully would've done something to her.
"Leave him alone, Bowers." Sydney told the bully. Arianna furrowed her eyebrows, assuming that her sister had ran into the bully some time earlier that day.
Bowers furrowed his eyebrows at the small girl and he let out a chuckle before his eyes slowly slid to a policeman, who was staring at him. Fear seemed to fill his eyes as he looked back down to Sydney, and he glanced over to Arianna as if he were embarrassed.
Bowers slowly backed away from Sydney and made eye contact with the boy that stood behind her "This summer's gonna be a real hurt train for you and your faggot friends." The bully told the boy before licking his hand and wiping it onto his face, making Arianna cringe.
The bullies all laughed and high fived before starting to walk away. It reminded Arianna of a typical jerk-guy group you'd only see in the movies.
Arianna's round, blue eyes followed them before looking over at the group of boys that they had just stood up for.
The boys all watched with annoyance in their eyes as the bullies drove away in the car, all tired of how they were treated.
Once the car was out of the teenager's sights, Sydney turned around, facing the boys. "Are you guys okay?" She asked, her voice laced with concern.
"Yeah, we're fine." A voice spoke from beside Ari, causing Arianna to look over at the boy. He had dark curls, freckles all over his pale face, huge glasses, and sharp cheek bones. Arianna made eye contact with him, confused at the fact that his eyes went wide for a moment, but then went back to their normal size, and a goofy grin was quickly plastered onto his face.
"And who might you be, gorgeous?" He asked Arianna, wrapping one of his arms over her shoulder.
Arianna blinked as she looked at him with amusement, before grabbing his hand and unwrapping his arm from around her. "I'm Arianna."
Sydney realized she hadn't seen any of the boy's faces during the school day. "Who are you guys?"
"W - Well, I - I'm Bill." The boy stuttered out, pink tinting his cheeks as he studied the girl's facial features. "A - A - And th - th - th - this is Stanley, E - E - Eddie, and-
"Richie!" The boy with huge glasses answered for himself. "Geez, spit it out, Buh-Buh-Bill!"
"Well, it's nice to meet you all." Sydney ignored Richie's obnoxious comment and smiled. "I'm Sydney. Arianna and I are sisters."
"You are?" Richie blurt out again, but softened his obnoxious tone at the looks her received. "I mean, you both don't look like sisters."
"Well, we're twins." Arianna explained, only making Richie even more confused.
"Unidentical, Richie." Stanley reminded him, rolling his hazel eyes as an'oh' look spread onto Richie's face.
Arianna tore her eyes off of the odd boy and looked over at Bill, a smirk growing on her lips as she saw his green eyes glued on Sydney.
"Hey, Ari." Richie spoke, snapping the brunette out of her thoughts.
"Hey, Richie." She joked back as a smile spread across her lips.
"Hey, how do you get your ass to look so good in those short? Like, no offense, when other girls wear shorts like yours, it makes their back look weird." Richie suddenly asked in a serious tone.
Arianna furrowed her eyebrows at the random and obnoxious question. What the heck? "Uhm..." Arianna trailed off as she let out an amused chuckle. She turned to the other boys. "Is he, uh, always like this?" She interrupted the boys' conversation with Sydney.
"Always." Eddie rolled his brown, round eyes.
"Oh, shut it, Eddie, you love it!"
Arianna chuckled at Richie's words and shook her head, and as they made eye contact, he smirked and winked at her, making her roll her blue eyes.
"W - W - W - Well, welcome to D - Duh - Derry. It was..." Bill struggled to finish his sentence, and he mentally cursed at himself.
"It was nice to meet you." Richie finished the sentence for him.
Arianna gave him a warm smile. "Thanks."
A car horn honked, making Arianna, Sydney, Bill, Richie, Stanley, and Eddie look over to where it was coming front. The twin's mother sat inside of the car. "Our mom's here." Sydney spoke with a smile. "We've got to go."
Arianna smiled, hugging her pale arms together. "It was nice meeting you all."
The boy's watched as the girl's started to walk away.
"You too." Eddie called back, a small grin etching itself onto his lips, his stare not leaving the girls.
"See y'all around!" Sydney waved with her smile, then finally turned around and continued walking to the car.
The boy's only continued to stare at the girl's at they walked away. This was the closest interaction that they had had with girls in a long time. They were innocent.
Arianna grabbed the car handle and opened the door. She furrowed her eyebrows when she heard Eddie say, "Richie, stop staring at her ass!"
"I'm not staring at her ass-"
"Richie!"
She shook her head and fought back a grin that was forcing itself onto her pink lips, and climbed into her mom's car.
Pervert.
●●●
Ari hopped onto each stair step until she made it down to the hallway, freezing as she heard the front door open.
Her father was home.
Arianna and her sister didn't have a good relationship with their so called 'father'. He was always trying to hit on his own daughters, and he was overly protective when it came to meeting new people - especially boys. He often argued with Arianna as Sydney always tried to interfere, but Arianna didn't want her sister to deal with it. Arianna felt like she had to protect her sister as her sister protected her.
Their mother never tried to defend her daughters and would just sit there and watch. One reason was because she was afraid of him. That was due to the fact that he wasn't a very nice man.
"I'm home!" She shuddered as she heard her father's voice announce those words, and she heard him slam his keys on the counter, making her jump.
She quickly continued to make her way to the kitchen, determined to reach the cabinet and get a snack before her father came in. But, just as she opened the cabinet door, her father stepped into the kitchen.
"Hey, Ari." His smooth but unsettling voice spoke from the doorframe of the kitchen, and Arianna froze as she heard his muddy boots approaching her. She hated when he spoke her name.
"Hi, dad." She uncomfortably said, spinning around to find him standing right behind her.
His lips were twisted in an ugly smirk, and his dark brown eyes looked down at her with a dark look. It was like staring in a deep pit of darkness. "Hey, baby." He spoke, the smirk not leaving his overly chapped lips. "How was your day at school?"
She gulped, not daring to make eye contact with him, almost gagging at his breath that reeked of alcohol. "I-It was good."
"I'm glad." He grinned. Arianna nodded in agreement and tried to slip past him, but froze as he put his hands on both sides of her so she was trapped.
"Talk to any boys?" He asked, the look in his face suddenly twisting into an angrier expression.
The thought of the boys came into her head. Their names popped into her head, as if she were being tempted to blurt them. She hesitated before shakily nodding, her wide eyes glued to the floor. "Yes, dad."
Silence.
"Were they nice?"
"Yes, dad."
"How nice were they? Do they like you?" He frowned, and she could hear the obvious anger in his voice.
She then immediately thought of Richie. Was he staring at my ass? "N - No." She shook her head as if trying to shake the thoughts of the boy out.
"Do you like them?" He asked, breathing heavily. Arianna knew the man was angry, and it wasn't such a bright idea to make him angry.
"No, no, never." She shook her head, and she froze as he started bending down, his brown eyes now leveled with her own blue ones.
The man held eye contact with her as he frowned. "Stay away from them. You hear me, young lady?" He ordered sternly, his nostrils flaring with anger.
"Yes, dad-"
"You stay away from them!" He repeated, making the frightened girl jump in fear at his harsh words.
"Ari?"
Arianna and dad's heads both turned to the side, seeing that Sydney hopped down the staircase onto the landing, and stopped as she saw them. Her confused face dropped as she saw her father. "Oh... hey, dad." Sydney spoke quietly before rushing towards them, grabbing her twins hand, and dragging her away.
As Sydney lead her younger sister up the stairs, Arianna hesitantly turned her head to look behind her, seeing that her father never took his eyes off of her, and watched as his daughters quickly went to their rooms.
●●●
"So." Arianna started after a few minutes of silence. "Those boys were nice, right?" The thought of the boys hadn't left her mind since.
Sydney looked up from the flower she was sketching and her eyes went wide. She nodded, quickly looking back down to her sketch.
Ari furrowed her eyebrows. "Why are you acting so weird?"
"Nothing!" Sydney blurted out, yelling something in gibberish when she accidentally tore her sketch paper.
Arianna giggled. "I don't think it's 'nothing'. I saw the way you looked at Bill."
Sydney froze.
"Do you think he likes you?"
Sydney looked up from her paper and shook her head. "Probably not. Wait, why are you asking?"
"Because I saw him staring at you. I thought it was cute how you were both staring at each other." Arianna smiled and winked at her.
Sydney rolled her blue eyes. "Well, what about you and that loud kid with huge glasses? I heard what that boy said to you; disturbing. I should've told him to back off." She joked.
Arianna looked at her clear finger nails, starting to think about the boy once again. Did he like her? Was he staring at her butt? She knew she was going to find out sooner or later - that is, unless they even see the boy's ever again. The girl found herself wanting to get to know the boy. Who really was he? There must've been a reason as to why the boy was so loudly spoken.
"Ari?"
Arianna slightly jumped, not even realizing she was grinning until Sydney gave her sister a certain look, and she wiped it off of her face. "What - no! I'm sure he doesn't like me."
"Oh, really?" Syd asked with a smirk.
"Yes."
"You're not denying that you don't like him." Sydney said, making Ari grab her throw pillow and throw it at her face.
As Arianna started to laugh, she heard her stomach grumble. She realized hadn't gotten the snack from earlier when her dad interrupted her.
"Sydney, can we go to the store?" She asked her.
"Why?"
"Because I'm hungrryyyy." She complained as she jumped onto her bed, making Sydney yell at her about her 'just-made bed'. Ari thought to herself happily, 'I'm fun.'
°°°°°°°°°°
Sooo this first chapter was a little to long, but, oh well. This first chapter may have been boring, but the others are still better, I promise!!!
edit, mar 2021: ari and syd are rlly the bully busters up in here
-S