Almost Friends

Chapter 10- Mia

Chapter Ten

Mia

Temper Tantrums

"My God, I hate the mornings," I mutter. Sighing, I slouch over my phone and reply to some blogger named Andy who follows me on Twitter.

I actually kind of know Andy in real life. She's a freshman at SLH and she somehow has over two hundred thousand followers on Twitter, which is so completely insane. Especially considering that she's not that cute. I have five thousand and I thought that was a lot. I don't mind Andy's tweets—they're usually funny. But the chick can also be hella annoying when she repeatedly asks me to star in this stupid YouTube series she's trying to make. It's like she's obsessed with me. But that's not totally a bad thing. Seeing as she's got a butt-ton of followers, every time she tweets me or even just mentions me, her followers end up following me too. That's why I try not to ignore her too much.

Mark sits beside me at the breakfast nook, loudly crunching away on his cereal.

I turn away from his noise and put my feet up on the wooden bench we're sharing. I glance up and get a peek of the sunrise through the window at our left. I lift my phone and snap a picture of it.

"You should eat something," Mark says, his spoon clanging against his bowl. "Do you even ever eat breakfast?"

"Do you even ever shut up?" I retort, my voice gravelly and sounding like I've just smoked twenty-five billion cigarettes.

I return my attention to my phone and caption the picture "Sunrise in Swamp Hell Rose" and post it via every social media app on my phone.

Mark's annoying crunching slows and he sighs.

I look up, watching the sun inch up over the horizon and, all at once, everything that happened last night kind of rushes at me ... everything was good when it was me and Mark talking about life and playing Everquest, but after we met up with Ran and went to Lanie's house, everything went wrong.

I shift in my seat and turn to Mark.

He's bringing a spoonful of cereal to his mouth and stops midway, his hair extra floppy and his eyes puffy while he looks back at me. "What? Why are you staring at me?"

In one swift motion, I reach over and grab his spoon, stealing half a bite of his cereal.

The colored puffs of crunchy whatever are way too sugary to be healthy, but they actually taste pretty good. I set his spoon back in his bowl and toss my hair over my shoulder so it hits him in the side of his face.

"Gross." I turn away from him. "How can you eat all that after last night?"

"I'm a dude," he says.

Our doorbell rings, and I sigh, grabbing a strand of my hair as I return my attention to the ascending sun.

That's Ran—it has to be.

Early this morning, he texted me asking if I wanted a ride to school.

That hardly ever happens and even though—considering last night's crapfest—a conversation with Ran scares the piss out of me, I couldn't say no.

As Nadrine and Ran's voices carry in from the foyer, I check the strand of hair I'm holding for split ends. But of course there are no split ends; I get it trimmed every week.

"Ran's here?" Mark asks, his voice going up a notch.

I laugh and glance at him. "Your man crush? Yeah, he's bringing me to school. Jealous?"