First few weeks of school went by so fast. It's already Halloween even though it felt like the first day of school was yesterday.
The whole student body sat in the cafeteria as counselor Blatt gave a lecture about cyber bullying. "Cyber bullying is no laughing matter..." Mauve, along with the other girls at her table found better interest on their phones. "Sending a cruel message to someone online can be just as hurtful as saying it to their face..." Mauve and Charlotte continued to ignore their counselor and laugh quietly at a fail compilation from instagram.
"Im not gonna name names, but the other day a mother called me up because her son was crying after some kids online made fun of his facial deformity..." counselor Blatt continued.
It wasn't really a mystery who she was talking about and the other teens were also obviously able to figure it out. Eli looked around the cafeteria, mortified at the other students as they laughed and whispered and pointed at him.
Mauve looked at him and she could feel herself frown. She doesn't understand how people could be so mean. Eli is such a nice boy and from what she knew, he's never done anything to hurt anyone. She stared at him from her seat; she could tell just by his face how much he wanted to disappear in that moment. Mauve didn't know why but she felt the need to protect Eli. He seems so fragile. She wanted so bad just to give him a hug because his friends didn't and she wanted to go over to the kids that were laughing and yell at them for acting like a bunch of assholes.
But she couldn't. To her, in situations like these, where she wanted to break character and not care about what others had to say, she felt like she was being held down by a giant weight that represented her high school reputation. A few years ago when it was just Mauve and Samantha, she wanted nothing more than to be popular, to be pretty, to be noticed by everyone. And now that she has that, she couldn't care less about it.
Counselor Blatt changed the subject to talk about the Halloween dance and how students should wear culturally sensitive costumes.
Mauve continued to stare at Eli as he talked to Miguel and Demetri.
"I still can't believe you two aren't gonna be Laker girls with us." Yasmine spoke, not so subtly sending a shady look to Charlotte and Mauve, "We agreed on a group costume like weeks ago."
The darker skinned girl sighed drooping her phone and looking to the blonde with annoyance "We didn't agree," she said referring to Mauve and herself, "M and I have had our costumes planned out since summer; We're going as Dorthy and Glinda from The Wizard of Oz."
Yasmine rolled her eyes "Whatever. You guys are always doing your own thing. I chose Laker girls so we could do something all together instead of together but separately."
It might've seemed like a simple disagreement for anyone who watched and listened from a distance but there really was more to it.
Yasmine and Charlotte are both stubborn and strong minded people. Ever since Mauve could remember those two were always clashing and the other three girls who sat at the table knew it, they could feel the rising tension of an argument coming.
They stared each other down, challenging the other to say something else that would light the fuse to the bomb of an explosive argument between two teenage girls that could no doubt get physical if escalated high enough.
Moon looked up from her phone, sucking her teeth at the two girls, "Come on guys, it doesn't matter if we're all matching or not. We just need to have fun, it's a Halloween dance!" She let out a giggle looking at her friends with her bright eyes and big smile that shows off her big shiny teeth that make her look absolutely precious.
