The Clique Effect

Chapter Nineteen: "We're Sitting Ducks At This Point..."

Ever since the announcement, it'd been throbbing pin and needles over my skull, enhanced by the hangover I'd felt from the other day when Brook and Nellie came over to my house and wreaked havoc. Nellie requested another glass of ice cream, after her third or fourth one I couldn't tell, and that all there was to it. Peering my eyes over the hallway, where a throng of students ambled on and about, my hand rested and massaged over my temple. The blurry images of said students looking over me flashed in mind, daunting, piercing through my skull as the bright light filtered through.

Lying face-down on the couch while my stomach was too nauseated to even rise on my feet, I perked my head slowly over Nellie who just said a few words. "That Seth guy... needs to be taught a lesson." Through my hoarse state, Nellie's tone rang through me faintly, but I could still hear Brook saying about how Logan mentioned a guy who kept stalking him and wouldn't accept no... even after he insisted.

A shrill of piercing squeal came through me next, which turned out to be Nellie eagerly almost falling out of the couch, thumping on the armchair repeatedly, that we didn't have a choice but to look in her direction. "I know what we should do!" Nellie shrieked. Her eyes wandered over mine. "Molly! Didn't you say you knew him? Of Seth, I mean." She pointed out.

"Yeah... So what?" My arm was dangling over the couch to the floor, which I held up my index and air-circled boringly, I wasn't all that impressed with Nellie's overly enthusiastic idea given how numb every inch of my body was.

Nellie heaved out a sigh, sliding over to where I was lying down. "Okay give me your phone." Scrunching over my forehead as I jerked my head up slightly, I looked at her quizzically. "You'll know soon enough, come on, just give me." She pleaded—literally—her back bent over and her palms clasped together as if she was begging for something.

Sitting upright as I tried to fish my phone out of my pocket but to no avail, I slid over to the other side of the couch, burying my hand deeper in case it'd fallen out of my gaze, only then did I hear a buzz coming from the opposite direction. Landing face first as I slid over to the other side of the couch, my hand slipped deeper and touched the outer side of my phone case, I mumbled out an exclaim while pulling the device out and waved it up in the air for the rest of the group to see.

"What do you need with this?" I asked Nellie, unlocking my phone that it slipped out of my hands.

Nellie scooted over, taking my phone in hers. "Let's see." She was mumbling incoherently about my contact list and saying how I could really enhance some of the name a little more unique other than adding where I met them from after the name. "Oh look, there it is, finally." Then the chime sound for phone call was clicked on, I hurried over to her side and about to snatch my phone away, but she yanked me dismissively.

Even in my worse state, I managed to be the party pooper.

Nellie exclaimed over the phone. "He answered! On the first ring as well, what a loser." She noted, ignoring the fact that Seth could've heard all that and hung up right after knowing it was clearly a scammer.

"Hello, what's up?"

Seth's soft-spoken voice echoed in the living room as Nellie put it on speaker. Nellie widened her eyes over us, Brook slid over to her side and peered through the phone call. "So hi, Seth, or should I say, the guy who snitched to the school about you know what in the bushes." It was Nellie who decided to speak, as expected, since both of us uttered a word and went still over the proposition that Nellie planned out.

"This isn't Molly, is it?"

"Molly is..." Nellie traced over the lining of the couch, tugging a smirk over her lips. Then she mumbled in a soft tone that only the closest ones knew not to cross. "Occupied at the moment. But I'm here, so let's talk." She started to say. Brook reached her hand out over to me behind Nellie's back, which I leaned backwards to throw her a look with a shrug over my shoulders, that she only replied with a scoff before she averted her gaze on Nellie.