Mark My Words

79 | Badassery

It makes you look badass now.

If Rosalie looked badass, Arden Dodge had to be killer.

Rosalie knew it was stupid of her to track Arden's social media, but it was what she did—with soccer captains across the nation, from other countries, across the world. Arden was no different, she told herself. Arden was her competition, in more ways than one. But she wasn't stupid enough to follow Arden on Instagram, or Twitter, or any of it. Arden just so happened to be her most frequent search on all of those sites, and it came as a mild surprise to anyone who happened to notice.

Rosalie skimmed over photos of Arden's Instagram feed for the thirtieth time in the past week. They were all curated—perfect—and they all had that sweet, plastic smile Rosalie remembered leaning over her in the rental car. She couldn't make that shit up, though, and it irritated Rosalie that Arden could tear her thumbnail through Rosalie's cheek with the same smile she used to culminate a following of thousands on social media alone.

Because Arden had a unique feature, and people romanticized it. Rosalie could understand now why Joanna never looked back on Arden. She'd loathe to learn that the scar she gave Arden made Arden beloved by thousands of nameless faces.

She sighed, a hand gripping her hair. She leant over her knees, phone still in hand. She nearly dropped it the instant she heard someone beside her saying, "Uh... why are you looking at pictures of her?"

Rosalie floundered with her phone before effectively shutting it off and pocketing it in her sweatpants. She looked up from the turf at her feet and found Juliana leaning over her, eyebrows up to her hairline.

"N-No reason," Rosalie said.

Juliana eyed her suspiciously as she tugged off her gloves. "Uh-huh, seems plausible." She chucked the gloves into her bag beside Rosalie and let out a shuddered breath. "God, we're inside and it's still freezing."

"You're lucky you get to run around to warm up," Rosalie muttered. She would much prefer that over sitting in the arena's cool atmosphere.

Juliana would be playing centerfield in place of Rosalie's usual position. Rosalie clasped her gloved hands in front of her mouth, mostly to cover the scar and secondly for warmth. She could feel her own teammates' eyes on her as they gathered out on the field for warm ups. Even players who weren't on the roster were required to warm up, but given Rosalie's current condition, she was confined by the bench.

As expected, Joanna didn't give two shits over warmups. She walked the field while everyone else strained their lungs over suicides, and Rosalie swore Joanna was doing it to taunt her. It made sense, but the prospect of Joanna doing it just for the hell of it pissed her off even more. Joanna was already sabotaging the entire team for the sake of staying under the radar.

The Bradshaw Knights were no longer content staying under the radar. They gave Adams the middle finger, and now they'd do the same to every team at Regionals.

Rosalie put her hands out in a "What the hell are you doing?" manner. Joanna was just standing there, arms crossed, staring off into space while her unlucky passing partner—Mia Elgin—threw her head back with a groan and went to fetch the soccer ball where Joanna let it fly straight past her. Joanna raised her shoulders in a comical shrug before cupping her hands over her mouth and shouting, "Oops!" at Rosalie.

"You're being ridiculous!" Ray shouted from the other end of their half of the field.

"I'm being the perfect amount of ridic'," Joanna said.