Chapter Eleven

"Mr. Baxter, fetch the nurse!" Paulina heard Mr. Lancer cry out. She lowered herself to the floor and gingerly positioned Sam on her back before moving away. Several students hurried from their seats and started to crowd around them until the man ordered, "In Search of Lost Time. Return to your seats and give her some space, now!"

Almost everyone obeyed, but Danny wasn't one of those people. Paulina watched as he dropped to Sam's side and checked for a pulse. After a sigh of relief, he gently shook her shoulder and called out to her. "Sam? Sam."

"Miss Manson, can you hear me?" Mr. Lancer's voice was firm, but anyone in that room could detect the amount of compassion and concern within it. Fortunately, she stirred right after that and her lashes swept upward as she cracked open her eyelids. She blinked several times to adjust her vision before staring at everyone who was towering over her.

"Nice catch, Paulina," Star remarked, though it sounded almost absent because she was focused on the scene unfolding before her. Paulina gave a dismissive nod before looking down at Danny, who had rolled up his hoodie and propped Sam's legs on top of it while Mr. Lancer crouched down beside her.

"How do you feel?" She ignored his question, or just didn't hear it, and attempted to sit up, but Danny gently pushed on her shoulder to get her to lie back down. "It's best that you remain lying down until the nurse comes in," Mr. Lancer continued. "Do you feel dizzy, disoriented, nauseous, or all of the above?"

"No, but I feel suffocated." Sam's voice sounded hoarse, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "I feel fine. Really."

"You're obviously not fine if you just fainted." Paulina didn't recognize the voice of the person who said that and she didn't bother turning around to see who it was either. "Maybe you didn't eat breakfast today or maybe you're overworked."

Nobody responded to her, but some shrugged and others hummed. The school's nurse, along with Dash, came bustling into the room just then and she made a beeline towards Sam. "Oh, she's awake. That's good." She knelt down beside her and asked, "Are you feeling lightheaded, nauseous—"

"I'm fine." Sam exhaled softly and leaned forward, positioning herself upright so that she was now sitting up. Paulina knew the girl was most likely embarrassed because she had several pairs of eyeballs trained on her. Most of their classmates were only standing there because they wanted to be nosy, not because they were genuinely concerned about her.

The nurse kept pressing her with questions; not because she wanted to come off as overbearing or annoying, but because she was simply doing her job. "Are you okay to stand? Did you hit your head?"

"Nah, she didn't. Paulina caught her before she hit the ground," Dash answered. Paulina stiffened once Sam's now wide eyes flicked towards her. She awkwardly raised her shoulders and looked over at the nurse, who nodded her head and smiled tenderly.

"Okay, dear, let's get you to the clinic." The woman lightly gripped Sam's upper arm and placed her other hand on her back before slowly helping her to her feet with the minor assistance of Danny. Mr. Lancer stood up as well and started ordering everyone to return to their seats. Once the nurse and Sam were gone, class resumed.

For the rest of the period, Paulina was a little distracted. Sam fainting and her catching her kept replaying in her head. She felt like she should've said something when she saw how ill the girl was looking, but then again, she thought it was a little odd how no one else seemed to notice anything off about her.

Danny probably did, though. She assumed that he was whispering to Sam about going to the nurse, which she probably just refused. The more she thought back to it, the more that situation seemed less hypothetical and more like what actually happened.

She didn't see Sam during lunch, but she saw Danny and Tucker. They were sitting inside the cafeteria this time, eating and talking to each other like everyone else was doing. After mentally debating with herself, she hesitantly approached them.

"So, where is she?" Both boys stopped what they were doing and looked over at her. They then glanced at each other, probably having a silent conversation with facial expressions before either of them chose to speak. "Is she like, okay?"

"She got sent home early." Danny cast a glance to his right with a slow raise of his shoulders. "She's okay. She just needs to take it easy. All that fighting and stressing isn't exactly good for a person's well-being."

She didn't know if he was just saying that to make her feel guilty or if he was being truthful at first, but she eventually went with neither. She was certain that he was lying about what really happened because he refused to look her in the eyes while he was speaking, which was something he never had a problem with doing before.

After school, during cheerleading practice, she was in the middle of doing a butterfly stretch after warming up when her phone started buzzing beside her. She paused and grabbed it, glancing at the screen to see who was calling her.

Of course it would be her ex boyfriend.

Normally, she would've jumped to answer the phone call, but her entire conversation in the locker room with Sam popped into her head. Instead of answering, she stared down at the phone and waited until it stopped ringing before exhaling and continuing her stretch.

While she did that, Tiffany stomped over to her and stood above her with her hands on her hips. Paulina peered up at her and scrunched her face, resisting the urge to snap at her and tell her to beat it. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Yeah." Tiffany glanced away and took a deep breath. "I want to be back in the A-listers again."

Paulina looked amused as she held back a smirk. "That's not happening, Tiff."

"And why not?"

She moved into a crisscross position and eyed her nails, noting the fact that it was almost time for a fill-in. As entertaining as it was to see Tiffany crawling back, she didn't care for it much. "I want peace and you want war. I'm sick of you fighting my battles and escalating them, which is all you're going to do if I allow you back in."

"That's a damn lie," Tiffany growled. Paulina remained unflinching, even rolling her eyes and looking in another direction. "I wasn't fighting any of your battles. I was defending you and you wanted to get all pissy about it and boot me from the club."

"Defending me from what? Manson wasn't doing anything wrong that day. You started a fight with her, spit on her, and then came yelling at me for saying you were in the wrong." Paulina then decided to re-tie her shoe since she was already sitting down. "Then you told me to choose between you and her. I'm not saying I choose her, but I don't choose you, so what's the point of you being in the group?"

"Because, sweetheart, you don't own that group. Everyone contributed to it, so it's not fair that only you get to call the shots."

"Actually, sweetheart, Dash and I call the shots because we were the main ones to initiate the group." After tying her shoe, she rose to her feet and walked forward, jamming her finger into Tiffany's face. "You don't have the right to come here and tell me what's fair and what's not. I brought you into the group and I took you out. Plain and simple."

"You fought Manson, so I don't know why you're making a big deal about me fighting her." Tiffany crossed her arms and leaned back. "You've constantly insulted her and even initiated a fight of your own for no reason, yet I'm a bully for it?"

Paulina lowered her hand and casually shrugged. In a way, the girl had a point, but she didn't care about that. "I fought her because there was so much tension between us already. We didn't like each other and that fight was pretty mutual. You, however, fought her for dominance and superiority. You called her out for fighting someone who didn't want to fight, but she didn't want to fight you and you still fought her."

"Okay, but that's between her and I. That has nothing to do with you. You were just waiting for a reason to kick me out." Tiffany swung her arm out and chuckled dryly. "You can try as hard as you want to be this fake changed person, but you're not fooling anyone. You're still the same evil, conniving little diva you've always been."

Paulina nodded her head slowly and her lower lip protruded outward. "Sure, but this evil, conniving little diva is also the captain of our cheerleading team. Want to continue this conversation, or do you want to get out of my face and go finish stretching before I get really upset and make you do some wall sits?"

Tiffany's leer lingered on her for a few more seconds before she tore her gaze away and immediately stormed off. Paulina bowed her head and sighed before kneeling down and picking up her phone.

"Tiffany's wrong," she murmured to herself. "I can definitely change."

A/N: More of a filler, but sorry for the delay. Since my story was shouted out by Danielle, I want to return the favor. Feel free to check out her story 'Behind Closed Doors' or 'Mine' if you like thriller or any Danny Phantom stories. Her user is iimdanielle.