Freaks

8(Continued)

Harper has to wake up extra early now that Kenan takes her to school and he can't be late. She's too afraid Jackson or Alice would see her if she let Malakai take her. It'd be ideal for her to sit in the parking lot and share yawns back and forth, smacking gum until it was time to go inside. But she has to sit inside the empty cafeteria.

For quite a while, not many people are there except for a few people coming in for detention or sports. Then eventually the possible murderers come through the doors, one dressed in fancy clothes and the other in sweatpants.

Alice takes a hesitant seat beside Harper, acting energized as if she were mentally healthy, "Hey. I saw you texted me about having more questions?"

"Yeah." She watches as Jackson sits behind Alice, "I wanted to know more about your dad. I want to know all of your motives."

Alice bats her eyelashes for a silent minute, "It's really private." She starts to consider, "But...it's something I should tell you in a more personal area." She looks around the empty tables where few sit and have a better opportunity to hear them, "You know?"

"Okay. But where?"

"The beach." She glances at Jackson, "Did he ask you—"

"Yeah." She replies as Jackson sits halfway asleep with his fist on his cheek, "I just have to go home and change first. If that's possible?"

He blinks his eyes longer as his answer and Alice brings up her phone, "Good because I need your help." She decodes the numbers, "With a decision." She taps a few more times and eventually brings up a picture to show a teal, floral printed bikini on a hanger, "This one? Or..." she scrolls over, showing a mustard yellow bikini with a snakeskin design, "This one?"

"Uhm." Harper pauses as she teeters between the pictures.

I didn't know dressing like a middle-aged woman's handbag was a style.

"I got them yesterday." Alice states, "I like both but what's more summery?"

"The teal would look better on you I guess."

She nods and takes back her phone, "I'll agree on that. Thank you."

Both were ugly, teal might let her eyes stand out better but it doesn't change the boor of a brain behind them. Harper is holding every nerve in her body to stop herself from being expressively blunt to them both, to tell the real truth, to tell Alice she's two-faced, tell Jackson she feels ill around him. She wants to tell him she hates him, how she never loved him, and even if she ever did, she can't see how...he sucks at relationships.

Now she's seeing it, it's almost exactly how Malakai put it, slowly dying. She's experiencing what life would've been like if she had stayed with them, she would be a part of this, still pretending like everything wasn't bothering her and her life was completely perfect.

Now, she's only pretending because she has to, back then it was a choice, gladly she took the right one before she put herself through something like this. She can't imagine doing it without the others on her side, the freaks. Before, she made the wrong choices, chose to be fake so she could fit in, so she would be liked by all, so she didn't lose what she had. She didn't want to be alone. She still doesn't truly.

Throughout the rest of the day, she finds herself walking next to Jackson in the hallways. He's always up in her ears, asking when they'll be together again. Still unbothered by this plan Alice made up. And she is always reminded of the others when she passes them, missing laughter at the lunch table when all she has now is gossip.

English is as usual, the class is almost finished with The Invisible Man and Luka still despises her. Which means he's not going to ignore her. As soon as she takes her seat, he whips his head to her, not even saying her name first, "Why would you tell Kai to go to the beach?"