Annoying Adam

The After Effects

Of course. the next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache.

Lordy. No, I did not get hung over. I didn't even have a drop of alcohol. The music was thumping all night, and the smell of the cigarette smoke was forever imprinted in my nose, even after I left the house. And the freaking annoying alarm clock that was blaring a senseless beeping noise over and over did not help.

Sighing, I slammed the off button and crawled out of bed. I slunk into the shower and turned on the hot water, hissing as the cold water hit my back. I kept hissing until it finally warmed up. For a minute there, I almost thought that I turned on the cold water, but was too lazy to turn it onto the heated portion.

After I washed my hair, shaved, et cetera, I reluctantly turned the water off and dragged myself out, toweled off, and slipped on the tiled floor. I growled and stood up, swaying and trying desperately to stay on my feet. Giving up, I slithered like a snake into my room and into the closet to grab whatever I felt like. And the rug-burn on my chest told the whole painful story.

The light green shirt I grabbed, along with a pair of light blue skinny jeans looked good to me, so I slipped that on along with some riding boots. Meh. I never really was one to keep up with fashion anyway. And it's not like I really cared who cared at school- I had no one to impress but my two friends.

Lizzy was safely on the bus when I finally figured out what the noise originating from my stomach was. I went into the kitchen and snatched the first thing out of the fruit bowl. (Yes, we actually had one of those.)

I smirked as I thought of the chaos just waiting for me at school. I took an evil bite of my apple.

And immediately spit it out. Who the heck could eat Red Delicious ones?

~~~

As I roared up to the school, it was quiet. Too quiet. And, as cliche as that sounded, it was actually an understatement. The kids that should have been hanging out outside and being rowdy were speaking quietly in their separate groups, not at all the picture of wild yet mildly controlled chaos that I had imagine they would be when I arrived.

I immediately became suspicious. Where was this peace coming from? And, as b*tchy as this will sound, I was wondering where all my gossip and anger was. Ooh, that was even worse than I thought it would be.

I stalked over to my group of friends. They looked up at me, obviously confused at my posture. I relaxed (physically, I was still freaking out mentally), and they seemed to relax as well.

"Did you hear about Angel?" Anna asked, her eyes wide.

"Obviously not. She didn't go to the party. Did you?" Allie interrupted.

I thought quickly. If I said yes, they might be disappointed in me. Or they would want all of the 'juicy details'. But if I said no, there were a ton of witnesses. But I could always laugh them off and say they would have been too drunk out of their minds to know whether or not I was there. But they could retort that I couldn't have known they were unless I was there.

"No," I said, startling my friends after my long silence.

They both raised one eyebrow skeptically. "But I did hear it for a long time through the night. So, what was this about Angel?"

Anna looked around, then pulled us in for a group huddle, like what football teams did. "Apparently she bats for the other team."

I faked ignorance. "Well, you can't really pick your team in softball. I thought Mr. Lawrence assigns them. And it's not time for softball yet anyways, so who cares? This school has some serious issues."