Page 43 of As the Rain Falls
My shoulders drop.
“See you next week, Mrs. Yun,” I smile politely, waiting for Kayla to get her stuff together.
My friend hands her the text, and I give her a gentle nudge towards the exit door. Alice is walking right behind us.
“The weirdest thing just happened to me,” I tell them, thinking about my conversation with Mateo Pereira.
Kayla throws her braids back, glaring angrily at Alice. I frown, watching as Alice rolls her eyes in a much more childish way than my friend just did.
“Well, something exceptionally weird happened to me too!”
“What’s going on with you two?” I keep my tone lighthearted, not wanting to add fuel to the fire.
“I think I just failed my first high school test.” Kayla turns to me and opens the door. “All because of her!”
“Alice?” I bite my lip, fighting off a smile as I look over my shoulders, watching the black-haired girl blow some air out of her mouth. “What did you do now?”
Kayla doesn’t let her answer. “She stole my lucky eraser!”
“I did not steal anything!” Alice sneers, which is supposed to sound aggressive, but we both end up ignoring her a little. “I really didn’t—”
“Your lucky eraser?” I echo Kayla’s previous words, finding them funny. “Is it really enough to get you all fired up?”
“Fired up?” Kayla exhales loudly. “You just wouldn’t understand, Cassandra. It’s a very important thing for a girl like me to keep her lucky charms around her at all times.”
I nod profusely as I trace after her, my lips twitching with amusement. I don’t particularly believe in lucky charms, but maybe Alice does. Maybe it’s the kind of thing they both share in common in spite of all the differences.
Again, they’re both really odd people.
“Ugh!” My friend stomps hard against the ground, walking away from me with an annoyed look on her face. “You are the worst, Alice! The worst!”
I smile so hard, watching her leave. “Why did you steal her eraser? You really need to learn to leave her alone.”
“Oh, because I’m the problem here?” Alice gives me a side-eye. “Your friend is such a psycho, yelling at me for no reason. I literally just said that! And you know what?Whatever! You’realways going to take her side anyway because you’re afucking pushover!”
“Alice, wait. That’s not true either!”
I start to speak, considering that she might actually be telling the truth this time after all, but Alice knocks shoulders against me, throwing her hair back without sparing me a glance.It forces me to take a step back so that I won’t hit the wall, which really isn’t all that nice of her to do.
“Hey! Can you watch where you’re going?”
She turns around then, and flashes her dark eyes at me. Surprisingly, I see more than the usual irritation there. This eraser business is more serious than I first thought.
“Well, maybe you should just stand out of my way, don’t you think? Get lost!”
Oh?
My steps falter as I watch her leave, not knowing how I should respond to that. Zacharias pauses next to me, his freckled face looking especially troubled as he glares at her back. Alice catwalks down the hallway, not giving a damn about either one of us.
I think she might be tracing after Kayla. Good for her, I guess. Alice is not one to avoid confrontation like I am.
“Can you believe she ran for class president three times in a row and won?” he snorts lightly. “What a fucking bitch.”
“Well.” I play with my hair, rolling it around my fingers. “You sort of voted for her, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Zach smiles, looking a little awkward, and brushes his red hair back. “How do you even know about that?”
“I read the results, remember?” I stare at Alice’s retreating back as she leaves. “And I recognized your handwriting on the paper, Mr. What-A-Fucking-Bitch.”
