Plastic

CH. 6

see u next year lol! im not even gonna bother reading this back if its bad or doesn't make sense my bad ig

CH. 6

Cody could already tell from the moment she furiously read her - very clearly directed - poem: Courtney had Cracked.

"If only you knew how evil she really was, Cody," Courtney tells him, wiping away a stray tear and trying to swallow away the lump in her throat. Cody and Courtney were in the school bathrooms as Courtney complained about Heather. "You know I'm not allowed to wear hoop earrings? Two years ago, Heather told me they were her thing, and I couldn't wear them, or she'd stop being friends with me. So, my parents got me these gorgeous golden hoop earrings for my fifteenth birthday, and I had to pretend I hated them." Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

She lets out a shaky sigh before looking Cody dead in the eye, "And you know she cheats on Alejandro?"

Cody doesn't miss a beat, "Yes?"

"Every Thursday, he thinks she's just hanging out with us, but really, she's hooking up with Trent in the projection room above the auditorium!" She breathes deeply, trying to keep her composure, "And I never told anyone... Because I'm such a good friend!"

Jackpot, Cody thought. Courtney's breakdown gave him an idea. After his Christmas break, he's gonna try to help Alejandro catch Heather in the act every Thursday, in secret.

-

Cody had put a note on the door in the gymnasium leading to the outside soccer court, "Soccer practice held in the projection room above the auditorium." He hoped it was enough to fool at least Alejandro.

He didn't end up seeing a sobbing Heather the next day, so he guessed it hadn't worked. So he had to think of something else.

"Hey!" Cody calls out to Alejandro as he walks up to his locker. Alejandro greets him back before they're both ambushed by a thief who swiftly steals Cody's backpack. Cody yelps as he watches the guy - The guy actually just being Noah in a balaclava, - run away. He looked at Alejandro pathetically, and Alejandro didn't even need to be asked before he started to chase the masked thief. Cody yells out, "Looks like he's headed to the projection room!"

Again, it didn't work. At the end of the day when Cody left the school to go hang out with Noah and Gwen at his house, Noah told them about what happened. They didn't find Trent and Heather making out in the projection room; they'd seen the soccer coach getting it on with some female teacher.

Cody sighs, "Why are we still even trying? None of this is gonna work." Gwen shakes her head. "Cody, we just have to... Think outside the box."

Noah wasn't listening, rummaging through Cody's cabinets instead, looking for a snack. He grabs a box, looking at it quizically, "What the hell are kälteen bars?" Cody looks at the box Noah's holding, "They're nutrition bars from Sweden, they help you gain weight. My mom used to give them to the kids in Africa."

Noah and Gwen both look at Cody with an intense look that he couldn't read. "What?"

Gwen leaned onto the table, looking Cody dead in the eye, "Cody. Give them to Heather. Her figure is, like, all she cares about." Cody thinks about it for a second, "Are you sure? What if she..." He trails off, before nodding. "Yeah, I'll do it."

-

"What's that?" Heather says, pointing to the kälteen bar Cody was holding.

Cody hesitates before answering, "Oh, they're these weird nutrition bars my mom uses to lose weight." Heather immediately snatches the packaging out of his hands before he can say something else. She squints, "It's all in like... Swedish?" Cody nods, "Yeah, there's this ingrediënt in it that's banned in the US." Heather looks at him for a long while, and he tries to suppress the anxious feeling of being caught and keeps a calm face, "It burns your carbs. All your carbs, it'll burn them." He lies further.