"Hey." Dollface said, a small smile forming. Diaz looked over at her as he walked down the sidewalk.

She rose.

He was late.

That's weird.

He was always here first.

"Bad night?"

"Yeah, I guess." He collapsed into the bench with a thump and yawned, dark circles burned under his eyes.

Dollface looked at her boots and her toothpick legs stuffed into her much too skinny for most of her family, including her parent's taste, skinny jeans.

She sat on the metal bench.

Today was the day.

The day she had to go up in front of her class with a finished piece and explain what she did.

Then finish her math exam and bullshit her way through an essay on a play she'd never even heard of.

"Wanna get a coffee? I think we have time to walk over to Three-Story down the street."

"I don't really like coffee that much."

Oh well.

Whatever.

Dollface put the foam ring back over her exposed ear and continued on with her metal journey.

Dollface absently hummed to Crazy Train and watched a few cars pass by, counting them in German.

Eine, swei, drei….

"What?" Dollface looked at Dorado, lifting a disc.

"I have earbuds."

"Yeah?" She said, "That's nice."

Diaz looked into nowhere.

He hadn't slept at all last night.

She could tell.

Dollface looked at the pavement. There was a little round disc of blackened gum on the pristine concrete.

They were doing better than the bus stop back home.

There was only one, and the bus company had gone out of business decades ago.

Now the small school used it for it's only yellow log of stinking metal, stuffed with middle schoolers, high schoolers, and snotty elementary brats.

There was one upside, people from up in the big city had started to funnel into larger towns in the area, meaning new wealth could be poured in soon.

Dollface still cursed her father for not giving a shit about the small art and music department until Regina had moved down there.

"Wanna share?" Diaz asked, eyes leveling with hers.

"Sure." Dollface paused her music as it faded out, pulling her headphone jack out and scooting over as he straightened up and moved closer.

"Casual Friday?" She asked, chewing on mint gum stolen from Regina's makeup desk that morning much earlier.

"Yeah." Diaz said, "Final's Week Friday."

"Same." She said, chewing thoughtfully. She looked without looking at his jeans, taking the clunky bud from his brown hand. Calvin Kleine, light acid wash.

Once again, she was the poor kid, with high-waisted Aeropostale skinny jeans she bought last summer in the Clockton Goodwill as her birthday treat. They had been very nice, with very little wear on the belt loops, of which held one of Grampa's old braided leather belts wrapped twice around her waist.

Grampa was a very well kept man, even in his old age. Sweet tooth or not, he was damned if he'd end up like many other men in Elmore.

And working as a health inspector could put you off a lot of things.

Dollface had never actually used earbuds past her richer cousin Missy. Prissy Missy Custer was a bitch, but when it came to family reunions that was half the town of old people who pinched cheeks and made fun of you or even bragged about how much better they had it when they were kids, what's a little feud?

She especially remembered Missy being nice when they'd set the tables in the small meeting hall that reeked of Lent fish and old mildew/mold/fungus and messed up which side what went what utensil and got yelled at by their shared relative great Aunt Mary. Great Tante Mary, a hermitic hoarder of an old lady who reeked of mothballs and old, wet newspapers who neither girl was allowed to complain about, was the biggest bitch in the county.

Cousin Eileen was much more fun. She was Elmore's music teacher, and older woman in her seventies who always had a cough drop in her mouth and rosin in her nails.

Dollface put the jack in the port and Diaz handed her a bud.

She pressed play on her Walkman, waiting for the last fading notes to squeeze out of the mix.

Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me blasted through their ears.

The pair jumped, Dollface hurriedly turning down the sound.

This had been the only tape she brought from home, full of her favorite songs, of which Gramma would pass out at the thought of her owning. Thanks to Wolfie's rebellious nature against backwater parents, Dollface got all the sweet stuff.

No charge necessary, leaving her forever in debt.

"Step inside, walk this way, ya want me babe? HEY HEY!"

Diaz sat in silence, soaking it in. Dollface shifted nervously.

"Didn't expect this."

"What do ya mean?"

"Well," he said, "Didn't seem like you'd be into Def Leppard."

"Well I am." Dollface huffed, "Ya gotta problem with that?"

"No, not at all." Diaz said, as if trying to brush it away, "I kinda like this too..."

"...Wow, how'd you do it?" Dollface looked at Tina. Tina was shifting nervously in her bus seat.

"I don't know!"

"What's her name?" Dollface asked.

"Jaiden." Tina said.

"I'm honestly a li'l sur-prised, ya seemed uncomfortable with Sapphie." Dollface giggled, "And you thought that weirdo Zim was 'sooooo keeeee-ute!'"

"SHH!" Tina snapped, looking over her shoulder at Sapphie. Sapphie had two tiny buns on top of her head like mouse ears, silver eyes locked behind pink lenses.

Dollface had to admit, Sapphie did look good.

"Well, Jaiden was just so nice and asked if I wanted to come with her to that coffee shop near your dorm."

"Three Story?" Dollface asked, "Are they any good?"

"I'll have to tell you!"

The bus soon screeched to a halt on Martyr Street's Art and Design Hall for Girls and the packed prison soon emptied out in a cloud of Calvin Kleine Obsession and Yves St. Laurent perfume.

"How was your first week here?" Tina asked, standing up. Dollface joined Tina's head in the clouds of overpriced perfume and they filed out, past the frog-like bus driver.

"Well," Dollface started, thinking really, really hard, "My roomates hate me, my sister's a brat, an' my teachers are scary, plus I landed right in finals wek and have to be tested over shit I don't know about…"

"Oh."

"But I have you, an' that's good 'nough fer me!" Dollface beamed. Tina smiled widely around thick glasses and tackled the smaller girl into a hug.

They walked down the hallways, all the girls around them seperating into groups and running to their classes. Dollface filed behind Claudine and marched to her assigned project shelf. Tina followed close behind and grabbed her garment box.

"I am so behind." Tina quivered flatly.

"It's fine." Dollface assured, "M'gramma always said, 'Fake it till ya make it'."

"But I do not think I can!"

"Tina!" Dollface hissed, "You can!"

Tina clutched her box, voice flattening out more, "I do not think I can. I am too scared!"

Dollface sniffed, remembering what it was first like to hang out with Princess. She sighed, thinking.

"Are you upset like every one else?"

Dollface looked at her rainbow leg warmers. Gramma had knitted them for her when she was twelve, back in 1983's usual winter. She looked at Claudine's, a purple pair with leopard print and thought about Princess's Tide orange leg warmers and wrist bands, as well as her favorite matching sweater, all worn in and out of dance practice.

"You hate bein' touched like I do, dontcha?"