PARTNERS IN CRIME ━ original

02.

partners in crime,
chapter two

        IT WAS MY mistake to have believed that the stares and whispers would die down by lunch. I'd figured that by then my arrival would be old news. But I was wrong.

        I wish it was an exaggeration to say that the entire cafeteria was staring at me by the time I entered the line. There was a second of silence as people gawked, only for it to be broken immediately by murmurs again.

        What little appetite I had disappears. I look down at my tray and realize it's too late to put it back as our part of the line enters the kitchen. I shake my head when one of the lunch ladies, Miss Marlene, kindly asks me which meal I want.

       "Just ignore them, Via," Marisa Antonio says. Marisa and I have been best friends since I was born. She was a few months older than me, our moms living the true dream of their daughters continuing their legacy. Marisa doesn't look much like her mom aside from her smile and personality. She'd inherited her father's big, doe-like eyes.

        "I'm fine," I reply, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge at the end of the line. I hand Miss Rosa, a dollar and place my tray on the dirty stack by the second door. I wait for Marisa and our other best friend, Kalani Kayako, to pay for their food before we head toward our table.

        "What the hell are you looking at?" Kalani barks as we sit, her glare directed toward a group of freshmen girls. They'd been staring at me and whispering to each other, yet looked liked deer in headlights now that they'd been caught. "Get a goddamn life, Jesus Christ."

        "Lani." Marisa sighs. "It's not worth it, just ignore them."

        "No." Kalani scoffs. "Staring is fucking rude." She raises her voice and glances at the girls again, though they're not looking at us. Instead, they're quickly gathering their stuff.

        Kalani is half-Japanese from her dad. She has a whole rocker-chick vibe going around her with a messy shag haircut. She's never been one to avoid confronting people, whereas Marisa would rather die before she told someone off. That's what makes the three of us so perfect. Kalani's black, Marisa's white, and I'm the grey in the middle.

"I'm okay, Lani," I tell her as I open my water. "Seriously."

"Do you think she's going to show up?"

"I don't know. That would be, like, super disrespectful, right?"

I tense as the two girls walking behind me, whispering extremely loudly with no effort to hide the fact that they're talking about me. I let my eyes flicker up to the tv screens in the cafeteria, where all the announcements are placed, just as it changes to the next slide.