Hunted - The past that kills [COMPLETE]

11 - Rejection and Location

As the final bell of the day rang, Clara slammed her locker door shut and threw her bag over her shoulder. She was both thankful and dreading that school was over, the former because she could finally get away from most of her not-so-pleasant peers, the latter for obvious reasons. The sound in the hallways as she made her way towards the exit was deafening as usual.

Teenagers were talking and shouting, lockers were opening and shutting with quite a bit of force, delinquents were running each other into the walls, jumping on top of one another and acting somewhat like zoo animals. Clara would never say it aloud, but sometimes she felt like schools accepted immature idiots like those kinds of people just to use them in one big social experiment that the staff had not told the students about. At least it would give a logical explanation to the wildness.

As Clara burst through the doors into the open air, she was instantly relieved when she noticed she could still hear perfectly fine. She made her way over to Hayley, Devon, and Nate, who had all escaped the stampede before the bell had rung. Clara took note of how Nate's smile seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. Of course, she never openly showed feelings towards him because of his relationship with Indiana, but she couldn't seem to suppress the crush she had on her best male friend no matter how hard she tried.

The four greeted each other, having a light-hearted conversation about their last classes – Hayley blushing over how cute her English teacher was, Nate, irritated by how the PE teachers seemed to think that every guy was athletic and forgetting that guys like him weren't actually driven by testosterone, and Clara and Devon debating over why the former could memorize information about Greek mythology so easily.

Before they could discuss anything else about what would go down that night, the shrill voice of Indiana rang through their ears. "Nathan! There you are! I'm so glad to see you, babe".

Nate groaned and put on a fake smile for her as she walked up to the four of them in her six-inch heels and an incredibly short plaid skirt. Her look screamed the definition of slutty school-girl, whether she knew this or not was up to anyone's guess. She threw her arms around Nate's neck and kissed him, her skirt fanning out in the process. Hayley and Devon fell into fits of silent laughter, only being stopped by glares from Clara.

Indie smiled when she finally pulled her lips off of him, which made Clara felt a small hint of jealousy towards her.

"Indie, it's only been an hour and a half-" Nate said.

"It feels like forever, though" she pouted at him, "And you know it's Indiana, not Indie". She smiled again a moment later. "Come on, you need to go home and get ready for tonight! Plans have changed so I'm inviting you to the party as well. There's gonna be expensive liquor and it's being hosted at this abandoned warehouse, so we've got a really cool DJ and-" she kept talking as she grabbed his hand and started pulling him towards the gate.

"Babe, I already said I can't go," Nate said over her constant yapping. Clara's inside twisted as he called her babe; she'd managed to hide her jealousy, but Nate wasn't the type to use pet names no matter how much his girlfriend insisted he did. It sounded unnatural coming from him.

Indiana stopped in her tracks and turned slowly to face him, "I thought you'd be excited, though, babe...? Come on, you've met half of the people attending. What's the problem?" she said.

"It doesn't mean I like those people either. Parties like that are not my scene and I'd rather go to them with my real friends than some fake spoiled ones and my girlfriend-" he paused. "Actually, you know what? I'm not gonna lie anymore. The truth is I can't go because I have something I need to do with these guys, my real friends" Nate confessed.