The Patron Saint of Monsters

Chapter Three Part One

They were sitting around their usual table on the outside patio that was designated for seniors only, the senior section was never monitored and most of the students used it for a place to smoke, use their phones and do other things that were against their high school’s policy. Oleander was smoking a cigarette and looking at her phone, Valerie was thumbing through a magazine that marketed sex positivity and feminism, she referred to it as “The Bible” .  Rebecca was on the ground leaning back on her elbows sunning herself, she had her hoodie off, revealing the fact that she was not wearing a shirt. Trina was trying to get the girls’ attention. Eventually Oleander gazed upwards with disdain, preparing to gripe about the sunlight when she saw the irritation decorating Trina’s small features. Oleander often found herself feeling bad for Trina, she knew what it was like to feel awkward and uncomfortable but Trina seemed to take shyness to an entirely new level. “What is it Chicka?” she asked her friend.

“You said we had to do something before we could do anything about Trent, we said we would discuss matters further at lunch and now it’s lunch and no one is saying anything!” Trina replied in a fierce whisper, she had been tempted to shout but the only thing Trina hated more than her friends was attention, she could not stand being in the middle of a scene.

“I want to learn more about him, who he was as a person before he offed himself.” Oleander explained with a shrug as if it were obvious, she did not understand the thin girls anger.

“I want to know why he killed himself.” Rebecca chimed in.

“I want to know how he became a monster, like was he turning into one and is that why he swallowed a bullet?” Valerie contributed with a curt nod and without looking up from the glossy pages of her magazine, wrapping her lips around the straw protruding from her diet soda before taking a long sip, like a question mark to punctuate her sentence.

“Holy fuck!” Oleander began, "Do you think that’s what it was? I mean like if I was morphing into a monster, I’d probs kill myself. Well depending on the monster, I’d be a vampire any day of the week.”

“Vampires don’t become ghosts.” Trina said with a judgemental tone.

“I’d kill myself if I was in twilight.” Rebecca snorted, knowing that her step-sister Trina had previously been obsessed with the series.

Trina began to blush furiously and looked down at the book she had open on the table. Oleander reached forward and rubbed the back of her friends’ hand, “A lot of people like twilight. “ she said soothingly.

Valerie just laughed and winked at Rebecca. Things with the girls always seemed to go this way, Rebecca snarking at Trina and Oleander and Valerie alternating between trying to fix things. Neither of them particularly cared for Trina. They had taken to calling her Tag-A-Long Trina. Trina’s number was in their phones as “Cookie.”

because she was still technically a girl scout, their running joke was that they had named the cookie after Trina. Trina who stuck to them like peanut butter on the roof of their mouths.

Sometimes the teasing didn’t sit well with Oleander, it had long ago formed a knot in her stomach. She hopped that Trina never realized why she had the nickname she had, but sometimes she felt as though Trina’s constant negativity justified their jokes. It had taken Oleander a while to figure out why Trina stayed around them, the day that the realization that Trina simply had no other place to be had dawned on her she immediately changed the contact number in her phone from “Cookie” to “Trina” she had refrained from saying anything to the other girls though.

“I think we should look in the library for some old yearbooks, maybe ask some teachers and try to figure out if any of the skeezers we know went here around the same time as Trent.” Oleander said to the group.

“Good idea, we can ask Mark when we convince him to get our party supplies.” Trina responded.

“I am sure my brother will help us, he was a senior the year before we were born. So he is the right age, he probably knew human Trent. I know he had a friend that went insane and killed myself, maybe it was Trent.”  Rebecca said, thinking about her older brother and his sketchy friends. They were all slackers in their thirties who enjoyed reliving their high school days by aiding the underage drinking and general bad behavior of Rebecca’s friends. Rebecca adored her older brother and tried to always emphasize that he was her brother and not Trina’s. She had always thought it was weird that someone like Mark could also be the type of someone who killed himself, she knows he was really hard on his clique, and maybe even the whole town. No one really talked about it anymore but when the girls had been younger everyone around them always seemed to stress the importance of expressing their feelings.

“All right,” declared Valerie, “we can talk about it after school, let’s meet up at the library?”

“Perfect.” Said Oleander with the two step sisters nodding their agreement.

“Oh and by the way” added Valerie, “Ian said he’d love to come.” and with that the bell rang ending their lunch time.