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The train ride to school the next day was awkward. After the stunt that I pulled yesterday, Ariel, Jasmine and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms. If I were them, I wouldn’t speak to me either. Especially since I couldn’t tell them the whole story about Jake and the drugs and our arrangement.
In silence, we walked in to school and I broke off to find my fake boyfriend and do our first period dance. But, to my surprise, Ariel came with me.
“Don’t worry,” she said, the anger in her voice clear. “I won’t get too close, lest your precious new friends see me.”
“Ariel, it wasn’t like that.”
“All I’m saying is that Jasmine and I have been by your side since the beginning. We protected you from those girls, and now, the second you sniff popularity, you go running off to them like a little lost puppy.”
“It’s not like you were exactly friendly to them.”
“I don’t have to be friendly to them. They dunked your head in a toilet.”
“In Freshman year!”
“That’s not the point. The point is that it happened.”
“And I’m over it.”
“Yeah. Now you are. Two days ago, you called them skanks. Evil Queens, remember? Now you’re best buddies with them? I’m sorry, but it all seems a little flip floppy to me. And not even the good flip flips. The cheap ones you get at the dollar store.”
“Are you calling me a cheap flip flop?”
“If the shoe fits.”
I let out a breath as she stomped away.
How could Ariel say that to me? I thought we were friends, and now here she was calling me names? Whatever happened to forgiveness? Whatever happened to sticking together through good times and bad? How could she treat me like this, all over one night with three girls? Three girls that she threatened, no less.
My blood was boiling by the time I reached Jake by his locker.
He kissed me on the cheek and, I accepted it begrudgingly. Next to him, Eric gazed over my shoulder, as if he were waiting for someone.
Tough luck, pal. She wasn’t coming anywhere near me today.