Irisadonna

1: A Bet

Irisadonna had mountains of work to do for school. She was a mistress procrastinator and always did her assignments the day before they were due. Unfortunately for her, Irisadonna had three projects due the next day and she only had one completed and ready to hand in.

Irisadonna hated doing homework at home. Her stepdad, Benjy used to help her with it every night at the table in the dining room, but that was before he got that big promotion. The house was too empty for her to concentrate now, even with her stepsisters running around. As a result, she did all or most of her homework at the public library where she could be around people. People who were (above all else) quiet.

She liked being left alone. Social situations were not Irisadonna's cup of tea and if she could choose, she would become a hermit. Again, unfortunately for her, her best friend was the biggest introvert on the planet and was so deep in her shell that you'd need a rope and tweezers to get her out. Thus, Irisadonna was left to suck it up for Belladora's benefit and accept the role of being the 'fun' one.

Being the 'fun', social, confident one was the last thing on her mind though as she worked rapidly on her Social Studies project. It was about midday and Irisadonna (who had already been at the library that Thursday for four hours) was in her zone, no one would come between her and getting her work done so that she could go home and be with her lover (also known as her mattress).

After she had handed in these last three assignments Irisadonna would only have exams to do before she could be off the hook for the entire summer.

As I've already mentioned, Irisadonna was in her own little world of Social Studies, one that she was actually genuinely interested in and one that had a national anthem of Bad Blood by Nao. She, as defence minister (Irisadonna made up the entire cabinet of Social Studies World) was responsible for ensuring that no one invaded her precious country by approaching her.

John didn't know that, and in the moment he probably wouldn't have cared very much either. He had come to the library for three main reasons:

1. He didn't have anything better to do.

2. He was bored out of his mind and that day happened to be a public holiday, meaning that not many interesting places would be open. This reason kind of feeds into the first one but then again, John wasn't known for his reasoning skills.

3. His friends would be there, along with girls.

His friends were idiots. Trust me, I'm in no way being mean when I say this, no matter how you twist it or coat it in sucrose, the simple fact of the matter remains that John's friends were dumber than boulders, and some of them were probably heavier too. They were a pack of over-touchy, rich meatheads who tried way too hard to be 'bad boys' all the time. Altogether, they were one big cesspool of cringey edgelords, probably sponsored by MTN DEW® judging by how much of the substance they consumed.

John and three or four of his fellow rich idiots sat at a table close enough to Irisadonna that she would have been able to hear their foolish conversation and the even stupider (yes, sweetheart, stupider is a word) bet John and his closest friend in the group, Marshall made if she hadn't been wearing massive baby pink noise-cancelling headphones and listening to her world's national anthem.

"Hey, Aswald," Marshall chuckled loudly, garnering unnecessary attention from those around him not wearing headphones and making the middle-aged librarian glare at them. "I dare you to ask that girl out," he said, pointing to poor Irisadonna, laughing as though what he'd said was funny in any way. The middle-aged librarian in the blue cardigan 'shushed' him and he subtly flipped her off, sitting back in his seat and grinning like the gigantic idiot he was.

Paul, another display of John's poor taste in company laughed with Marshall, spun the plastic part of a ring pop on the table like a dreidel. "That's Irisadonna Loveheaven, there's no way you're getting through with her," he smirked, grabbing the plastic piece to respin it as it slowed down.