All We Will Never Know

Chapter 4 - Alexis

Alexis Carmichael stared at herself in the reflection of the small mirror on her locker door, struggling to conceal a pesky zit she had just spotted on her nose. "Damn it," she mumbled, keeping a clear eye on the people bustling around her to make sure no one saw what she was doing. It was embarrassing enough to stroll in on the first day of senior year with a pimple the size of Pluto on her face, let alone to be caught covering said pimple to avoid unwanted attention in the first place. Her father was a plastic surgeon, for Christ's sake. If anyone at Everwood was expected to be flawlessly perfect it was Alexis, even though she swore to never go under the knife and succumb to such pressure herself. Thank goodness fashion week was over a month away, plenty of time for her complexion to return to normal.

"Lex!" She hit her head on the door of her locker and winced in pain, turning to find Mia and Cordelia behind her.

"Can I help you?" Alexis asked dramatically. She hurriedly looked into the mirror, then smiled when she realized her zit wasn't noticeable anymore. She hid her concealer in her purse and closed her locker, leaning against it to study her nails. "Sorry girls, just kidding," she said with a wink. She wasn't kidding, though. Her friends were .02 seconds away from catching her concealing a flaw. And sure, they would be supportive and probably wouldn't even mention it, but Alexis hated hindering anyone's perception of her. It was a problem, she knew it, but it worked for her.

"This day is going by so slowly," Mia sighed, crossing her arms. She looked down at the floor, and Alexis noticed how afraid her friend had looked all day. Probably for the same reasons as everyone else.

It was nearing the end of fourth hour, when a majority of the seniors had an online class that wouldn't start until the second week of school. Among those enrolled were Alexis and pretty much everyone she associated with. The principal was aware, yet instead of making them sit in the library and pretend to study like he would have for anyone else, he let their group do whatever they wanted as long as they weren't causing trouble. Alexis smiled at the thought, knowing the power she had over the school and pretty much everyone in it. The power she and all her friends had. It didn't even matter that Kassidy wasn't here today. As much as Kassidy would claim otherwise, Alexis didn't need her to be popular.

"What are you smiling about, weirdo?" Cordelia asked, sliding to the floor with a thud.

Alexis looked down at her, admiring Cordelia's grown out roots that she somehow made work. She couldn't imagine letting her own roots grow out, even though her natural color was only a shade or so darker than the sun-kissed highlights she spent over two-hundred dollars to maintain each month. She felt a familiar feeling within her chest, the habitual burn of jealousy toward one of her friends for being something she couldn't. In Cordelia's case, it was confidence that Alexis envied.

She sighed heavily, closing her eyes and breathing in the unappealing scent of Pine-Sol. She obviously couldn't tell Cordelia that she had been mentally imagining a world without Kassidy, a world where she was the queen. So instead, she made up a lie. "I'm thinking about Eric Ziegler again," Alexis finally said. Even though it wasn't technically true in that moment, it would have been any other day.

Mia giggled. "I'm so glad my brother isn't old enough for you to fantasize about. Gross."

Cordelia ushered to the other end of the hallway, where Peyton and Sam had been standing for over fifteen minutes, in the middle of a heated discussion. "You should be glad Peyton wasn't here to listen to that," she laughed.

Alexis's fascination with Peyton's older brother, Eric, had started as a joke, after Peyton had innocently acknowledged Alexis's own brother's good looks one day during sophomore year. To get her back, Alexis had started constantly talking about Eric Ziegler to purposely make Peyton uncomfortable. What the girls didn't know was that Alexis's obsession with him wasn't completely an act.