Chapter 2: Class Project
"And I was like, get away from me, and then he was like I've never loved you more or something, and I don't know, something just clicked between us. I always knew we had the chemistry. We just needed some time apart." Peach blabbered on enthusiastically to her friends as they all listened intently, or at least pretended to. It was the same old story and Rosalina was getting bored of it.
She grabbed her language arts book and shut the locker. She noticed Luma creeping down the hallway, quietly as if trying to blend into the walls. "Hey!" she called towards her friend.
The noise startled the Peaches as they turned and stared at Luma. She gave Rosalina a quick nod acknowledging her and sped off, slipping into the class at the end of the hall.
Birdo rolled her eyes, and the other Peaches, including the queen herself, burst into a fit of giggles.
"What's so funny?" Rosalina demanded. The girls quit giggling after a second, as if Rosalina was so unimportant that she could be held up.
"Oh nothing, just that she's such a loser." Peach replied, in a tone that suggested it had clearly been obvious.
"What is your problem? Do you even have a life?" she retorted.
The peaches gave each other questioning looks, Toadette looked into Rosalina's eyes pleading her to shut up. "Rosie..." her voice began so softly that only the two of them could hear.
Peach began speaking to her again in a fake diplomatic tone, "Look, its not your business anyways, so there's really no need for us to be talking, if you wanted to hang with us you could just ask, we've invited you before and I believe you refused. Not that I blame you for wanting a second chance, I mean, look at us, we're so-"
"Shallow, conceited?" Rosalina interrupted.
"I was going to say pretty, popular and totally awesome. But, hey if that's what you think." Peach shrugged and turned to walk away from her locker. All the girls except Toadette followed closely behind.
"Could you try to be a little nicer, please Rosie, it would be so much better if we all could just get along, isn't that the way you like it?" she questioned.
"Oh, is that why you hung back? I can barely stand having a locker next to someone so annoying. How do you expect me to like her?" she answered.
"Gee, you're such a hypocrite, at least she's trying to be friends." Toadette replied defensively. She sighed. "We'll talk later, k?"
Rosalina didn't respond, she simply watched her best friend rush to join Peach's side."
"All right class, sit with your groups, the class projects I assigned last week are due at the end of class this Friday. No exceptions, get started."
"Ok, so I got most of the rough draft for the script written, but we'll need to finish it today." Toad said, grabbing papers out of his binder.
Rosalina read over them, these look good, there's a few grammar errors but we can fix that later."
"Is Bev still absent?" Mario asked. Rosalina nodded.
He groaned. "Its a shame really, she's in the drama club, she would have loved doing all the work."
Rosalina hit the side of his arm.
"Ow!"
"You deserve it! Deflecting all the work onto one person. And, You're more concerned about the fact she would do a lot of work than the fact she had pneumonia."
"Had?" Toad sounded surprised.
"We were texting each other at lunch." Rosalina explained. "She says she'll be back tomorrow for sure."
"Thats good." he sounded a bit happier.
They finished the rough draft of the script, and decided to take a break, there was only about 10 minutes of class left. The three teens quickly packed their things and began talking vigorously.
Somehow the topic of Peach was brought up and Rosalina found herself slightly irritated.
"She's not that bad you know." Mario defended, like always.
"You don't even know her! You were friends till 7th grade!" she cried.
""Actually, she's got a point." Toad interjected before Mario could argue with her. "But I know her, and she's not as great as you think so Mario, but She's not terrible either. Its not so hard being friends with her."
"Ok, tell me this," she persisted. "How can you be friends with Bowser. We all know he's a big idiot." Mario nodded in agreement.
"Well," Toad began, "I can't really explain it. He's like an onion."
"You got that right." Mario replied not sounding sarcastic at all. The other two gave him confused looks.
"What?" he questioned. "He has made a lot of people cry."
Rosalina chuckled, and Toad had a slightly irritated look on his face.
"No, I mean he's a mutant turtle of many layers. He just doesn't always appear to be. We've been friends for a long time now, I can't just unfriend him."
"Peach did." Rosalina pointed out. "You guys didn't see anything wrong with that."
"Its different." Toad tried.
"How? if she didn't unfriend us she wouldn't be popular, but if you didn't unfriend him you would be? Its ok, I get it."
She refused to continue talking to him and sat silently at the table for the remainder of the class period.
"Peach isn't the type whose friends with people for the sake of being friends." Mario defended.
"She shook her head with disappointment.
Toad shrugged.
No more talking occurred in the group for the remainder of the period. Fortunately the empty silence was filled when the bell rang.
All the kids hurried out.
