Nadine's Stuck.

TWENTY-TWO

Nadine's POV:

Today is February 10th;

I have four days.

I'm not so sure if I should be so calm about my death. Shouldn't I be panicking like those people from movies hanging off the edge of a cliff? I'm basically doing the same thing to myself.

If I were one of those people, I would just let go. You'd die fast, I think, with the height they show in the movies. There's no way you wouldn't. I don't think my vote counts, though.

I'm sitting in the bathroom at school, some girls giggling in the stall next to me while they gossip about people I don't know and take hits of their vapes. The smoke just barely gets past the smoke detectors.

Most of my classes are too much of a hassle to attend, so I usually skip in the bathroom.

Last year, I never would.

Last year, I wouldn't have even thought to skip class.

"...not even!" A girl squeals. New pairs of feet pitter-patter into the bathroom. The girls in the stall next to me quiet, hushing each other.

Elana.

I bend down and hover the side of my face inches from the floor as I struggle to see through the gap between the stall door and the floor. Elana and two girls I recognise from my English class stand near the sink, raking fingers through their hair and fixing up their lip gloss.

"Seriously, Elana?" A girl with Birkenstock sandals and white socks snorts, dipping the wand of her lip gloss into the tube and out again. "Akiko Suzie, or whatever her last name is?"

Suzuki.

The other girl adjusts the way her Lululemon shirt fits her body. "If we knew you were going to start doing charity work for exchange students when you got called in to get babysat by seniors, then we would have forced you not to do it. Exchange students are weird, El."

"She's not an exchange student," Elana giggles, rifling through her backpack.

"Are you sure?" Birkenstock's eyes narrow as she glances over at Elana. "Could have fooled me, she has a weird accent."

"Totally! Her name's weird too." Lululemon backs away from the mirror, turns to the side, and inspects her body. She whines, "Ugh, I shouldn't have eaten so much yesterday..."

"Yeah, you shouldn't have," Birkenstocks applies a thin layer of lip gloss.

"Hey!" Lulu hits Birken's arm, causing Birken's lip gloss to smear down her lip. 

So, that's where Elana gets it from.

Birken rolls down brown paper towel from its holder and tears a piece from it. She wets it under the sink. "I was kidding, obviously. Anyways, you should stop talking to Akiko, El. If you keep hanging out with her, you're going to talk all weird like her. School totally sucks!" All three of the girls laugh at a Birken mocking Akiko's accent.

Elana flaps her free hand. "Stop it! Oh my god, that's so mean! She's not even that bad when you get to know her!"

"Not that bad?" Birken wipes the smeared lip gloss with the wet paper towel. "Sure, but everything about her is weird. She dresses all emo, she has a weird accent, she always smells weird, her name...I could go on. From my point of view, there's about nothing redeemable about the girl."

"She's funny," Elana shrugs, finally pulling out what she was looking for from her backpack. Mascara. She leans close to the mirror, widening her eyes as she flicks the mascara wand over her lashes. "And pretty."