The Rebel (#Wattys2016)

6. Your Majesty

At dinner, Adeen kept her head down. It wasn't the hardest thing, considering she had done it countless times when she was off on a mission to get Intel or when she was in charge of guiding some soldiers into a riot. But it was still hard. Adeen had never related much with other girls her age, and they seemed to hate her. So she focused on her food.

On her delicious, abundant food. The last time she had had steak —real steak, not squirrel-, was... well, she couldn't remember. It took all of her soldier traits to keep her from eating it all as fast as she could just so she could eat more. She wanted to bury her head in it and just eat until she couldn't move.

But she ate one bite at a time, and used her fork and knife, and wiped her hands on the napkin. When it was over, Adeen was definitely far from done. But she followed the others upstairs.

On the way upstairs, June caught up with her.

"Are you okay?"

Adeen didn't answer right away. "Yeah, I'm just trying to adapt." She looked around before speaking again, wanting to keep anyone from knowing her fatal flaw: social life. "How do you get girls to be your friends?"

June genuinely giggled at that. "Most of the time you don't. Sometimes, you manage to make someone like you. Sometimes, it's like you were predestined to be friends." She sighed. "Look, the other girls looked at you funny, I noticed it. Sometimes you can't change that."

"But why? What did I do to them?"

"The people like you. You basically showed them that if you were Queen, you'd help everyone, not just High Castes."

"But the people like you too."

June smiled at Adeen shyly. "You haven't spent a lot of time with girls, have you?"

"No. My sister, mostly."

"Homeschooled?"

"Used to. I work."

"How?"

Adeen had thought about the lie, so it came out naturally. "Babysitter."

"If there's something I've learned, Adeen, is that no one is a golden coin. No one will be liked by every single person in the world. There will always be someone that hates you, but you can't change that. You just gotta try to make most people like you."

Adeen thought about it. Back in the warehouse, it didn't matter if somebody liked her, she was their superior. They didn't need to like her, just obey her. But here, it was different.

"Another useful advice: girls tend to be snakes. If they can't be better than you, they'll try to make you less than them. They do this by words. For you, someone quiet and mysterious—"

"I am not mysterious."

June laughed. That caught some girls' attention, but they quickly got distracted.

"You're right, you're not mysterious. You are just a Six who ended in the Selection, is the people's favorite, and now doesn't talk to anyone. Sometimes people confuse shyness with over confidence. They are treating you like a bug so you feel like one."

"So what do I do?"

"Ignore them. When people bother other people, they look for a reaction. If they don't get any, they move on." Adeen thought about it. June used her silence to change the theme. "Can you believe we'll meet him tomorrow?"