"Georgia!"

"What?" I slammed my locker shut, "Oh it's you."

The girl from yesterday manoeuvred her way throughout the hallways crowds, curls slipping from the grasp of her overstretched hair tie, bouncing across her cheeks and over her eyes. Each person she bumped into she muttered a quick apology until finally huffing and puffing at my side.

"So glad I caught you," she breathed while adjusting her notebooks.

Acutely aware of the occasional inquisitive glances, I crushed my notebook to my chest and folded my arms. "Look nerd, don't think that we're friends or anything just because we exchanged words yesterday." Her eyes narrowed in poorly contained annoyance.

"Zip it will you? Mini Radford told me that-"

"Mini Radford?" I marvelled at her ridiculous nickname for Finn, partially annoyed that I hadn't thought of it myself.

"I'm really trying to tolerate you so please help me out here," she urged with an air of exasperation. "As I was saying-"

"Who do you even think you are?" I cut her off, annoyed by her disrespect. The pre-breakup Georgia had never once had to demand the respect of anyone; it was like an unwritten rule that floated in the air, surrounding me with an aura that reeked of superiority.

"Girl if you don't stop interrupting me!" she hissed. Huffing i tossed a lock of hair over my shoulder and rubbed my lips together, ready for this conversation to be over and done with. I gave her an obvious look as if to say 'go on.'

"Right so, Mini Radford said that you don't have an extra-curricular on your records." Rolling my bottom lip between my teeth, I pushed the fleeting feeling of inadequacy to the back of my brain, not allowing my confidence to falter once more. As much as I'd liked to deny it to the high heavens, Finn was right.

Lauren had cheerleading and yoga, Breanna had gym and her dancing- but I on the other hand hadn't found a hobby worthy of my time. In retrospect I did try, but testing the extracurricular waters ended almost as soon as it began, as I chalked up my inability to remember my own schedule and complete lack of interest in unnecessary sweating as proof to my extracurricular doom.

Some claimed that my lack of commitment to one activity that I could harvest as my own was a trait to be admired, that it added to the wispy tendrils of my exclusiveness. Maybe at that moment I hadn't truly pinpointed the reason that prevented me from settling into an appropriate expertise to match my title, but maybe deep down I had.

Knowing fully well where our conversation was headed, I decided to quit while we were ahead. "So clearly he spoke to you after we met yesterday, but how about we both pretend that I come to your little meetings and you can go back to your panic room? I get my extracurricular credits and all is good here."

"That's a tempting proposition, really it is," she drawled sarcastically, "but I'll have to decline. I don't lie to teachers and I won't lie now." I rolled my eyes in annoyance. Of all the people I could have been having this conversation with, it had to be a teacher's pet.

"Anyways, we postponed our website meeting to tomorrow at 3pm, please don't be late for your own induction into the group." She finished with defiance dancing amidst her brown irises. She quickly leaned off the locker and disappeared into the shrinking crowd.

Rolling my eyes I dropped the arms to my sides, loosely hanging on to my notebook. Keeping my head straight and high I strutted through the halls, heels clicking behind me as I sharply shoulder-bumped my way through.

****

The day had taken its toll on me. I found myself constantly wound up, with puzzling pent up emotions circulating throughout my body. I was unsure where this constant state of aggravation had found a place to latch onto me, but it managed to make me increasingly annoyed at every little thing, for no particular reason.

For example, Aurora Pierce had within all her rights, gingerly asked to be excused to buy some water from one of our nearby vending machines. It was only after she had been excused did I realize that I too, wanted to be excused. I had bounced insults within the confines of my mind as she left the room, knowing fully well that I'd have to wait for her to return before I'd be able to leave.

If having to wait as Aurora took her proper time to stroll back into class hadn't already irked me, the universe found another way in the form of Jeffrey Higgins. Absent of his newfound presumptuous manner, had sat mindlessly twirling his pen as he listened to our Sociology teacher ramble into the controversial capitalist versus socialist views on governing a country. The continuous movements of the pen between his fingers in my peripheral view had taken up most of my attention, and each time his fingers faltered, the pen dropped to the desk with a rattling thud, only to be picked up once more.

My eyes twitched as I observed him, before finally grasping the pen from his hand and placing it on my desk with a threatening look. Lauren had regarded me with caution, uncertain of the reasons for my behaviour, but I couldn't blame her.

I wandered through the halls, twirling the pen between my fingers quite similarly to the way Jeffrey had. I blew a breath of resignation at my current state, not particularly proud of feeling like a ticking time bomb. I wasn't exactly sure why I had taken the pen with me, but my arms grabbed it on its own accord as I was exiting the classroom, seemingly needing something to hold on to.

Finding our bathroom, I pushed the door open as I had numerous times before.

The two girls welcomed me with me with similar emotions, one with a snide and the other with absolute annoyance.

"What are you doing here?" Breanna's eyes narrowed significantly as she consciously turned her body towards me. Her body language was perfectly aligned to scream indifference, but the eyes that I'd learn to know quite well flashed with a fleeting look of surprise before quickly vanishing.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you forgot who actually found this place," she sneered.

She was almost right, she had introduced both Lauren and I to this bathroom when we would have never ventured to the fourth floor ourselves, as it was completely out of the way from all of our classes. But she hadn't actually discovered the bathrooms. Her cousin Mary Beth had taken Breanna under her wing, introducing her to the abandoned bathroom and simultaneously inducting her into her mini clique. Not long after, Lauren and I tagged along and had grown increasingly fond of Mary Beth who treated us as equals and not just friends of her cousin.

When Mary Beth and her friends had graduated two years ago, Breanna, Lauren and I collectively agreed that our inherited private space would remain our secret rendezvous point, up until this very moment.

Not wanting to acknowledge her previous statement, I glanced over her shoulder to the girl with lipstick that was two shades to bright to be worn during the daytime, far less indoors. I vaguely recognized her as a member of Breanna's dance team.

"You brought someone here?" I asked, betrayal seeping into my voice. Breanna, as much as I had hated to admit at this current moment, had always had the upper hand. She had a tighter control over her emotions than I had, and was always able to ruthlessly finish her fights.

"Well lookie here, her brain does still work," her words laced with sarcasm. She rolled her eyes and proceeded to touch up her makeup as if deciding that I was no longer worthy of her time. In that instance, I observed her the way she confidently applied the lipgloss to her lips while casually leaning over the counter. 

My presence did not bother her as much as hers bothered me, and every inch of my being hated it.

"This is our bathroom Breanna, regardless of who found it."

She tossed a sly smirk in my direction, bringing her taunting eyes to meet my own. "Is it now?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"Yeah, and I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from bringing your charity cases in our space," I quipped. My voice was monotonous, and the girl in question gasped in shock.

"Oh you know what I'm sorry," I continued with a falsely sweet tone, "It would be much better if you'd march yourselves out of here to one of your infuriatingly preppy cheers." I clapped my hands and mocked the cheer team's signature closing movements where they forced their heads to meet their shoulders with a sickly sweet smile.

The ever present mocking in my tone and actions had visibly upset Breanna, as I was acutely aware of how it got under her skin. Her lips twisted as she hardly contained her obvious annoyance. To her dismay, she was hardly as good at concealing her emotions as Lauren, and while she was still better at hiding hers than I was, her flared nostrils were always a tell-tale sign that she felt threatened.

As if suddenly realizing that I had not only disrespected her friend, but inadvertently her by implying that I assumed she was from the cheer team, the girl with a nose slightly too big for her face and ears that were littered with studs finally decided to join the conversation.

"You don't run this school Georgia." Her reply was as expected- weak. Breanna rolled her eyes upwards in annoyance. The action was so quick that I had nearly missed it, but I knew that she was also disappointed in her friend's inability to provide a sharp response.

"Huh, I've been hearing that quite often these days. All this repetition is beginning to get a bit boring don't you think?" I smirked, pretending to examine my fingernails as if it were the most pressing matter to attend to.

She had opened her mouth to chalk up a response, before closing it once again, projecting the image of a gawking fish out of water. The wheels in her peppy little head were spinning as the seconds closed in on her time frame for a proper comeback.

Breanna had spared her by cutting in before she could formulate the response she was searching for. "Give it up Georgia. This bathroom doesn't belong to you," she quipped. Her eyes met mine in defiance, as if egging me to continue the conversation.

I took the bait.

"Really now? I wonder what Mary Beth would have to say to this," I snickered, feigning ignorance.

While Lauren and I had loved Mary Beth as our own family, Breanna idolized her. We were both well aware that Mary Beth's time spent at Radford Prep was centred on her life mottos. She was unrelenting when it came to her mottos, to the brink where she had strategically thought out one liners to ease her way through the problems of high school. For every road bump she had encountered, there was a correlating solution in her eyes, carefully calculated and neatly written in a hand bound journal gifted to her by her free spirited mother.

On the day of her graduation, a few weeks prior to her departure to Europe to study abroad she had slipped us a sheet of paper with a scribble of elusive text to aid us through the remainder of our high school life without her, but the three of us had never completely dissected the words to understand its severity.

The silent threat that loomed between us amplified the tension floating in the little space between Breanna and I. Truthfully, the thought of tainting Breanna's image in the eyes of Mary Beth was not something that I was particularly fond of doing. Being the only children born to their parents, she had regarded Breanna as her perfect little sister, and I didn't intend to cast stones at the dainty illusion she had of her.

Not like I'd ever admit to Breanna.

The spark in her eyes fuelled with the mentioned of Mary Beth, almost as if she were silently daring me to tattle on her. However within mere seconds, she regained her usual carefree composure and tossed me an airy smile, leaving me confused in her wake as she nonchalantly strolled out of the bathroom with a dainty wave, her friend strolling behind her.

"I have absolutely no idea what's got her panties in a twist," I half whispered to Lauren as I reclaimed my seat in Sociology class. Mrs. Brutton had thrown me an exhausted glance and a cocked eyebrow as I sauntered through the doorway after having taken my unusually long absence.

Lauren scrunched her eyes in confusion. "Who exactly we talking about now?"

"Breanna," I stated with an eyeroll, "who else?" I scoffed.

"What did she do this time?" she asked inquisitively.

I flipped to the back of my notebook and began relaying the events that had unfolded, not wanting to disturb Mrs. Brutton as I conveyed my utmost confusion regarding Breanna's current attitude.

A thought gnawed at the back of my mind as I remembered the contents of the two year old jagged sheet of paper that contrasted the crisp handwriting. It stated:

1. Friendship is sacred

2. If friendship isn't sacred, then what is?

****

Author's note:

hello again lovelies,

wow. a new chapter a mere seven days after the last? what is this sorcery? :o

shoutout to my boyfriend who doesn't fancy reading, but spent the entire day reading this x

please don't forget to vote & comment your thoughts on:

(i) Georgia's character - is she confusing or what

(ii) Breanna - waddup with her?

see ya later xx