Queen Bitch

C H A P T E R 4

My mouth swung forward and my body was frozen on the spot. Blake looked confused.

"Who, Athena?"

"Well if that's what her name is." Rene said. "Athena." she tested, and her lips curled into a grin. I think she had finally called my bluff, even though I evaded her for a week. Which is not good.

"Well she's my friend, yeah, but that's all she will ever be, not my girlfriend! How did you get that one?" Ouch.

"She was the one who told me that you were her boyf-" She noticed the expression on my face. "Yeah, sorry, I probably got this story mixed with my friends."

Well that was weird. I know I've been at this school only for a short time, but Rene isn't supposed to be nice, and yet she was.

"Well, then let's get back on track, shall we?" Blake said with a sudden burst of confidence. He began flirting with her again, which she reciprocated, and it was soon obvious that they had forgotten about the scenario that has unfolded just moments ago.

"Well, I'll be off then, don't mind me..." I muttered to myself. I tossed the apple into the bin and walked off, disappearing through the doors of the cafeteria and kept walking on and on, till I had escaped the world of judgement and friendlessness to a place where I can let it all out- the toilets.

🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜

I stare at myself in the mirror. Like stare.

Before freshman year, I never thought, even considered, the possibility that I was ugly. My eyes passed over my features, and I used my fingers to comb through my long light brown hair, also mistaken for dirty blond, and tried to think.

I know I'm jealous of Rene. But I have mixed feelings about why I'm jealous. Do I like Blake, or am I just scared I'll lose him?

Well, it already appears that I have lost him, and no matter if I like him or not, I better do something to catch his attention. I can feel him losing interest in me, paying less attention to what I'm saying, and spending more time plotting how to get Rene to like him whenever we are supposedly 'chilling' with each other.

Maybe Blake is spending less time with me because I'm ugly? He's always talked how some girls put no effort into what they looked like, and how they never tried to conceal the flaws that were on their face, but I never thought he had meant me.

Until now.

I didn't have too many blemishes on my skin. I did have dark under eyes, and my lips were always dry from the lack of hydration, but even the peeling of my lips didn't concern me because I didn't care what I looked like, and a little pain in your life won't kill no one.

My eyebrows were kind of uneven, and in need of plucking, as well as shaping.

My nose had tiny freckles on them on them.

My eyelids were translucent, allowing one to see the veins that travelled beneath the surface of my skin.

My eyelashes lay flat, with no life.

I looked...

ugly?

And it was then that she realised.

That a best friend would care if her best friend thought she was pretty.

That they don't get jealous of potential girlfriends.

That she was in love with, or at least liked, her best friend.

She, Athena Juliette Thames, had a crush on her best friend of... too many years to count, and that she didn't like that one bit.

🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜

A week went by and Athena realised she needed a change. Blake had drifted apart even more, and she had a bad feeling that Blake was planning something big, on his own. Something good big. And that that good big wasn't for her.

I pushed at my potato salad with a plastic fork. I didn't like potato salad, at all, but it was either that or cheesy fries. And I noticed that the girl Blake liked was skinny.

I glanced at my watch, and bit my lip sadly. Blake was 10 minutes later than he normally was. After his animated conversation with Rene, Athena noticed spending even less time with her. He would be slower in coming to meet her at their lunch time spot, talked to more people (jocks included, what a scandal!) and in art, he did't set up his easel next to hers in art. Even though we always set up our easels next to each other in art.

"Oh hey, Athena. What are you doing here?"

I looked up and saw Blake. Using his fake smile. On me. With him were all his new friends, and right next to him was Rene. Cringe.

"This... is where we sit." I said, acting patronising.

His gang began to murmur, and Rene squinted her eyes. Not in a mean way, but as if she was trying to figure me out.

" You mean... He sits with you?" She asked, as if she was genuinely confused. Blake looked like a deer caught in deer lights, and I realised that he wasn't going to stand up for me.

"I-I'll be going now anyway."

I grabbed my mushed up potato salad that I ended up not eating and got up to walk away.

"Wait."

I turned around, hoping it was Blake, but it wasn't.

"What do you want, Rene?" I was too angry, that I could function. All my bottled up anger threatened to spill out, and my normally calm self began to get frustrated.

"I just wanted to say sorry, for the way I was acting on the day of the football trials. I'm usually pretty bitchy to strangers." She confessed. Well you weren't bitchy to Blake.

"Are, are you ok?" She asks when I don't reply.

I blinked at her. This girl is too stupid. And stupidity only fuelled my anger.

"You stole him from me, you-"

I took a step at her, raising a hand to slap her. Her eyes widened in alarm. As I took another threatening step towards her, she shoved me back.

"Stop, Athena, your not thinking straight!" Behind her, I heard Blake's gang laugh. I turned my head to look at Blake, who gave me a disapproving look. "FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!"

"You bitch!" I screech.

I jumped on her, and tried to take a swipe at her.

She pulled my hair, a futile attempt to remove me from her body.

"Get the fuck off me!"

We wrestled on the ground, and she, obviously stronger rolled on top and pinned me down. She leaned down close to my ears.

"I don't know what I have done to make you treat me like this, but I'm sick of it. Every time I try to be nice to you..." she moves away from me and stands up. "Your such a bitch! Don't talk to or touch me again. You don't have that right." She said louder, so that the people around us could hear what she was saying.

I suddenly realised what I had done. Rene honestly didn't seem bad before this fight. And I had been the one to attack her first; she was just defending herself.

She was nice to me but I was weary of her. I had heard rumours of her that I thought were true and I was scared. After all, weren't all the queen bees just queen bitches? Rudeness was basically me defence mechanism, and now I realised that maybe I shouldn't have been so way around her.

Because now I had awakened the beast.