KY$ ✓

One | Pancake Ass

SOTC (Song Of The Chapter): Where's My Juul??? By Full Tac (ft. Lil Mariko)

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Girl One shot up. "Katrina, someone needs to deck your pancake ass before I do!"

"Shut the fuck up, toxic ass bitch!" Girl Two shrieked.

Everyone in the classroom went up an octave as I slumped in my desk.

I knew both aggressors in the fight this time. Girl One, a blonde who I swear on the Bible giggled bubbles, for being a self-proclaimed Insta Baddie. Girl Two was a chick with an eyebrow slit I met on the first day of school when she slammed her Starbucks into my favorite top. Somehow I can recite the Eminem rap of what she immediately screamed her drink was (a Chai Tea latte with three pumps hazelnut shaken more than baby Trisha Paytas if anyone was wondering) but not to study for my History test next class.

Not that it would matter in a few minutes.

Girl Two continued. "Literally ever since Bryce started liking my story you've been telling me what to wear at Kayla's parties! Do you not realize how tox—"

"I don't need your ass cheeks hanging out around my boyfriend!" Girl One screeched. "You're always trying to seduce him— you're always just trying!"

"So I have an ass now?"

The class roared like lions on crack.

"GIRLS!" Mrs. Meyer shouted for the bazillionth time, finally getting in the middle of them before a surefire hair pulling session. "Both of you to the dean's—"

Ring!

Faster than brain signals everyone got up with their bags and out the door including me.

The halls of Grandview High School were its usual. Mobs of humans cluttered up spaces and cracked open lockers for the upcoming second period class. A teacher nearly broke the door off its hinges to scream at a gaggle of boys cursing. Hall monitors taking form in middle-aged women said, "Heeeey, girl!" To each of the female specimen walking by in an attempt to sound like they didn't eat straight rocks.

But what only changed versions was the gossip within it.

"Derek Diablo has sixty-nine bodies."

"Cierra is a fucking Queen, it's Bella who needs to take meds."

"Men are trash."

"All bitches are the same."

"Kaitlyn took a pregnancy test at a gas station."

"Don't date him he smokes weed and he's a dick that'll end up just like his dad."

"I cut myself yesterday."

God played a sick trick on me when he surrounded me with the teenagers of the 21st century— this generation who faked love on Instagram only to backstab their besties with their tongues. He knew I'd get the message when he got me here that if they couldn't care less about their honorary brothers and sisters, they'd care less about a loner.

More specifically, a new girl they never tried to know anything about.

Finally, I flung open the door to the girl's bathroom. Then a stall and locked it before I took it out of my backpack: an orange bottle to the top with little white pills.

I clasped it in my palm and breathed out.

"Now kill yourself, Clara Stratton," I whispered.