Raven was still angry to say the least, but she did find a little joy in the fact that every time she acted indifferent towards Apple, the spoiled brat looked a little like her world was collapsing. Ever decreasing joy since causing other people to feel bad was wrong, she knew it and she usually did not like it at all, but she would try to enjoy the tiny bit of revenge that she got as long as she could. That said screwing with Apple's obvious guilt would probably loose the last bit of joy some time around this afternoon. She just wasn't the kind of person to do that.

She opened her locker and found a letter that she didn't put there. The paper even of the envelope looked expensive and smelled like flowers, so she already had a suspect. For a moment she thought about throwing it in the bin since she didn't want to hear any excuses, but then she decided to read it anyway since she was curious what Apple had to say.

Dear Raven,

I know I was never nice to you. In fact I was a total jerk all the time, especially that time a few days ago and I see that now. What I wanted to tell you is that I am really and sincerely sorry. I can't even tell you just how sorry I am and even though I know I have no right to ask that of you, if you find it in your heart to forgive me, it would mean the world to me. If you don't, I just want to assure you that I will not bully you again and that I will try to keep the others from doing it too.
If I can make it up to you in in any way, please let me know.

Best wishes,
Apple

That was actually kind of cute and it read like she was crushed by regret. Raven shrugged. It could just be the prelude to another joke at her expense and she certainly was not interested in that.

She put the letter back and closed the locker, when she saw Apple waving at her with a nervous smile on her lips before she took off in the wrong direction. Both her next lessons and her friends were the other way. Something was suspicious and Raven was kind of interested in suspicious things. She followed her, which turned out more difficult than expected, since the rich girl was pretty fast. Who would have thought growing up in a palace would teach you how to run?

Raven ran after her to the outside around the corner to the playground nobody ever used, because high school students weren't exactly in that age anymore. She saw her crawling into one of those concrete tubes that were ugly as hell but brilliant for being alone, when you just couldn't take people at the moment. Raven thought about respecting Apple's wish for solitude, but curiosity won.

"Apple?" She made a few steps toward the pipe.

"I'm not here." Apples voice sounded higher than usual.

"Funny. Come on Apple, let's talk."

Slowly She came out of the tube and waited for Raven to say something. Her expression shifted between a smile and sadness so often that it turned into a weird mix of both most of the time and her eyes that Raven had not seen clearly from the distance before were red and she seemed to be unable to decide if it was ok to look at her or not. She had tried to hide the red with make-up, but it was still faintly visible.

Did she cry? Is it because of me?

Raven felt terrible about herself and for the first time in days she dropped the mask of indifference around Apple and showed her concern without restraint.

"So... Because of that letter. Were you serious?"

Apple nodded frantically as if she was under a lot of pressure.

"Ok."

She looked confused. "Ok what?"

"Ok I forgive you." Raven made clear. Apple's expression turned almost ecstatically happy. "Under one condition." Absolute horror. "You explain to my why you were the way you were and why you suddenly changed." Back to happy. Her emotional roller coaster was also kind of cute. She never would have guessed Apple had a cute side too.

"Sure, no problem, how about I treat you to a meal in the evening and you can ask anything you want."

Raven was all ears. Did she just say free food? "Sounds great!"

Free food! And Apple didn't look like a mess anymore because of her. Not so bad either.

I am sorry this comes a little late, but I have to deal with test that determine the course of my next year at the moment and I wanted to make sure to do the best I could when adding just the right amount of details on this chapter, so as you can imagine I am terribly curious what you think about the storry so far and of course my writing style. Also language, but I assume I got that accross already.