gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 15

Day Fifteen

They mostly walked in silence until they came to another small, clearing type area. Hunter dumped all of her branches down as Shelby and Toni followed suit, crouching down as she began to look through the more flexible vine-type pieces that lay across the floor of the clearing area.

"It's genetic, by the way," Shelby told them both, motioning to her mouth incase they had forgotten what she was talking about. "When my baby teeth fell out, the other ones just never came in, incase you were wondering."

"I wasn't," Toni said, not looking up from the pile as Hunter passed her another handful of smaller sticks. The blonde however did look at Shelby, sending her  avery tight lipped smile as she nodded in acceptance of the information.

"I kinda was," Hunter admitted, both of the girls looking at her in surprise. "What? I've shared classes with you since we were kids, of course I wanted to know how it happened since it wasn't like I'd ever noticed it before."

"Yeah well, I'm not fishing for sympathy," Shelby continued after being slightly surprised that Hunter was even aware they shared classes before since she had never really acknowledged her. "But it hasn't not been hard."

Toni scoffed and Hunter knew that the girl had just opened up a can of worms by saying things had been hard for her. While Hunter knew the past year of her own life had been hard, she was faintly aware of the fact that Toni had a significantly harder life than her even if she didn't know all the details.

"Okay, Becky, maybe don't talk to me about hard," Toni muttered sarcastically, stuffing some more of the twigs into one of the drawstring swag bags they had found ages ago. 

Hunter grabbed her own, ramming it full of sticks as she wandered through the trees and slightly further away from the argument that she knew was brewing.  

"Nobody believes me when I say this but I do have actual problems, like, way more than you can imagine."

"All right, great. Let's hear them," Toni said as she rose to her feet in a challenge, squaring up to the girl even though she knew Hunter would complain about it later. She loved Hunter, she did, but her annoyance towards Shelby was rife and ready to go.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have to be pitch-perfect every second? To be watched like a hawk for the slightest bit of weight gain or the tiniest wobble in my heel or... or if my hem is just a centimetre off regulation or I say the wrong thing about international politics? Well then, God help me."

Hunter blinked from where she was crouched, thinking about how Shelby's issues were ones that she would have killed to have. Instead she got hateful parents and an abusive boyfriend.

"So you're complaining about being judged when you literally signed up for that?" Toni pointed out, little sympathy in her voice as she voiced the same thoughts that Hunter was thinking.

"I know. I know but... but I'm not just talking about pageant stuff. It feels like everywhere I go, somebody's asking me to like... to meet some kind of expectation," Shelby admitted with a softer tone, Hunter almost feeling some sense of relation to what the girl was saying. She understood that feeling all too well. "It's a lot is all. The pressure."

"Yeah well, my dad's been a no-show since day one, and my mom's in and out of rehab like it's the fucking White Castle so nobody expects shit  from me. Doesn't feel great either. Do you know how many field trips I've had to bail on cause no-one's been there to sign my permission slip? You know, I don't give a fuck about going to the planetarium. It just would have been nice to have someone there to say that I could."