1) Chapter three, and I'm now going out of order with the themes. This chapter just sorta took a life of its own. -_- Whoops. Luckily, one of the other themes fit the description, so I lucked out. enjoy

4. Annoyance

1,921 words

I was probably the only cheerleader in the school that chose to sit with my true friends at lunch instead of the cheer squad and football team. It was nothing personal – assuming they didn't take it personally that I would rather talk about politics and books than who Tammy's going out with tonight and whether they'll go all the way and if she'll get expelled if they find out she's pregnant – but it was a choice that got me weird looks at times. Our cheer squad had fifteen girls on it, and it was distinctly split into three cliques that made maintaining practice nearly impossible. My inter-squad clique was five girls that were more down-to-earth than the other ten, and they made practices and road trips much more bearable, but they weren't my true friends.

No, a small group of six people and a single straggler took that honor. Savannah was easily my best friend. We had met my first year at this campus, and she had a very dry humor that no one else really appreciated like I did. Second place went to Dylan, a black boy that held the position as the football team's running back. We actually met via my big brother. Dylan had some sort of hero worship for him and befriended me to become friends with my brother. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – he started liking me more, and we became best friends. Next would be Julianna, the fashionista that was a part of the ragtag group before I was, and the last three were Mikaela, Cassie, and Maddie.

The "straggler" has a story all her own. Margaret Clemmens was a skittish girl that had somehow wriggled her way into our group. I think the thing that attracted her was the fact that we were all too nice to say "no" or tell her to go away. Margie was a strange girl, reading books that we had never even heard about like Acorna: The Unicorn Girl and getting frustrated when we didn't want to read them with her. I was fairly certain that if I wasn't embroiled in my own fandom, I wouldn't have minded reading through those books, but I simply wasn't interested in half-human, half-animal stories. To make things worse, Margie had a habit of wearing her heart on her sleeve, getting angry over the smallest things. I could recall her shrieking at me for noting that her orange parka looked nice. Apparently, the parka wasn't orange; it was red, and how dare I make such a mistake! It wasn't just me she got mad at either; a lot of the kids in my class liked picking on her just because they knew they'd get a funny, explosive answer. It didn't help that her father was the Biology teacher and had similar problems with his temper.

I met Margie in one of my classes. The boys were making fun of her drawing, and I had told them to lay off. I had taken some lip about my bottle-blonde hair, but I didn't explode like Margie did. I coolly reminded the boys who my on-again-off-again boyfriend was and informed them that Dylan had no qualms in beating the crap out of them if they starting bullying me, and if he was busy, I always had my 6'5" big brother to call on. Billy and Dylan would never hurt someone, but these idiots didn't know that. They reluctantly returned to their classwork, waiting for the teacher to return to the room. From that moment on, Margie decided I was her best friend. Unfortunately. She kinda made me dread our approaching senior trip to New York. Chick cramped our style something awful.

"So… wha' can he do?" Dylan asked, staring wide-eyed at Optimus, who was standing in my lap, his optics just level with the table. I rolled my eyes at my fellow senior as I took a bite of my pasta. Mondays were Italian in my school cafeteria, which meant I could eat what I wanted. Carbs were good for cheer practice.

"Anything you can," I responded. "And don't talk about him in third-person. This mech's as sentient as you are."

"Ah…" was Dylan's genius reply. He looked mildly uncomfortable, but this didn't surprise me. Dylan was the only other person in my school that liked Transformers as much as I did. He didn't like G1 – he said it was too cheesy – but he liked Bayformers, much to my chagrin, and he enjoyed Transformers: Prime. Optimus was one of his favorite Autobots, too. "Hi, Optimus."

"Salutations, Dylan," the red and blue mech responded evenly, leaning back against my chest so that he got a good view of everyone's faces. "Private Tex mentioned you yesterday, and it is an honor to make your acquaintance."

"Wait, 'Private Tex?' Didn't wanna give him your real name, Marie?" Julianna teased. I grimaced. I allowed my family, close and extended, to call me Marie, but at school, I went by "Elizabeth," my middle name.

"I am aware what her true name is, but I desired to gift her with a new one. 'Private Tex' is a temporary alias she will go by until I can discern a suitable designation for her."

All eyes stared at Optimus as if… well, as if he were an alien. I knew exactly what was going through their minds, too. It was a joke among our clique that I was a walking thesaurus. Not even kidding. For my eighteenth birthday, they got me a thesaurus and wrote a long note on the back page to me. It was a strangely thoughtful gift, one that came from my large vocabulary. I thought it was funny, personally. A huge vocabulary came with advanced writing, so I hadn't expected them to be so surprised by it. My friends only discovered it when Mikaela needed synonyms for words on an English assignment. Seriously, it's not hard to come up with synonyms to the words "walk," "run," "say," "understand," and the like. She asked the table generally what the synonyms to the word were, and I just started spouting out words. Hence, the walking thesaurus.

Now my little Transformer spoke like a Hallmark card. Fantastic.

"Wow," Cassie said. "I can see why you got this model instead of waiting for Batman to come out. You two are a perfect match."

"I didn't want Batman," I argued. "He'd snoop through my stuff, and there's a lot of embarrassing thing I would rather keep in the dark from my sentient robots."

"Hey, what's the story on those things, anyways?" Maddie asked. "They're made in the US, right?"

"I believe so," I responded as I lifted the mini-Autobot onto the crowded table. Realistically, these tables were made to fit six people, and we always crammed in 8+ people. Sometimes, some of my cheerleader gals would come sit with me whenever there's a temporary inter-squad quarrel. I'm Switzerland. Optimus gave the table a slightly disgusted look – there were messy teenagers eating there, after all – and he made his way to the center of the table before sitting criss-cross facing me in the middle on a clean spot.

"I was created in Raleigh, North Carolina. Persobots Incorporated only uses American-made components in their Personals, as well," Optimus chimed in. We all glanced down at him before all gazes returned to me. I shrugged.

"He'd know best," I stated blithely. Optimus nodded at my statement, and I went back to eating as my friends turned their attention to the mech on the table.

"So, do you work kinda like Siri?" Julianna asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the table as she focused solely on the little 'bot. Optimus Prime's optics dimmed a little as he accessed the internet to discover who "Siri" was, then his optics brightened again when he focused on her.

"No, I am far more advanced than a simple virtual assistant. My language recognition skills as well as my adaptability greatly supersede that of a cellular phone."

"Yeah, he's more like I, Robot, remember? I read an article about him," Savannah broke in. Mikaela gave her a concerned expression.

"You don't think they'll freak out on us like VIKI did in that movie, do you?" she questioned, ever the suspicious person.

"Most likely. The government's probably making them just to learn all your secrets," Savannah replied with a sly grin. Mikaela's eyes went wide.

"She's kidding, Mikki," Maddie interjected, glaring at Savannah, who only smiled back innocently.

"Red Alert?" Optimus questioned, turning his attention back to me with a raised optic ridge. I grinned back at him.

"And Inferno," I responded, gaining the confused attention of all the people at the table.

"You two really are made for each other," Julianna stated with a frown.

"Why did you even buy him?" a voice questioned. All attention turned to Margaret, who had ended being the odd one out today who couldn't sit all the way at the table. At our table, the first seven to get there got to sit up against the table, and the last one had to squeeze in nearby, but wouldn't be able to place their food on the table. Today, the unlucky one had been Margaret. She sat between me and Julianna, but she still had about a foot between her and the table.

"Because I wanted to," I responded evenly, wondering why she was even bringing that up. Did one need a reason to buy a Personal? Once they were more affordable, I could guarantee that almost everyone would have one. Except for Mikaela. Savannah had probably taken any such desire own one away with that comment about the government. Margaret frowned, her eyebrows furrowing as she took a clump of her huge homemade "hot pocket" and tossed it in her mouth chewing slowly at least ten times before she spoke again, and she didn't swallow before she opened her mouth, much to my disgust.

"It seems like a waste of money to me," she stated, and I felt my teeth grind at the familiar words. "I mean, Personals are around seven hundred dollars, aren't they?"

"Yes, but he's worth it," I stated, holding back the urge to snap at her. How dare she question my motives? What business was it of hers what I bought?

"Well, it's not like he's this special thing. He's just a toy," she pointed out, and I scowled at her.

"To you, perhaps, but he's my friend. Don't assume things you know nothing about," I snapped. The bell rang, thank God, and immediately rose to my feet, ignoring the girl who had sat beside me as I tossed the rest of my pasta in the trash. The sauce had tasted nasty anyways. I grabbed Optimus gently off the table and joined the flood of students heading out the door behind our table. Dylan and Savannah jogged over to catch up with me, but I ignored them, too, focusing on the Personal who was sitting on my arm like a toddler, small hands fisted into my shirt as he looked up at me in concern.

"Are you alright, Private?" he asked as I navigated the hallway to my locker. I gave him a small smile.

"Of course," I said evenly. Now that I was away from my clique, I had to adopt my normal, cheerleader persona that everyone else in the school knew me by. Strange how different Cheer Captain Lizzie was from Fanfiction-writer and Book-reader Lizabeth. "Just a small annoyance."

Chistarpax: You say that now. Once he starts switching the names of the songs just for laughs, you might change your mind. And I totally agree. Mornings are the worst, especially when your mom wakes you up in the morning singing. Ew.

A Wiccan: Aw, man, that sucks. I feel for ya. I know people in my school were not forgiving at all. Once they found out something about you, they raked you across the coals just because they needed someone to pick on. It's sad to say, but the greatest day of my life was when I figured out that I just don't care what anyone says. They're opinion doesn't affect my life. Once I stopped letting them see how much it hurt, they moved on to another target. Graduation was still the greatest day of my life, though. Finally got away from all those jerks, and now I get to hear from their friends as they're lives fall apart. Apparently, in the real, grown-up world, nobody likes a bully. My brother was always this shining person. Every girl loved him, every guy wanted to be his friend, and he was just so sweet. He was that typical country boy that everyone loves. Then you got me. I'm not anti-social, but i don't get into the gossip, and I very rarely have boyfriends. Why? I dunno, but it bugs my mom because my brother's been married two years now, and I'm coming up on 21, and I've only had three boyfriends in my whole life, and none of those relationships lasted past two weeks. I think my mom thinks I'm defective, because I am pretty, just not pretty enough, I guess.

Anybody ever had that one friend that you never really befriended; they just kinda latched onto you? I had about five of those. I used to be that nice person that will talk to the people everyone else ignores, that told off the bullies. Unfortunately, that gained me a lot of friendships i didn't really want and a ton of creepy guys that fell in love with me because I stood up for them. A lot of them became stalkerish, so Dylan, who you met in this chapter, became my "Senior bodyguard." We had the same classes so he basically hung out by me and sometimes pretended to be my boyfriend to keep the stalkers away, hence the on-again-off-again part. Sigh. Life in a private school.