Page 58 of A Vicious Rumor

Her outfit was more sophisticated than Kitty’s, but still fairly tight and revealing. It was essentially a high-waisted skater skirt, stockings that were made to look like thigh highs, and a crop-top sweater. Her hair and makeup were done, too.

She looked beautiful.

And fake.

And not at all like the natural flower that used to be mine.

I gritted my teeth, trying to remind myself that she never was mine.

"Alright," Mr. Bennett said, walking into the room. "I hope everyone had a good summer, but now it's time to get back to learning. This semester you'll be teamed up with lab partners, and before you all raise your hands and request your best friend, the answer is no. Lab partners have already been assigned."

A collective groan was released around the room.

"Yes, yes, get it out now," Mr. Bennett said. "I'm going to announce partners and when I do, go ahead and pick a table together."

He started working through the list alphabetically, but I had a while to wait considering that my last name was fairly far down on the alphabet. I looked around to see who was being paired with who. It was obvious the teacher was trying to split up friends. It was smart. I had to give him credit for that.

"Tyson Stone," Mr. Bennett said.

"Yeah," I replied in a bored tone.

"You'll be paired with Lily White."

I blinked in disbelief for a moment as what he said processed. I guess I hadn't figured that Lily and I could be paired together given all the other kids in the class. I turned to look at Lily and she was making a face to her new "friends," and it really fucking pissed me off.

I decided to stay where I was and let her walk to the back of the room to join me at my lab table. She turned around and looked at me, but I didn't meet her gaze. It was almost as if she was doing everything on purpose, and I couldn't face that. If she were it would be too much to handle. I knew I'd hurt her, but I didn't do it on purpose.

"Can't you come up here, Rock?" she asked, calling me by my nickname again.

"No," I replied simply.

She huffed dramatically, just like Kitty would, before stomping her way down the aisle. She waited for me to move over, but I stayed put, forcing her to climb behind me. She threw her bag down on the table and muttered something under her breath before finally settling down.

I kept my head resting on my arms through the entire ordeal.

"Right, now that that episode is over," Mr. Bennett said, "we can move on." He finished calling out the rest of the lab partners, went over the expectations and assignments for the semester before ending class five minutes early, telling us we all had to remain in our seats until the bell rang.

"Is this really how it's going to be?" Lily asked me in a fake ditzy voice.

"How what's going to be?"

"You acting like this?" she huffed.

I snorted. "Between the two of us, I'm not the one acting," I said.

"Oh, yeah? So you pushing Kitty up against the lockers as I walk by, that's not you acting?"

I sat up and raised my eyebrow at her. "Oh, so you did notice?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Noticed you being an asshole, yeah," she said.

I shrugged, smirked, and put my head back down on the desk. "Still counts. Looks like I won the first round."

"There's no rounds," she said. "I'm dating Zachary. You're just going to have to get used to it."

"Sure thing, sweetheart," I said. "You just keep trying to convince yourself that this whole thing isn't a game and that he really likes you. You just let me know how that goes for you."

The bell rang and before she had the chance to respond, I got up and left. I couldn't be around her any longer.

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