The Cinderella Agreement (Completed) [Featured Story]

09: The Hostility

how long has it been since the last update? 3 weeks? I'm so so so sorry for that, my schedule is unfathomably tight and it's even a miracle I managed to squeeze in this chapter today. Hopefully this sort of delay won't happen again, but I'm afraid I'm not in the position to call the shots so early. :) enjoy the chapter, and please do put in your votes❤️❤️

MIT LADEN and Aimee Griffiths were like two parallel lines: always nearby but somehow never crossing.

Mit lived in a small town on the edge of Chicago, and so most of the people she went to school with have been around since elementary, or even as far as pre k, taking away a couple of leakages and giving in several influxes into the cycle.

The first time that Mit had crossed Aimee happened five years ago in the second week of sixth grade middle school, when she had asked Aimee if she could copy off of her math homework and Aimee refuted. Then and there, Mit had decided that she didn't like Aimee at all, and now, half a decade later, she realized that nothing has really changed yet; she was still the awkward Arab-American girl and Aimee was still a modern day Marilyn Monroe, one who had refused to give out her maths homework answers and who had eventually taken away Mit's friend from her.

And she still disliked Aimee.

Now, they crossed again, defying the laws of mathematics once more, a pair of overlapping, discordant lines.

Aimee was leaning against the locker next to Mit's lazily, a small smirk playing on her painted lips. She stayed there for a while, unmoving, save for the times she blinked and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear, simply watching, studying, observing.

Mit thought it stupid as she continued to look into her locker, ignoring Aimee, that is, until she remembered that that was always what lions did before ambushing their prey.

They watched, they studied, they observed, and then they stroke.

Mit tried to swallow a wad of saliva, but finding her tongue as dry as a strip of sandpaper, she let out a puff of air instead. A cross between a sigh and a grunt left her lips, the lips of a metaphorical antelope at the mercy of an intimidating lion.

"Melon," Aimee finally said, unfolding her arms.

"What do you want?" Unconsciously, Mit let a dribble of venom dip into her voice, and then she realized, a little too late, that Aimee Griffiths was not a person to challenge.

Aimee seemed to notice too, because her eyes narrowed, her lips curling at the tips in an uncomfortable sneer. She had the oddest of eyes colored with an uncommon shade of indigo that variated between bluish and purplish and blackish, depending on her mood—whether happy or devious or angry.

They were dark now, a looming caliginous hue similar to that of the gentian violet paint in the nurses office.

"Paris wants to see you after school. She was going to text you later, but I was on my way to my sixth period class and I thought I'd just let you know," the blonde informed, tightening her frail, thin arms back into a fold below her chest. She was wearing her cheerleader kit for reasons unbeknownst to Mit, except maybe as a mark of superiority or a loophole to break the dress code.