On Day two of Simon's hiatus, an announcement crackled over the school's loudspeaker.

"Zara DeRealis, there is a package waiting for you at the reception. Zara DeRealis, there is a package waiting for you at the reception."

The receptionist wasn't halfway through the first phrase, that Zara had already gathered up her writing utensils and dropped them into her pencil case. Her eyes snapped up to the clock hanging on the door; only ten minutes left before lunchtime. By the time she walked to the reception and back, the bell would have already rung.

Zara raised her hand.

"You can leave once you have done the questions I've assigned," Her History teacher murmured, attention on the novel before her. Zara nodded and scribbled her name on the sheet. She then collected her belongings and walked to the front of the class and placed it on her teacher's desk.

"I ran out of space for the last two so I wrote them on the back."

The teacher skim-read her answers, flipped the page, then nodded. "You're dismissed."

Zara flew out of the room and into the corridor, escaping from congregational silence into solitary silence. That's when the voices riled up again—they seemed to do that whenever Zara was in her own company. If she wasn't surrounded by other people, then the voices would step in to fill that emptiness. It was annoying, needless to say, as Zara enjoyed her alone time. But this issue must've stemmed from her childhood, where she spent most of her days in forced solitude.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket for the fifteenth time, and she pulled it out to silence it.

Ten new texts. Three missed calls.

All from Max.

She rolled her eyes, and deleted all of them without a second thought. After that disrespect from the day before, Zara was not in the mood to speak to him. He had to learn that when you mistreat someone for no reason, you cannot expect that someone to crawl back at a petty 'sorry'. He was used to girls coming back to him after being treated like shit, but Zara wasn't like them—she would make that fact crystal clear to him.

A part of her revelled in his attention, while the other was miffed by it. He was turning into a macho version of Saffron, and although Zara preferred the copy to the original, it was slowly beginning to get on her nerves.

Now for the package.

I wonder what it could be?

What if it's Simon's head, in a purple box tied with a red ribbon? That would make for a gruesome surprise.

Oh don't be silly, who would have time for such a frivolity? I say it's a puppy.

A puppy? You're delusional.

The voices continued arguing over the package, accompanying Zara all the way to the reception. Once she reached the front desk, she leaned over the green counter to look down at a short woman. She wore a floral dress that complimented her pink headband, and her blonde hair was cut into a bob.

"How may I help you?" The receptionist asked, detaching her gaze from a computer screen and folding her manicured hands over the keyboard. She looked like a porcelain doll.

"Uhm, there's a package for me?" Zara rarely ever presented herself around this part of the school, so she was as much of a stranger to them as they were to her.

"Oh yes! Zara right?" The woman had a strong Southern accent which she hadn't noticed before. At Zara's nod, she jumped to her feet and squealed like a little girl, clasping her hands together. "You are such a lucky girl! I'm jealous!"

Lucky, of course. Jealous, of course not.

Zara just watched her with a confused expression, her fingers curling against the edge of the counter. The lady wobbled to the backroom, where lost property was, and returned with a massive bouquet of roses. It was so gargantuan in fact, that she actually struggled to walk back to Zara, her back was bent backwards for the effort. Zara's mouth fell open as it advanced towards her—there must've been dozens of roses, all tied together by a red ribbon.

The receptionist placed them on the counter, and surprise surprise, they stood on their own. Their beauty couldn't be denied to them—their petals were a deep shade of crimson, and dwarfed all the other insignificant decorations in the room. The other clerks turned to stare at the bouquet, their gazes filled with curiosity and envy, and a few muttered amongst themselves.

Zara felt a little light-headed, and she blushed.

"They came with a note, but no name. Looks like you have a secret admirer!" She slid a pink envelope over to Zara, who mechanically picked it up, still in a daze.

Her brain had short-circuited a long time ago, so her limbs were now moving on their own. Zara slowly opened the envelope, under the fascinated gazes of all the other women in the room, and pulled out a card. It had a puppy holding a heart-shaped balloon on the front, and a second heart made by smaller hearts on its back.

With her hands shaking uncontrollably now, she opened the card to reveal a note inside.

Sorry for yesterday. I may be an angry cripple, but I'm not an asshole. I hope you enjoy the roses.

Taped underneath it was a red M&M.

"This guy!" Zara unwillingly said out loud, shaking her head. Was he for real?

She rubbed an eye with her hand and brought it down the side of her face. He certainly hadn't wasted any time, it had been less that 24 hours and he had already gone all out. Zara didn't take the daring token of affection too close to heart. It probably wasn't the first time he had tried to win a girl over using the oldest trick in the book; chocolate and roses.

She closed the note and pushed it back into the envelope, her trance broken by logical reasoning. Pushing the envelope into her backpack, Zara looked back at the bouquet. It sat there expectantly, waiting for her to pick it up and show it off to the rest of the school.

"Would you like me to put them in some water, dearie? They are going to wilt otherwise," The receptionist said, her eyes glued to the roses.

"You can keep them. Distribute them to the others as well, I think the roses would suit your floral theme very nicely." Zara nodded towards the woman's dress with a smile. These flowers would have no use for Zara. They would fall apart in her arms during the bus ride home, and that would earn her a complaint from the bus driver. Besides, it would take more than a couple of flowers for Max to regain her respect. "Actually, let me do it."

She picked up the bouquet effortlessly and began to walk around the office, pulling out a couple of roses at a time and placing them on each desk. After going around a second time, she balled up the ribbon and chucked it away. Zara then left the office, followed by grateful 'thank-you's' that surrounded her like butterflies.

I have to tell Aurora about this, she decided.

She opened her inbox and it blinked with an incoming message.

Did you get the roses?

From Max. Of course he had timed the arrival of his lavish gift so he could gauge Zara's reaction.

Yes. She hadn't replied to any of the previous ones, so she would indulge him with a one-word.

Did you like them? Damn, this boy was relentless. He couldn't sense her annoyance through her reply, couldn't he? He needed an essay coupled with visual aids to get the message. But Zara couldn't lie about one thing—the roses were indeed lovely.

She unwillingly broke out into a grin as she jabbed another Yes in.

As she walked by empty classrooms, it occurred to her that the lunch bell must've rung during her absence, so she diverted her path into the network of corridors that led to the cafeteria.

A slight spring in her step, her previously crappy mood was replaced by euphoria.

As she neared the cafeteria, she thought she heard Saffron's laugh coming from behind a row of lockers. He must've been talking to another group of friends; she could join in and then the two of them could walk together to the cafeteria. Lunchtime couldn't be any more perfect, unless the menu special was a dessert with chocolate.

Zara sighed dreamily, her mouth watering at the prospect, but it all fell apart the moment she turned the corner.

Saffron was there alright, but not with a group of friends as Zara had assumed. Instead, he had a girl shoved up against the wall, her legs wrapped against his waist while a hand was entangled in his hair. His lips were crushed against hers, his own hand underneath her whilst the other gripped the nape of her neck.

They were just going at it, eyes closed, all cares thrown to the wind. Zara just stood there with her hands limp by her sides—a nuclear bomb had just gone off inside her skull and now the mushroom cloud was rising up and pouring smoke out of her ears.

"What the fuck is going on?" Zara said, her voice loud enough to jerk both of them out of whatever quixotic universe they were trapped in. Saffron snapped his head towards her, but when he saw who it was he immediately dropped the girl he was holding and stepped away from her.

As if that would magically erase the scene she had just witnessed.

The girl looked so eerily similar to Zara, that it caused her stomach to lurch. One wouldn't think that the two were twins—their resemblance wasn't that uncanny—but she looked like Zara's sister. At a distance, one might've even mistaken her for Zara.

"I swear, it's not what you think!" Saffron's eyes were just as wild as his hair. They kept darting from the girl to Zara and he took a step forward in the attempt to calm her. His cheeks were as red as his swollen lips, that seemed to grow redder by the minute.

"Don't you dare touch me." Her voice dripped with poison a she shrugged her shoulder away. Disgusted didn't even begin to describe how she felt. In fact, no amalgamation of words could, it was all just a mess in her head.

The girl behind him tried to say something, but Zara's killer glare immediately homed in on her.

"This is between me and him." Zara's finger stabbed the air between herself and Saffron, "Not me, you, and him. Say one word and I swear to God I'll punch your—"

Saffron grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her behind him. Oh, he was being the knight in shining armour now, protecting his woman. How revolting and pathetic.

"You're not going to, because I'm not going to let you."

Zara almost burst into laughter— she actually sputtered in response. His words sounded like they were taken from a soap opera. His attempt at being heroic was laughable, to say the least.

He was aware that she could get him contorted into an unnatural position in the span of a couple of seconds, right?

"Actually, why am I even mad at this poor girl? You're the disgusting prick! She has nothing to do with it—I'm sorry, whatever your name is." Zara took a peek over Saffron's shoulder to look at her, but she shrunk away. Jesus, Zara knew that she looked like a psychopath right at that moment but was she really that scary?

"How am I a prick, Zara? Because I stopped kissing your ass like a loser?"

Zara was momentarily at a loss of words.

"What's wrong, cat got your tongue?" He chuckled dryly, crossing an arm over the other, "You didn't really think that I would spend the rest of my life drooling after you while you...you went after that asshole!"

"What the hell are you talking about, Saffron? Are you out of your damn mind? Stop trying to turn this around on me!" Her hands now shook by her sides, it was taking her all not to punch a hole through his chest.

"It's the truth Zara, Aurora told me all about it! ButI knew that you had some sort of crush on that guy for a while now—"

Aurora you bitch.

"So what if I do!" Zara shouted back, and it silenced both Saffron and herself.

A penny dropped in the ocean of her mind.

She wanted to back-pedal, to turn the hands back on time to undo what she had just said. But that was impossible now—now that what Saffron had said was proven to be reality, nothing she could say or do would deny it.

She liked Max. She liked Max. She liked Max.

Zara attempted to sputter something, anything, but the excuses just tripped over themselves and fell flat against her tongue. Saffron looked like a wounded animal for a second, his lips turning downwards in a frown, but then his face became devoid of all expression.

"I knew it," He said quietly, almost to himself, "You're a hypocrite. A fucking hypocrite." He shook his head, the Saffron Zara once knew slipping through her fingers like sand.

"Saffron I—"

A fist flew into the door of a nearby locker, causing it to sink in with a metallic clang. It resonated across the empty hallway, causing both Zara and the girl to jump backwards in fright. Zara was now visibly concerned—Saffron had never reacted this way to anything.

"You what Zara? You're sorry? Is that what you wanted to say?" He looked like an enraged bull now, and despite the fact that his knuckles were bleeding he seemed indifferent to the pain. "I loved you Zara! I fucking loved you! But then you rejected me like a nobody and threw yourself at someone else, the one guy I never even thought you'd look at. How do you think that makes me feel, huh? Why are you allowed to do whatever you want, while I have to wait at home like a lapdog, praying that one day, the Goddess will grant me her attention!"

Zara's stomach backflipped again, causing vomit to rise up to her throat. Her eyes stung as she forced it back down, but it kept coming back up, each time more persistent than before.

He loved her. Or at least he had loved her before she had gone and ruthlessly stepped on his heart the way she had. But she couldn't lie to him and say that she returned his feelings for her, because she didn't.

Not now, not now...

The back of her head started to pulsate, the way it always did before she blacked out. It couldn't happen now, not in the middle of a storm. There were still things she had to say, things that Saffron had to know.

"I couldn't care less about who you hook up with, Saffron, can't you see? It's not about that!"

"What is it about then Zara? Because I'm having a really hard time getting my head around this shit." His eyes glistened, and his nose flared, but at least the volume of his voice had lowered. He was running out of steam.

"I'm sorry I don't see you that way Saffron. You mean a lot to me, but not that way..." She bit her lip and shook her head, blinking back the tears, "You just went out and made a fool of me. The bet was just some stupid inside joke between the two of you right? A way to make me look like an idiot while you two have a good laugh. I know Orion is a selfish douchebag, but you? I expected more from you."

The convo back of the lair...it was about this girl, not you. You look like a damn fool.

"What bet?" The girl didn't move from her place behind Saffron.

Saffron rubbed the back of his neck, and turned to look down at her. He cupped her cheek with his hand and stroked it with his thumb. He looked at her pensively then turned back to Zara, digging a fist into his temple, "Always the victim, never the perpetrator..." Saffron blinked groggily, "The bet is off, alright? Since nothing I, or even Orion or Aurora do is mature enough for you anymore, just go hang with Maximilian, the big boy. We're honestly tired of having to deal with your mood swings—get checked or something, because you need serious help."

He took the girl's hand and walked away from Zara without a second glance.

"Go!" Zara called after him, tears now rolling down her cheeks, "I don't need any of you sons-of-bitches anyway! You're just a bunch of backstabbers, every one of you!" Her throat was raw, but it did not stop her from shouting.

It didn't stop Saffron either, who kept walking, ignoring her. 

-:-