Eigengrau

New friendships begin?

Chapter 7:

Parents that team up to make their kids do something they don't really want to do, are the equivalent of torture. Especially when one of the parents involved is not even one's actual parent, and your step-sister wants to puke at the idea of having you meet her crush's friends; and the step-sister's crush doesn't even want to be friends with you in the first place.

That was the situation Mia found herself in, after lunch.

She had been forced -not so much by Brett, but by Clara and Teddy-, to go out with Riley and meet his friends.

Riley, as you can imagine, was beyond disgusted by the idea, not because it would affect him -not that it comes to it, but it would, eventually, affect him-, but because he knew Mia wouldn't be welcome among his friends.

If you would have met Riley's group of friends, you would have been blown away: not one of them was ugly, not even taking into account the most 'weird' definitions of beauty. From whichever angle you looked at them, they were gorgeous. Their skin was clear, their hair soft-looking, and well taken care of. Even the ones with brown eyes -stereotypically the most boring color of eyes- had a look that could either make your heart burst with love, or tear your soul into millions of pieces. They weren't like Casey, who tried to look threatening and ended up being grotesque; they didn't try, that's just the way they were.

They were like a gang from a movie, with all these different ethnicities and sexualities and stories to tell. They seemed to have been casted for a modern YA book-to-movie adaptation, aiming toward teenagers, with the mission to empty their pockets, hidden under the fake goal of making them feel like they 'belonged'.

The group was composed as follows:

Riley: tallest out of all of them, incredibly handsome, killer smile, quick wit, with good intentions yet little knowledge of how to properly carry them out. Cat lover, night hater. All in all, good guy.

Fitz: Mexican origins, diversity provider, amazing ability to turn everything into a bad sex pun. Bisexual, good looks off the chart, tattoo artist. Warning, squeamish at the very mention of hamburgers.

Lilo: Short, both in height and in temper. Black, rude, incredibly nice if she liked you. Favor doer, history worshipper -black history, mainly-, Buddhist. Ukelele skills like you've never seen before.

Na-young (Mouse): not your average Asian stereotype. Conservative parents, rebel daughter. High school dropout, an open ear to someone else's problems, admittedly future McDonalds worker. Future chef from a five-star restaurant, according to her friends. Incredible sense of fashion, which was the source of Casey's jealousy toward her. Lesbian.

Walt: giant nerd, hipster as fuck, the human equivalent of the flexing arm emoji. When girls saw him, they turned into the heart eyes emoji. Everyone's favorite. Kind, yet picky when it came to people. Pet peeve: anything that had to do with Casey Duncan.

These descriptions, however, only scratch the surface. As every person -except for Casey, maybe-, they had a deepness within them that it's impossible to describe with words.

Meeting Riley's friends made Mia want to run and hide in a cave under the ocean. The tremble in her legs was hardly noticeable, thank God, given that they were walking on the beach, across the unstable, burning sand. She couldn't figure out yet why she was so nervous, why her heart raced with every step she took. She guessed it was because she'd never been under such pressure to fit in. While she had been changing clothes and putting a bikini on earlier, Casey had bursted into her room with a tense warning on her lips.