~Kiss Marry Kill~

A snail climbing a salt lamp

“Alex, Ashley, and… Mr. Arkley.” I said to Sabrina while she munched on her sandwich, little white crumbs sticking to her fading lip gloss.

“You just got lazy and gave me everyone beginning with A,” she scoffed. “Okay, I'd usually say to kill Alex, but considering how Mr. Arkley did me dirty on that one test…” She looked outside and thought for a moment, her legs swinging against the table we sat on. “Kill Arkley, kiss Ashley and marry Alex.”

I laughed. “You gave that way too much thought… couldn't playing this game kinda count as cheating on your boyfriend?? I mean what would he think if he heard us right now?” I teased, nudging Sabrina's shoulder.

“Oh yeah?” She raised an eyebrow. “I'd like to see him say something about it, like he gives a shit.” Sabrina flashed a look over to the table across from us, where her boyfriend Cody sat with his twin sister, Cora. They seemed to be discussing something together, which was pretty odd as I had rarely seen them talk during school before.

There was obviously some tension between Sabrina and her boyfriend lately and I was starting to get curious about the reason. The thing with Sabrina was, she'd tell me about everything and anything. We could spend hours talking about the most mundane topics and debriefing the same situations again and again, but her boyfriend was a different story.

  I'd like to think that Sabrina followed a “show, don't tell” kind of principle when it came to talking about him to me. I didn't know many details about what went on or how things were between them, but i usually got a pretty good picture from her expression alone.

Maybe that's why I felt a shiver down my spine when Dominique walked up to their table, taking a seat between Cody and Cora like it was second nature. I instantly looked up at Sabrinas's face to get some sort of verbal reaction but no words were spoken, she just gave a look that said “why is that bitch there?”

  Dominique was like some chick from a movie, and I don't mean like a good movie, I mean a shitty rom-com directed by a middle-aged man. Her parents gave her a French name and she must have thought it came with the passport because she spoke with an accent despite her only French relative being the cheap wine she chugged down at parties to impress the pretentious art pricks who called movies "films".
 
  She wore obnoxiously red lipstick which usually ended up on her pencils when she chewed on them (Yes, she still exclusively used pencils to write at the ripe old age of 17, and most of them were chewed to the core.)
 
  It wasn't just her lipstick that was obnoxious, it was everything from her fake accent to her body language. This was evident in the way she dragged the seat out and sat down between Cora and Cody, leaning half her torso over the table as if forming a wall between them, her heat-damaged hair like a tangle of moss, sprawled all over.

  Sabrina stared at them for a good moment, before looking back at me. “Kiss marry kill.” She said finally, pointing at their table in a manner that suggested she was demanding an answer rather than asking for it.

  “Uhhh…” I faltered, chuckling nervously. “Man, it feels like I'm being tested… I mean, what's worse? Killing your boyfriend or kissing him??”

  Sabrina laughed. “Trust, I don't care… just be honest.” 

  “Um okay…” I thought for a good moment before i managed to come up with half an answer, “ki- ow!”

  “shhh…” Sabrina whispered, and I noticed Cody was coming over to us, Sabrina gave me a side-smirk before looking over at him.

  “Hey babe…” He said in a way that made both Sabrina and I cringe, but she was a lot better at hiding it.

  “Yo.”

  “We got class after this…”

  Sabrina's breath reeked of sarcasm. “Really? I forgot-”

  “Chemistry class…” He interrupted, looking into her eyes like he was getting his glasses prescription done.

  “I know.”

  “Do… do you wanna go??” He said, taking her hand. I turned my face away, staring at the wall to avoid showing how much I was struggling to keep a straight face.

  Sabrina sighed. “Okay sure, fine…” She groaned as she stood up, his hand tugging on her’s. “Bye Juliet.” She smiled as I gave her a wave, before eventually packing my things up and going to my next class.

***

   The next two classes dragged on like a snail climbing a salt lamp. My English teacher droned on and on about the various extended metaphors of poems I hadn't even read and forced us to read out parts of our embarrassingly personal homework essays.

  On the other hand, my business teacher had finally become aware of the fact that we were incredibly behind, and went through about 70 PowerPoint slides with us during the one class. I took down around 3 of them before giving up.

  By the end of the day, I had learnt absolutely nothing about extended metaphors or corporate law, but probably mastered the art of sleeping with my eyes open. I finally jolted awake as the bell rang and sprung to my feet, ready to run out the school door before I noticed I was missing my umbrella.

  I wouldn't usually go to lengths to retrieve my umbrella, but I was having a particularly good hair day and I didnt want the heavy rain to ruin that for me. I figured I must have left it in English class and went upstairs to fetch it from the empty classroom.

  It didn't take long for me to spot the red object from under my seat and take it, but a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks on the way out.

I looked out the window, my elbows avoiding the stone flower pot Ms. Clarkson kept on the window sill. To my disgust, I saw Cody right beneath the window, holding Dominique up to the wall.

  My eyes widened at the sight, and I continued to look down at them, my expression changing from disgust to horror when Dominique pulled Cody in for a kiss that looked unsurprisingly French.

  That display left me mortified and enraged. No way Sabrinas's painfully cringe boyfriend was cheating on her with that wannabe French bitch. I actually couldn't believe it. I was so angry, so bewildered, so scandalised that I instantly reached for the handle to close the window, knocking down the flower pot in the process.

  As the brightly painted, heavy stone flower pot fell to the ground, my mind froze.
It took about two painfully long seconds for it to hit Cody's head, about three until Dominique’s desperate screams of fear overruled his deafening silence, and maybe five until I realised I should get the fuck out of there.