Other Worlds - The Wilds

Chapter 25

AN: Trigger warning of Abuse   

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  Things ran smoothly every day since that for quite a while. With Shelby, that is. Things with Carol were tense.

  Shelby and Toni were friends. Very good friends as well. The kind of friendship where they had deep chats at night, watched ceaseless hours of Netflix until one or the other had to be hurriedly snuck out through a window, played basketball in their spot and sat together at lunch with the rest of Toni's friends.

  This lasted nearly two weeks.

  Toni caught a lift with Shelby after school, as Martha and Dot were both busy. Dot with her dad; it seemed like he was pretty much on his death bed but Dot never liked to talk about it so Toni didn't push it. She hated it when people did that to her. Martha was hanging out after school with the elusive 'Marcus". Toni was only slightly disappointed that Martha hadn't formally introduced them yet but she let Martha take her time. This was a big deal for her.

  "Toni you can plug your phone into the AUX if you want."

  Toni's mouth hung open in shock. Until now Shelby had been pretty territorial about the AUX cord. If she was a dog she would have pissed on it; that's how severe it was.

  "Seriously?" She was stunned.

  "Yeah of course! Play whatever." If Shelby's right eye hadn't twitched so violently as the words left her mouth Toni might have actually believed that she had free reign over the music.

  As much as Toni would have loved to blast the speakers with rap or R&B she decided to play the playlist of Shelby's that she downloaded a few days ago. It was tolerable to listen to and was only about 70 percent country music, a significant drop from all of her other playlists.

  Within the first two notes of the song Shelby exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! I didn't know you listened to Carrie Underwood."

  Toni couldn't tell if Shelby was pulling her leg or not. It was so blatantly obvious that Toni was not a Carrie Underwood fan. If you looked at people that enjoyed country music, and then imagined the opposite of that, it would be Toni.

  Toni turned the music down. "Nope. We are listening to..." She checked her phone, "'Shelby's pop playlist.' Well that's just inaccurate."

  Shelby scoffed, "How is that inaccurate? It is all pop music."

  "Shelbs I hate to break it to you but I don't know a single song on here. So it can't be pop."

  "Taylor swift is on there and she's a pop icon."

  "Pretty sure she's country."

  "Oh and you, someone who doesn't know any of her music, would know that?"

  "Okay, let's find a Taylor song on this playlist and then I'll be educated enough for this debate."

  Toni scrolled through the playlist and selected one of the 50-odd Taylor Swift songs in the compilation, which happened to be the most recently added.

  The music started with a saxophone intro. Toni wasn't sure how to admit that it was very much not a country song.

  She bit her lip and looked at Shelby sheepishly. "Okay, so... I was not fully right."

  Shelby looked a bit restless. "Exactly. Pop icon. We can change this if you want now."

  Honestly, Toni was kind of enjoying it. "Nah, I like this actually."