Bully or friend (Camren)

Chapter sixteen

Before entering the school canteen, Lauren halted next to a stand that had printed copies of the school newspaper with the headlines excitedly screaming something successful the school had done this week that none of the pupils actually cared about. It was nearly irrelevant the school's newspaper and it was clear that the students writing the paper were as fun as watching paint dry. However, today, something possessed Lauren to pick it up and give it a quick scan before she entered the lunchroom. Flipping through the few pages, she quickly eyed the hundreds of words until about halfway through she had spotted something very interesting, it was called the Student Gossip Corner or SGC for short. This was definitely something new to the newspaper. When she continued to read, it revealed many personal stories of students from Freshmen to Seniors so nobody was safe. In today's issues, two Sophomore's that were in a long-term relationship, who Lauren hadn't heard of, had been exposed as the boy had been caught cheating on his girlfriend. Underneath, there was a photo of the so-called boy kissing somebody else who Lauren assumed to be the mistress. The rest of the gossip stories were petty things such as naming and shaming people who had cheated on tests or who people had crushes on yet a lot of them were already well known or obvious. Regardless, Lauren could sense that this Student Gossip Corner was only finding its feet and knowing how useless and careless teachers were, she could only predict it was going to take months to get rid of this.

Finally entering the canteen, she had noticed that every table had at least two or more school newspapers sprawled across the surface and it seemed like she was the last one to find out. When Lauren joined her friends at the table, they were all sucked into a conversation about the newspaper, Jenny expressing how much she loved the idea with a wicked smile as Kieran and Zack just shrugged in response, clearly disinterested. However, Daisy fiddled with her dark brown hair, shaking her head in disagreement with Jenny, explaining it went too far. Zoning out her mate's voices, Lauren continued to go through the paper, noticing a few more additions other than the gossip corner. There were comics of relatable school humour such as exam stress, teachers and homework which Lauren was impressed by. There was also a Song of the Week box where a song and artist was recommended and a brief review of the song which Lauren thought was rather intriguing. Needless to say, Lauren had been convinced to the get the school paper every week now.

"Lauren?" Daisy began, catching the green-eyed girl's attention as she shot her head to look at her friend sat opposite her. "So, Winter Formal, I reckon you and Lucas would go perfectly together!"

"Urh, I'm not sure," Lauren shrugged, closing the paper shyly.

"Why not?" She proclaimed with a gasp of horror, holding her hand on her chest. "You agreed he was cute!"

Everyone stared intimidatingly at the green-eyed girl to which she clearly blurted out, "because we don't really talk much, I'm pretty sure we haven't had a proper conversation since we were kids."

"More the reason you should go together!" She smiled cheerfully.

Rolling her eyes, she glanced over at the other side of the room as her eyes landed on Camila who was with her friends and Shawn, the pair were laughing and getting on really well. Unconsciously, Lauren clenched her fist, taking a deep breath in and then slowly releasing an exhale.

She quickly turned to Daisy, pausing for a moment then agreed hesitantly, "sure, I'll go with him."

Meanwhile, Camila kept looking over Shawn's shoulder to peek at what Lauren was doing yet she was too engrossed by the school's newspaper and her real friends. She decided to give Shawn all her attention, laughing extra loud at his jokes and giving him more light touches than usual and Shawn definitely wasn't complaining. They had been briefly chatting away at each other, well more of Shawn talking than Camila since she was staring at Lauren the entire time but she always remembered to zone back in near the end to conjure up a response.