Author's Notes: I've never been fond of absolutely colossal fan fics, so I guess it's strange that my only fic seems to be turning into one.
Chapter 22: Hibernating Snake
The girls' dorm was mercifully large compared to how many girls were inhabiting it. Avoiding others was easier than, say, in the overpopulated boys' dorm, so you could be mostly by yourself. Especially if you were sharing your room with Zoe Taylor and Melody Adams and you were Lola Lombardi. Zoe was hardly ever at the dorm except when she went to sleep and Melody was, despite her strange fascination with Lola and the rest of the greasers, now terrified of her and regularly took refuge in Karen Johnson's room.
Except now, for some reason.
"Uhm, Lola...", a timid voice sounded from the doorway to the dim room, the beast's lair. Melody peeked in, waiting for the motionless lump, Lola with her blanket pulled up to her ears, to move.
"Get the hell out", she heard the cranky man-eater mutter.
"But we've... Christy said...", the short girl stammered weakly.
To her surprise, the greaser queen stirred under her covers and sat up in the middle of her sentence, her hair shaggy and face lackluster thanks to the lack of makeup. She seemed to be reaching for something.
"Get out!" she yelled and threw a hair brush at her junior.
"Yikes!" Melody squeaked and slammed the door shut, just in time to avoid her accurate throw.
Now alone, Lola turned her eyes to the window, which had its blinds down but light let some light trickle through the slits. It was afternoon, probably.
"Hmm", she hummed as she pressed her head against her pillow, not sure if afternoon was a good or bad.
It was Monday and it had been three days since she had gone outside the dorm for anything else than food. Her excuse for skipping class today? Headache. The young woman wasn't exactly sure why she was like this, but she simply didn't feel like doing anything or talking with anyone. She didn't feel good or bad – rather, she felt like nothing in particular. It had always been long, but the items on her "things I should be concerned about but I'm not" list had increased considerably. Personal hygiene was among them, she noted as she felt her forehead and concluded that it was more greased up than Vance's hair.
The most pressing matter in the girl's mind was that she was running out of plausible excuses for truancy. She had gone through a lot of diseases she could fake and almost all the humane errors that she could get away with. Unfortunately, menstruation pains weren't a viable excuse for at least one week – Mrs. Peabody, that old bat, kept track of the girls' cycles and would actually check if there was any truth to claims that you were early. She also made an embarrassing example of anyone who tried to fool her. It was remarkable that a person so unlike Mr. Burton could be creepy for similar reasons.
Suddenly, the door opened with a creak. Was it the old stalker herself?
"Oh for fuck's sake Lola", a much disgruntled redhead said.
"Leave me alone, dropout", Lola hemmed, annoyed that Melody had probably snitched on her.
"Oh gee, look who's talking. You're gonna be a dropout for much better reasons than I was if you keep this up", Zoe said, rolling her eyes.
"Did you come all the way here to tell me that? Great, thanks for the heads up: now leave", Lola mumbled with a low, monotonous voice and turned to her side so she didn't see her roommate.
"Oh god, you're such a... Listen, you PMS'ing bitch: I really do get that we don't get along, but there's no fucking reason to be mean at Mel. Chris and Angie made some cookies in home economics and they're sharing them downstairs, Mel was just gonna ask you if you wanted some", Zoe told, trying to be patient with her aggravator.
"Well I don't want any. Ta-ta."
Zoe's already deep frown intensified and the edge of her mouth twisted in disapproval.
"Y'know what? No. For being such a bitch for no reason, you're gonna get up, have a fucking shower, put something on, and come downstairs", she announced and stomped to the window, opening the blinds.
It was too much of a hassle to oppose Zoe now that she was fired up, so Lola ended up doing what she had been told. The two girls were always bouncing off of each other for one reason or another when they were sharing the same air: Zoe couldn't stand the way Lola seemed to have the distinct personality of a vacuum without her countless boyfriends and Lola was annoyed that Zoe needed to be so damn ~*uñîQüe*~ and absolutely self-sufficient at all times. Yeah, Lola realized she was fake and reliant on being able to leech off of others, so what? She didn't see how Zoe was any more of a closed ecosystem than she was – in her opinion she just tried a lot harder. Way too hard.
On the other hand, because Zoe was such a hard worker, Lola was now walking down the stairs, feeling somewhat refreshed and more energized after a long, hot shower. Not that she'd admit it to the girl in question, though. As she laid her eyes on her fellow female students, gathered around the table in the first floor, her face was blank like it usually was when there was nobody to impress.
"You sure took your time", Zoe hemmed when she saw the shaggy-haired brunette, making her the center of attention. Lola's sight panned across the room as she stepped down, her pouty lips tightening into a thin line. Christy, Angie, Zoe, Karen, Gloria, and Melody were present. Mandy was probably with the jocks and Beatrice was most likely in the library. Lola had no idea where Eunice or Pinky could've been and she didn't care.
"Better come have some cookies before fatso smells them", Christy chuckled, biting into a chocolate chip cookie.
"Oh c'mon Christy. Don't be mean", Angie pleaded, but she giggled at Eunice's expense too. Gloria rolled her eyes, but kept her mouth shut about insulting the plump girl, for once.
Lola shrugged and walked to the table, taking one cookie and leaving the table in favor of sitting cozily on the sofa that was nearby.
"So, anyway. Did you hear? There was another nerd fight. I heard that Bucky's hand got, like, totally busted", Christy gossiped enthusiastically.
"Uh... Beatrice said he just got a minor burn from the bottle rocket", Gloria corrected.
"Like I said, totally busted. And I bet Bea gave him some 'tender, loving care' too, if you know what I mean", Christy continued. Some giggles and snorts came from all around. Gloria wasn't amused, however. Then again, she rarely was.
"Oh yeah, and I heard from Wade who heard it from Jimmy who heard it from one of the townies that the greasers broke into the chem plant again on Saturday", the dainty redhead told.
Lola, who was otherwise completely uninterested in whatever spouted from Christy Martin's mouth, perked upon the mention of her fellow greasers.
"Yeah, I heard about it on Sunday. The guys were pretty pissed off", Zoe commented, referring to her townie friends.
"What were they doing there? Not sabotaging the already volatile behemoth, I hope", Gloria asked with concern.
"I heard they had a fight against the townies. Like, a big one. Get this: Peanut really is with the dropouts and he fought against Johnny Vincent but they fell off the roof", Christy answered.
Suddenly, Lola's eyes shot open and she turned to look directly at Christy.
"What", she asked flatly, "did you say?"
"Like I said, they fell off the roof", Christy said proudly, as if it had been her accomplishment somehow.
"No! Before that!" Lola snapped.
"I said that Johnny and Peanut had a fight. It was a big one, apparently! I wish I had seen it", Christy sighed.
The girls were all looking at Lola, whose eyes seemed to have fired up. They weren't sure how or why, but that piece of news had apparently sparked life into her engines.
"Typical. Fucking typical", the greaser queen snarled venomously and stood up, storming straight into her room upstairs.
The other girls were left staring at where she had disappeared, some with their mouth open. Nobody quite understood why any of that had happened.
"I wonder if I should go tell her that they didn't actually fall down from the roof", Zoe pondered.
Lola would've probably been more at ease if they really had fallen, though.
Author's Notes: Make no mistake, I do like Zoe. But, my favorite female student? Christy. Oh, Christy, how I love your gossiping and school-burning silliness!