If someone had dropped a pen on the floor, the sound had been as obvious as a chemlab explosion.
To such degree was the thick threatening silence,when Spencer Hastings and Paige McCullers realized they were confined in a small 20 square feet room. Together. And therefore having to restrain themselves from lurching forward and downright throttle
the other, if such restraint was even possible to conjure.
Paige found resolve in imagining she was a Buddhist monk, her good karma becoming thwarted if she were to show the pesky bug known as Hastings any of her attention.
Spencer on her end, imagined how much glee she would feel at being able to witness the idiocity that was McCullers making a complete show of her mediocrity. And possibly bring those failures up later at their practices.
The two stared at each other with pure loath, as the other three in the room sat in their chairs shared nervous glances.
Well, Aria and Emily at least.
Hanna was busy giddily peeling a banana.
"Hastings." Paige faux-greeted with a tone of ice.
"McCullers." Spencer replied with faked calm.
The two never broke eye contact, and snuck along the edges of the room as if there was an invisible boundary preventing them from coming within certain proximity of each other.
It looked ridiculous.
They took the seats that had them positioned the farthest away from each other. The two broke their staring match and looked at anything else than each other, as if pretending the other did not exist.
Aria gave them both a sceptical glance.
Emily was nervously twiddling with the hem of her shirt, not seeking eye contact.
Hanna, humming and swaying her legs back and forth like a little kid, took a giant bite of the banana; the picture of a murderous carnivore ripping a bunnys head from its body and swallowing it down in a second being quite accurate.
This in turn had Emily's face paling rapidly.
"So..." Aria began carefully, ending the tense silence apart from Hanna's munching. "I read 'To kill a mockingbird'. It was honestly not my thing... So, what did you guys pick?"
Emily, silently asked by Aria's imploring gaze to begin, quietly followed suit after stealing a blushing glance at the sour Paige next to her.
"Uhm... Well, I chose 'Pride and Prejudice'. The fact that the two main characters overcome all the hardships they face and gets together in the end is so wonderful." Emily says, eyes peering to the grump beside her before quickly staring down at her own lap. Her face becomes slightly red. "I really recommend it."
"Mhmm" Hanna says, mouth full of half-chewed banana. "Shounds neat."
Aria gives Hanna a judging stare for her lack of etiquette, and sends Emily a supporting nod.
"Paige?" Aria says, passing the figurative ball on.
Paige crinkles her eyebrows together, lips pressed into a thin line. She looks quite reluctant before she quietly mumbles:
"..man, ...the demon..."
The other girls blinks, and Aria confusedly asks, "What did you say?"
Paige purses her lips as if she just tasted something sour. "Batman: Birth of the Demon..."
A maniacal laughter breaks out, and Paige's face turns glaring red.
Spencer is on the verge of breaking into tears, and slaps her own leg repeatedly as she keeps cackling in a frenzy.
"A comic book?! Are you freaking serious, a COMIC BOOK?!" Spencer doubles over in laughter.
"It's a graphic novel so shut up Hastings!" Paige growls back, ears beat red.
"BUT IT'S THE SAME FRIGGIN THING!" Spencer howls, tears flowing like the amazon river.
"Sh-Shut up! I knew that!" Paige sputters. But to her horror, Aria tries to suppress a snort and fails. Hanna laughs with pieces of banana stuck in her teeth, obviously thrilled someone can be even breezier in the head than herself sometimes.
But even Emily, sweet and kind Emily from her swim team, is giggling in her chair at her.
And it's all that pesky frickin Hastings fault!
Paige chucks her sports bag straight into Spencer's face, and rises up with an angry yell.
"You know what, I read another book as well. It's called "No one likes a big, uptight Know-It-All'!"
"Oh yeah?!" Spencer stands up as well, and chucks Paige's bag right back in her stomach. The impact makes Paige release an 'oof!'. "Well I read a book called 'Irrelevant dumbasses on Westburystreet! It was the most unintelligent book I've ever read!"
"And how the hell do you even know my street address? What are you, some sort of creepy stalker, huh, Hastings?!"
"We're on the same lacrosse team, what do you think jackass?!"
Soon enough, bags and jackets, even school books is thrown back and forth across the room with foul profanities, flying with the same blinking speed as a crow diving for something shiny on the ground.
Aria pinches her nose bridge, feeling an oncoming migraine.
Emily, at first worried from the ruckus, has now become busy gathering Paige's scattered sportswear from the floor; pausing suspiciously as she realizes one particular cloth in her hand to be a sports-bra.
Hanna, sitting happily in her seat, picks up an apple and declares, before digging in on the fruit:
"Well I read 'Nightwood by Djuna Barnes." She singsongs, and takes a loud bite of the Apple. "Her prose is pretty impressive, and it's really nuanced. But it was maay~bee a bit simple. But it was funso, I totally recommend it~!"
Aria became wide-eyed as she stared at Hanna, possibly seeing both a genius and a dimwit residing in the body of the apple eating blonde. Hanna was perhaps in reality both cursed and gifted.
Emily snuck the sports bra under her shirt when no one looked, and later snuck it home.
Paige later wondered where her favorite bra went.
And Spencer, ever the planner, mulled over whatever she would taunt Paige with at the next practice; the fact she was dumb enough to read a comic instead of a book, or that veeeery old corndog that Paige ate after Spencer had laid it out in the locker room as bait; knowing fully that Paige would eat it up just as revenge.
And how said food-snatcher later looked green in the face and had to excuse herself and run to the bathroom when practice had started.
Thus ended their first get-together as a bookcirkle ... Heh.