I take a deep breath before opening the door to my room, I swing the door open and am greeted by Shane's huge grin.
"So is it official now? What exactly did happen? Do you hate Liam now? Did you two have sex?"
I groan and turn around to immediately leave my room again, but he grabs my arm.
"Please Karma, I've been waiting the whole morning to get this story and your parents really freak me out. You owe me for not staying here with me."
I look over to him with a raised eyebrow. "I don't owe you anything it wasn't my decision to stay at her place."
"But you did stay there, and you stayed there quite long. Come on just tell me" he whines the last sentence and I groan again, motioning him to sit down.
"So she told you that Liam put something in my drink and then she wanted to take me to my place, but I told her I didn't want to go there. Just like I did the last party. So we went to her place, she gave me stuff to wear and I fell asleep." Then I told him about the morning, how Liam was there and that she made me breakfast and we were watching a movie. I didn't tell him about the kisses, though, that's none of his business.
"Aww, sounds so cute! So when is it official between you two?"He clutches his hands over his heart and lets himself fall backwards on my bed.
"Maybe never, depends what Lauren's gonna say about it." He sits up straight and stares at me with an open mouth.
"What does Lauren have to do with that? I mean you don't want to ask her for permission are you?"
I look at him with a raised eyebrow. "I wouldn't call it asking for permission, rather tell one of my best friends that I'm somehow falling for her stepsister who she hates."
There is a moment of silence after my statement, you can see how he thinks about my words, how he tries to detect if it makes sense or not.
"She will get pissed when you don't … wait. You said you're falling for Amy. You just said you're falling for her!" He jumps up and down on my bed as I bury my face in my hands. I should think more about the stuff I'm saying, this guy can be so annoying. Then he suddenly stops again.
"Wait, why? I don't get it, what do you see in her? You never fall for the bad girls. You never really fell for anybody, really."
He was kinda right I gotta give that to him, but still she is different than anybody else, but how do I explain that?
"Well let's start with the fact that she looks absolutely stunning and is more than beautiful, especially her eyes. And she wants to protect me and she really does protect me, I love that about her. She can also cook, she makes the best food ever, at least for breakfast. She cares so much about her dog, I bet you didn't even know she had one, but he is amazing, Chiron is a great guy. She is smart and wants to get smarter day by day, her grades are actually important to her, she's the second best student in the school. That's what Lauren meant yesterday. And even though she pretends that she doesn't like her family I can see that she loves her mother and she gets along quite well with Bruce." I realize that I just rambled and shut up quickly, avoiding Shane's gaze.
"WHAT?!" I know exactly that Shane makes is signature face with his mouth wide open, like he's shocked, but still smiling. "Oh my god, you must love her!" He gushes and I just roll my eyes.
"Shut up, love is such an overused word, it's used way too soon and way too often. I don't love her, I have feelings for her, yes. But it's not love."
"Yet." He says, nudging my shoulder. "So when do you plan on telling Lauren that you're going on a date with the enemy?"
I haven't thought about that, yet. Okay let's see, I can't tell her today, I'm not ready to do that. Sunday is a stupid day to tell her, it will seem forced that I want to meet her and she will detect that it's about something she doesn't want to hear. Monday? I don't know, she's always so moody on Mondays, like she has this allergic reactions to Mondays.
"How about Tuesday? She likes Tuesdays, she's in her best mood during practice and in any other mood she might kill me." I dare to look at him and he purses his lips. "What's up? Are you not okay with how I live my life?"
"Actually," he begins, "I still don't get why you even have to tell her, think about it, you just said it's your life. She has nothing to do with it. If you want to be with Amy, be with her. But I swear to you, if she hurts you or if she hurts me, which would be worse, I'll make her life miserable." He raises his pointer finger and puts it on my chest. "Do you understand? If she gets aggressive or anything, I'll run."
Oh right, Amy still has her mood swings, just like Lauren. But I can calm her, I know that. I always forget that she's different around other people, it's so weird that she's so nice to me and such an asshole to everybody else.
"Karma?" Shane's voice brings me back to reality. "So why exactly do you want to tell Lauren before going out with Amy?"
I sigh and look him in the eyes. "Look, it's fairly simple: I care about my friendship to her, so if I want to go out with someone close to her, I want to tell her. If she say no, I'm still gonna ask Amy out, but she has the right to know."
He finally agrees and sees the point, but he says it's stupid to wait until Tuesday. After this we talk about the rest of the day and how we will organize practice the coming week.
It's Monday and Shane lets himself fall into the seat next to me.
"Why do we have to have history on a Monday morning?"
History is one of the classes I don't have advanced, mostly because I'm not interested in general history.
"I don't know, just accept it and finish your coffee, you know that Mr Linefeld hates when you drink it during the lesson." He looks at the cup in front of him, that I bought this morning, and his face lightens.
"Aww you're too cute, you bought me coffee." I roll my eyes in response and return my attention to the book I'm reading.
When it's almost time for the bell to ring, Shane nudges my shoulder hard. "Did you know that your girlfriend has this class with us?"
Frowning I turn to the door and my eyes instantly widen. What does Amy do here? Is she really in this class? She looks around the room and her eyes doesn't even meet mine. I sit in the far back with Shane and she sits down two rows in front of us, next to the window.
"She looks really pissed, I wonder what's going on," I say while keeping my eyes glued to her back. I see Shane nodding in the corner of my eye, he stares at her, too with an open mouth.
The bell rings and the lessons starts, but she doesn't say anything during the whole class. Shane leans over to me.
"She must've skipped this class the whole year, I heard that she was sent to the principal's office before school started this morning, people say she has to attend all classes now for the rest of the year or they will hold her back a year."
I frown at him. "How do you know that?"
He shrugs in response, "I was curious so I sent out a mass text and people know stuff." Okay this guy is the master of gossip, I wonder if it's true, it would explain her mood at least.
She just sits there, tipping her pen against her desk with an emotionless expression, staring out of the window. I wouldn't find that odd, she always does that, but she also moves her leg like an hyperactive child. What is wrong with her?
The teacher approaches her and as a reflex I slide down my chair.
"So people back then were acting in naive realism, they only believed in what they saw, and when they couldn't explain what they saw, they blamed god. Would you agree with me Mrs Raudenfeld?"
Amy completely ignores him and continues staring out the window. I know she listens to him, but she doesn't answer.
"Mrs Raudenfeld, if you want to make this year, you have to participate in class. An A in the exam is simply not enough for you anymore to get through."
She snaps her head in his direction and glares at him. "I'm here even though I'm clearly repelled to your teaching, why isn't that enough?"
"Well after the incident last month and the one a few days ago, the whole staff decided not to let you off that hood that easy, so you have to participate or the attendance is worth nothing."
I lean over to Shane. "What incidents are they talking about?"
"Well last month she broke into the office after school, remember that?"
That was the first thing we really talked about, of course I remember that. I nod.
"Well the secretary told me that she deleted footage from the surveillance camera and changed the records of students. Like she changed the grades of the bimbos into worse grades and she also Changed Lauren's attendance record, but she has no clue about that, okay? Well, Amy was interrupted by the janitor and that's basically the main reason why she had detention the last month and until graduation. Normally there would have been legal stuff happening, but her mother begged the school board not to press charges. I don't know anything about another incident."
"What the actual fuck?! Just because I reflected people's intelligence in their grades and had some fun in the library, I have to do all of this shit?! Oh you know what? Fuck all of this, I'm out of here."
She gets up and storms out the room, leaving a classroom full of shocked students, staring at the door in complete silence. Mr Linefeld walks to the front again.
"Well that was quite something, and now we continue with the lesson ..."
While he starts talking again, Shane leans over to me again. "You should do something about your girlfriend, she seems a bit off today." He whispers.
I glare at him, but my face quickly softens. "Could you stop calling her my girlfriend? But you're kinda right, this is worse than she normally is."
I pull out my phone, I need to know what's going on.
Hey, is everything alright? You seem pretty mad.
I don't even have to wait long for the answer.
Everything's alright, really.
Then I feel my phone buzzing again.
Just keep away from me for today, for your own good.
I let out a deep sigh and put away my phone. Shane looks at me questioning, but I just shrug him off. I don't feel like talking right now.
During lunch everything was pretty calm again and I sit on my usual table with Shane and Lauren, we talk about the party from last Friday.
"Oh the party was great, I had so much fun, but where did you go Karma?" Lauren asks, "I haven't seen you throughout the night."
Might be because your face was glued to your boyfriend.
"I wasn't feeling well and went home early, I didn't want to ruin the party for anybody else."
In this moment Amy runs past us, a cloud of nicotine and alcohol smell follows her, and she barges right up to Liam.
"YOU DID THIS!" she screams at him and everybody in the cafeteria turns and looks at them. "You fucking demented asshole did this! I know exactly it was you! How could you do this to me?!"
Nobody moves in the whole room, just Liam chuckles a bit and leans back in his chair.
"And what exactly did I do?" His grin tells that he knows exactly what he supposedly did, and that he did it.
"You fucking cunt placed one of my notes next to a broken window of the chem lab where stuff was stolen on Saturday night! Are you fucking kidding me?!"
He gets up slowly and places his hand on the table in front of him, glaring at Amy. "Everybody gets what they deserve, and after you ratted out my family business to people, you deserve nothing less. I bet you told your little girlfrie-"
"Don't you dare talk about her!" She moves towards him, her jaw tightened, her fists clenched and her breathing heavy. "And what do you mean? I never told anyone about your family, why would I?!"
He just rolls his eyes, "Why wouldn't you. You want revenge after Friday. Just because I had some fun with Ka-"
Before he could finish his sentence, she goes to punch him directly in the face. There are gasps all around the cafeteria and Liam goes down. She leans down to him to punch him again but I get hold of her arm. I don't know how I got there so quickly, but I can't let her do this, this will only bring more trouble.
"Amy don't." That's all I could say and the moment I touched her she relaxes.
Her fists aren't clenched anymore and she lets out a deep breath. She still glares down at him and then looks at me. He expression is dark, but her eyes are somewhat soft, but they darken again. She glares around the cafeteria and frees herself from my grip.
"You should stay away from me." She almost whispers so only I can hear it, and then she marches outside while Irma the lunchlady runs to help Liam's face.
"What the fuck was that?" I turn around to see Lauren with crossed arms standing behind me, an eyebrow arched and her head slightly tilted.
I bite my lip and furrow my eyebrows, there is no way around this now. I look around and see everybody staring at me, I was pretty obvious I guess.
"Well, I think I have to tell you something" I begin.