Amanda O'Neill learned from experience not to expect anything from anyone.
Anticipation constantly trailed down to disappointment; people didn't show up, plans fell through, those you loved would always let you down somehow, and like her dad always said, "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me."
She always liked that one, she couldn't help but snicker every time she heard it. Even now.
Well, at least she didn't pretend to be mature. If Amanda was going to exist as the loud and brash and crude (American) one, she was going to own it. Why deny who you were? She really couldn't stand that about some people. Though 'some people' usually boiled down to a few - and those few happened to be wearing the same blue sash and sauntering down the hall, the shorter two following their blonde, British beauty queen like two ducklings on their mother's tail. Pathetic, really. If their noses could point up any higher, Amanda would've thought they were doing an observational study on the brightness of the sun.
But that made no sense - they were indoors. Amanda laughed at the thought anyway, high and childish and nasally. The brunette of the dog pack heard this and snapped her head around like a rubber band pulled taut and let loose. Brown eyes met emerald in the several feet separating them, Amanda slowed her gait and merely smiled her usual wily grin. Hannah England paused, contemplated, and sneered, rolling her eyes as if they were joining her nose in the act of cloud gazing.
Barbara Parker noticed her other half slow and whipped her head back, though with less sharpness, to meet Amanda. As if a mirror, her expression of disgust mimicked that of her friend.
Shoo, mutts, keep following your master! Amanda so badly wanted to say. Aroof aroof, get doggies, get! Instead she snickered again at the thought, which of course, annoyed the blue-clad sycophants even more. If she had been feeling more lucky, she would've kept laughing, just to piss them both off as much as she could. Admittedly, it was nice seeing them break their usual snot-nosed, holier-than-thou composure.
Diana Cavendish. Now she was tricky. So tricky that Amanda had given up on trying to get under Diana's skin a long time ago. Although, if she managed it, there was no way she would forget such a memorable achievement.
That'd be the day. Amanda thought again, folding her arms over her chest and winking at the two lap dogs with a wave. Grr, grr, run along now.
Barbara huffed in her usual and often predictable annoyance, hurrying to catch up with Diana. Hannah followed, yet found herself turning back repeatedly to catch Amanda's eyes again in the clamor of other girls. They locked stares. It was then, in the thick fog of the usual judgmental statements that popped up in Hannah's brain, that one stood out harsh against the others, a bright hue in a sea of monochrome, bubbling under the dark water:
Green was a nice color.
Hannah shook her head, tore her eyes away, and tucked a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear, moving to keep pace with the other girls.
Amanda's eyes lingered and lingered and lingered until the flock disappeared from her sight. Then, and only then, did she continue toward her destination. A different flavor of a smile reached up her face this time and a new shade found her cheeks.
But it would be fleeting, she knew, just as it was with the other girls. Those who she had stared at too long in the past. After all, she knew better than to expect anything could come of this. Nothing ever came of the girls here. She knew. She had tried.
Even still, she wouldn't deny the excitement of it, the slight thrum in the chest, the way she breathed in deep for a moment and held it, like keeping a memory in. A blink, a glance, a micro-expression.
A signal. A sign.