A Change Of Directions (Camren)

Chapter 13: You've got a friend in me

"What do you mean with 'it's up to me now'?" I groaned in disbelief and pressed my cellphone closer to my ear.

"Mila, you got this. You're my bro, you can do anything." A hoarse, scratchy voice croaked out at the other end of the phone, clearly weakened.

"But...but, I'm no good with this emotional shit, we'll only end up strangling each other."

"Please."

Oh my. He was dead serious if he pulled out the pleading card so soon.

Sighing to myself, I slowly said, "Just tell me where I can find her."

"Thanks, Mila. You're the best." Shawn voice sounded feeble and rough, I really wanted to go to his place instead and watch over him.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." I dismissively said, but I bet he could hear the smile through my voice, "Now an address please, so I can go directly to you afterwards."

"You haven't left the school grounds, have you?"

"Uh, no?"

"Good, cause she'll be in the auditorium, sitting in the middle of the last row."

Ending the phone call with a genuine 'Get well soon', I shoved my cellphone into the front pocket of my leather jacket and headed back to the school building, grumbling and muttering under my breath the whole time.

Of course, out of all the days that Shawn could've gotten ill, it had to be today. Today, where he was supposed to be the one consoling Dinah because as he had already predicted it, she had gone all Bitchy and freaked out when Normani had suggested them to become official.

I didn't know about it until just a few minutes ago, where I had gotten a phone call from Shawn, telling me to play the caring and listening friend for Dinah because he got fever and couldn't do the job. When he had missed today, I simply thought that he had been skipping school, which wasn't an unusual occurrence.

So he called me after Lauren had called him. Now I got the joy of attempting to soothe a mentally unstable Dinah and I really didn't look forward to that. Dread was spreading through my body as I approached the auditorium, nearer and nearer.

Slowly, almost cautiously, I opened the doors and carefully peered to the right, to see if Dinah was really sitting in the middle of the last row.

It was sadly true. The usually fiery, always sneering and insulting Tongan, sat all by herself with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms hugging them, a blank look on her face.

Nervously fidgeting with my hands, I slowly walked to her and sat down next to her. Like Dinah, I wordlessly stared ahead and gazed at the stage where I had seen a few members of the harmonies perform for the first time. Where I had met Frankie, Archie, Eve and Lucy and promised them to join the show choir, with the resolution to turn this school around with its fucked up system. I managed to fulfil one promise, the other one - let's say, I was halfway there.

I had a well-known reputation in Lima now, an envied one at that. Maybe it was because the football players kept coming to me to get advice on pleasing girls (Shawn might or might not have let it slip that I was a pro at this) or maybe it was because Shawn and I always performed song mash-ups during lunch break every Friday and had gathered a quite large fan base.

It could've been a lot of things, maybe even because of Mike, because he had stopped throwing slushies into people's faces. He even told his fellow jocks to stop. Ever since that backfired slushie attack, slushies were only used as thirst quenchers now and some students were really grateful for that.

But what set me apart from the Cheerleaders or Titans was that I never had the need to perpetually put other students down to fortify my own status. I listened to everyone when they wanted to talk to me because everybody was worth knowing unless proven otherwise.