Friend and Foe

Chapter Two

One month earlier...

The third time I yawned mid-sentence, Hazel put down her pen and sighed. Abigail looked up from her Instagram feed, focusing her attention on me.

"Okay, 'fess up," Hazel demanded, "lately you've been just so exhausted. Why?"

"I'm sorry. I just haven't been sleeping well. I'm fully present though," I was lying through my teeth.

"Bullshit," she snapped. "You've been like this for weeks now. Talk. Abb and I are worried about you."

"It's nothing. I'm just a little iron deficient I think."

"You think?" She sighs again, this time it's a more disappointed sound than the weary sound from before, "You haven't got it checked out yet?"

"No, if you haven't noticed. We are in the middle of a school term. I don't really have time for that."

"Don't take that tone with me," she snapped in an eerie imitation of my mother.

I felt like I was sixteen again. "What tone? I didn't have a tone."

"Hey. Time out," Abb said, trying to diffuse the situation.

I smothered another yawn with the palm of my hand. Hazel sighed again but didn't attempt to say anything again. We both kept our eyes on Abb, our unofficial mediator.

Abb used to joke that that was the only reason we kept her around. If feels like that more and more often.

She doesn't make the joke anymore.

"Talk to us. We just care about you. We want to help you." Abb had always had a gentler manner about her than either Hazel or me.

"I just... it's my MMA class. It's getting really intense. I've, uh, been training for this international even at the end of the year. If I place, I'll make the World Top Twenty." It's all more bullshit.

I've been getting better at lying on my feet. A skill that will help me in future endeavours I'm sure.

It was Abb's turn to sigh, "Why do you still do that? You complained all through high school. Now your parents aren't making you go, why keep going?"

Oops, so my lying needed more work.

"Because," Hazel spoke for me, "She did it once and now she can't stop until she's number one."

I nodded eagerly, "Exactly."

"You two are incorrigible."

I beamed at Hazel. She rolled her eyes but couldn't hide her own smile.

And just like that we had made up, the subject was dropped, and we were best friends again, the way it had been since we were kids.

"So," Hazel drew our attention back to the notebook open in front of her. "After..."

***

"Honey?" I was gently nudged awake by Mum. "If you don't get up now, you won't sleep tonight."

That was kind of the point.

"Mmnt," I mumbled into the couch cushion my face was mushed against.

"Come on. Your father is making carbonara for dinner," she tells me softly.

I had never been able to pass up on that delightfully creamy pasta. Even if Dad was in the habit of cutting the chicken too big.

I clambered up, off the couch. "Yuuuummm... Wait. I was gonna make that tomorrow."