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f i v e : she smiled

|  FIVE  |

SHE SMILED

Once Isaiah had relayed the parts of yesterday's events which didn't involve his mother, brother or stepmother at the canteen the next day, he realised Karim didn't laugh as hard as he'd originally thought he would.

No.

The boy only laughed so hard that the entire canteen paused for a few seconds. River and Shiro managed to understand what he was saying, and since they knew all about The Girl, they joined him.

'Faw, 'faw, 'faw.

They laughed, tears streaming down their eyes and sides aching, releasing incomprehensible words as they sat at their table and banged their hands on available surfaces (the table –poor table– and their bodies). It wasn't even that funny. They were a bunch of overdramatic idiots.

To add to his mortirritation (a new word that he deemed applicable to this situation, the result of the addition of the words mortification and irritation), the entire canteen's eyes were on them, wondering what the hell was that damn funny?

Through their chortles and chuckles, Isaiah flushed deeply from head to toe. It was painfully clear to anyone with eyes and ears that they were laughing at him.

What had just been simple embarrassment about coming to his friends with girl trouble turned into massive mortification with the whole school acting as an audience.

When he had growled and said shut up more times than socially acceptable, he locked his jaw and wrapped his fingers around the edge of his lunch tray. He stood up, trying to avoid the curious gossip-hungry stares of his schoolmates. He had only taken two steps before Karim's deep voice reached him.

"Yo, yo. Isaiah, wait," he said, seemingly considerably calmer.

In Isaiah's mind, he imagined Karim, River and Shiro (The Treacherous Three, he'd sworn to call them from now on) wearing apologetic looks on their treacherous faces. He imagined them looking so remorseful, so regretful. He even entertained the idea of his tall Japanese friend on his knees, begging for mercy and forgiveness. That was comical on its own, considering Yoshiro tended to be pretty nonchalant about everything and anything.

But that image was when Isaiah realised two things:

(1) that he was pushing it, and (2) that he could still and only hear River and Shiro's little giggles and laughs in the now-quiet canteen. That wasn't the sound of grovelling and mercy-begging.

Regardless, his fantasy compelled him to face the Treacherous Three. What he saw, though it wasn't what he had in mind, was enough for him to decide it was safe for him to walk back and eat his lunch.

He was almost at the table again, about to do just that, when Karim's humour filled voice asked, "Did you really say that to her?" Before dissolving in fits of unnecessary laughter again.

Shiro and River joined him, sputtering and throwing their heads back. Shiro was trying to wipe the tears from his eyes, and River was leaning against him, cackling and cackling like a cotton candy haired hyena.

"Fuck off." Isaiah snapped self-consciously. Nobody had ever laughed at him like that before, and he wasn't really going to stand there and take it.