My Art Freak

Chapter Five

(y/n)'s POV

The first half of the day was a blur, just people hurling meaningless insults at one another in the halls, deafening laughter, cute classmates, and worksheets.

Just like back in (h/t).

But now, it was lunch so I could just chill with the decent kids at my predetermined table.

"Yoooo, (y/n) ovah heeeeere!" The one, I think Kevin, called out to me. I gave a shaky smile and went to take my seat between Karen and Janis.

"You okay?" Cady questioned, raising a brow.

"Yeah, just shaky from new people and stuff. I'm not great at this 'people' thing." She nodded sympathetically.

"First days suck, I was the new kid last year and things got pretty hectic."

"Yeah, I never heard the story about that. What exactly happened?" I asked. Janis looked down, the Mathletes looked at one other, the Plastics stared. Cady cleared her throat, not breaking eye contact. Everyone looked at each other, and for a moment I thought I had said something terribly wrong until I heard Cady start to speak.

"You deserve to know. Last year when I got here, I was invited to join the Plastics. I did and after being told about Regina treating Janis badly, we plotted to take her down. Well we did, and I took over her role as the queen bee. I even played dumb to get a guy to talk to me, but he rejected me and I skipped Janis's art show on the same night. After a confrontation and everyone being forced to realize how wrong and bitchy we were, I got invited to join the Mathletes, the Plastics stopped treating people badly, and we're all doing okay. Sorry if that makes no sense or if I missed something. I try to repress this kinda stuff." She explained, looking softly at me the whole time. I nodded along, listening eagerly to the story.

"Man, that sucks. What kinda drama spell does this school have placed on it, my old one had literally nothing happen. Like when there was a new snack in our vending machine, it made town news."

"What was the snack?" Janis asked. Because that's an important question.

"Gross ass fruit snacks, like not even the good kind. Only healthy stuff at school!" I rolled my eyes and everyone got a good laugh.

"Well, at North Shore I'll assure you, our vending machines are filled with actually good snacks, like the Welch's fruit snacks and Cool Ranch Doritos." Damien made jazz hands, because when does he not? He was a true icon.

"Thank the mcfucking snack lord." I laughed.

"That's a thing?" Karen asked, tilting her head.

"According to that one cult at my old school, yes." I shrugged and everyone looked at me in horror.

"Cult?" Cady sounded genuinely scared.

"My friends and I always placed an orange in the middle of the table and chanted 'sacrifice' over and over before we threw any trash away. It was to appease the school food gods." I explained and their shock only increased. I was really good at digging myself further into a hole, wasn't I?

"To keep ourselves entertained," I added. "Preeetty boring back in (h/t)."

"Have you ever considered that your friends were very strange?" Damien asked.

"Can't that apply to all of us?" One of the mathletes, I think Tyler, chimed in.

"Yeah, fight me Damien!" I chimed in, jokingly holding my fists up. I punched the air in front of me for emphasis, because why not?

"You're a weird one, Mr. Grinch," Regina sang a low, deep voice. We all looked at her in shock. "What, am I not supposed to have fun too?" She added, sensing our complete and utter shock.

"You just don't really do 'funny' per say..." Gretchen said gently, patting her arm. My gaydar went off at the touch and I got a strong feeling she was gay. Regina shot her an icy glare and crossed her arms.

"Thank you sooooo much!" She said sarcastically and we all looked at one another awkwardly.

"I-uhhh, anyway! Classes, what do you guys have next period?" I decided to attempt to change the subject like a master.

"I have English with Ms. Fleming. Pro tip: don't have English with Ms. Fleming. She's a huge hippie and talks about her glory days back in the 70's all the time. Plus sometimes she mentions her days teaching over in like Idaho or Ohio where a bunch of kids committed suicide or something," Janis complained, turning to face me.

"Oh yeah, I think it was in Ohio. It was four kids, one of them died on school grounds too!" Marwan chimed in. He was the third mathlete, who also was big on conspiracy theories, strange things, and paranormal stuff. "I hear they haunt the school!"

"I heard they were actually murdered and they haunt the murderer. Some kid named Ron or something." Tyler added.

According to Janis, they were big into true crime stuff.

"How would you know, if it was reported as suicide?" I asked, tipping my head to the side a bit, accidentally brushing Janis's shoulder. I had no clue we were sitting this close. She jumped, but seemingly relaxed after a second.

"Well, this Ron apparently admitted to murdering them at a pep rally or assembly. Nobody believed him because it was laughed off as a charade to get popular. One student put it on her blog years later in 2015. It happened decades ago so everything is probably fuzzy, but it IS a firsthand account," Marwan explained. I nodded along while everyone else just looked skeptical.

I was also interested in that kinda stuff. Why else would I watch Buzzfeed Unsolved and listen to true crime podcasts?

(965 words)