DAY 1

"All this talk about prom among the juniors makes me sick," Ford groaned with a roll of her eyes. Prom was still quite a way off, but the upperclassman were treating it like it was coming within the next few weeks. Ford wished it was over and done with, but other sophomores were ranting and raving about the event as well, even though they wouldn't be able to attend.

"I just don't get why people get so excited about dressing up in things they'll only wear once… Like, is being uncomfortable really that fun?" Brenna agreed.

With the date of prom having recently been announced in the school's newspaper, any and every magazine covering prom contained a reader on campus — namely those preparing for their prom early.

The bell rang, and Ford and Brenna walked to class together. Together, they shared all of their non-Advanced Placement (AP) classes. Brenna's friendship with Ford was helpful, considering the trauma Brenna had had to deal with in the past, and the school understood this and placed the two girls together as a result. Ford helped Brenna remember the things she couldn't remember on her own, and together, they could so easily combine their seemingly evil genius skills to create generous outcomes of unfortunate events for their bullies, whomever they may be.

The day was tiresome in terms of its contents: lectures, quizzes that might as well have been tests, project assignments. For the one class with the one teacher who didn't understand the importance and necessity of Brenna being paired up with Ford for practically everything, Brenna and Greer had instead been assigned to each other, which inevitably led to Ford arguing with the teacher over the matter — and being sent to the principal's office, wherein the man of the school did absolutely nothing to settle the problem. They were stuck severed like so, and Ford crossed her fingers in hopes that all would go well for Brenna and Greer. It was a brand new week, after all — the project was due Friday. This week would be over soon, and then everything would revert back to normal. Greer would be forgotten; nothing that occurred this week would matter much more than that.

Brenna waited for Greer at the coffee shop to begin the project. Kieran, boasting a smile, approached her, greeting her with a friendly wave. She remembered him vaguely, if only because they'd met right before she underwent the surgery, but beyond a simple greeting and mere friendship, he was nothing to her at the end of the day, though she was nearly everything to him.

He'd made the mistake some time ago to confess to her his love; Brenna laughed in his face and told him they'd just met, with Ford shaking her head in disappointment. She'd warned him as much as he could, but listen he had not, and as a result, she told him she'd told him so without even parting her lips.

"You waiting for your date?" he asked.

"What? No… Greer and I were paired together for some lame project." Brenna leaned back in the seat, crossing her arms. "Speaking of dates, are you dating anyone yet?"

"No. There was almost someone, but… she doesn't think of me in the same way."

"Have you truly tried, though? People always say things like that, and it's usually before they've even tried," Brenna retorted.

"She laughed in my face, Brenna. I told her how I felt about her, and she just… she laughed. I'm sure she doesn't feel the same way." Kieran frowned.

Brenna frowned, too, and reached her hand across the table, placing hers over his for just a few seconds. "Well, then she wasn't worth it. You'll find someone who won't laugh at you," she tried, though her smile was weak.

Just as she pulled her hand away, Greer arrived at the table in the coffee cafe and grinned. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No!" Brenna exclaimed with a small laugh. "Kieran and I are just friends — we met a few weeks ago," she exclaimed.

With that, Kieran nodded and stood from the table. "I'll see you later, Bren," he said before leaving.

Brenna nodded with a smile and watched him head off, with Greer watching Brenna closely as she opened her textbook. "He likes you, you like him…" she trailed off.

Brenna rolled her eyes. "I just met him. He's cool, but I just don't feel that way for him."

An unconvinced Greer merely smiled and pulled out a pen and notebook. "We should probably get started on this now."

DAY 2

"Brenna!" Greer called out toward her project partner before the first bell rang.

Ford rolled her eyes and silently counted down to the new week that felt further away than it actually was. She made comments about the preppy girl approaching them, but Brenna ignored her friend and instead focused on Greer, who was making her way to Brenna. Ford didn't have to understand it, Brenna thought, because it was always she and Ford, but it was never her and someone else, too. Brenna could count her friend on her hand — "friend" being the keyword here, because that was all there was. Brenna had Ford, and she sort of had Kieran, and up until yesterday, she had had yet to notice how much she wished she had more friends.

[tbc]