"I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend." — Romulan Commander, Star Trek: The Original Series, "Balance of Terror"
It turned out there was a line Lila Rossi wouldn’t even cross. Sure, she wasn’t the nicest person in the world. Far from it. She was a liar, a thief, a cheater, a bully at times, a social climber.
But she wasn’t a monster.
As she looked the sketchbook in Alya’s hand, and the vindictive look on her face; Lila realized what was about to take place would push her over the line into monster status.
The school day had just ended. Most students had already left. Lila had been about to leave when Alya stopped her.
“How? How did you get it?” Lila asked. Surely Marinette wasn’t foolish enough to leave it around.
No, Marinette hadn’t been mean to her. Lila never even implied the bluenette had been mean to her. Lila spun her stories to the class, and whenever Marinette called her out for lying (which she was), the class would gang up on the Bluenette and accuse her of being jealous, of bullying poor Lila.
It was actually rather startling how fast the so call best friends had turned on the girl. Lila didn’t even have to push or instigate it like she usually did. No, a few promises of meeting famous celebrities, and they all rushed to do it on their own.
Rose’s sleepover. Rose didn’t invite Marinette at the other girls’ insistence so Lila wouldn’t feel unease.
Nino’s party. No one mentioned it Marinette. She had been acting crazily lately.
Trip to the movie. Marinette would just ruin it for everybody.
And so on and so forth. Until the class was going out of their way to avoid the bluenette. Some even went as far as verbally bashing the other girl and ending their friendships. It got to the point where no one, not even Adrien, would speak to Marinette; and ostracized her to the back of the class. Only Chloe defended the girl and sought out her friendship. To which Alya snorted, “Of course. Bullies belong with bullies.”
Now the class had moved on to destroying private property. Great.
Lila sighed. How was she going to get herself out of this one?
Lila prided herself on still being able to look at herself in the mirror at the end of the day. Despite all she had done and would be willing to do; Lila was firm on what she wouldn’t do.
Destroying someone’s life work; something they had spent months and months on, something that had nothing to do with Lila, was going too far.
Lila needed to move quickly. She eyed the sketchbook. It was a standard black sketchbook, nothing special. She owned a similar one herself that she used for quick doodles and to write down ideas.
That was when Lila got an idea. She quickly put her school books on the desk and beamed at her moronic classmates. Then all it took were quick sad eyes, and a can I hold it first, please. For Alya to hand it over. Then Lila accidentally spilled all off her books on the ground, and when everyone rushed to help her. Lila switched the two sketchbooks.
Then it took her classmates, not friends (never friends); Alya, Max Alix, Kim, Nino, Mylene, Ivan, all of ten seconds to destroy the book into as little pieces as they could. Never even bothering to look to see if it was actually Marinette’s work.
