Chapter 32: Snake's Not Snacking
It was a rainy April day and Lola Lombardi's morning had gone swimmingly: she had slept through most of it. It was now lunch break so the sultry serpent was leaving the safety of her den to feed. Upon descending the stairs, she swiftly passed Angie Ng, who then turned around before her senior managed to slip away.
"Lola! Have you heard the news?" she asked, making the greaser queen slow down and stop tentatively.
"What news?" Lola asked nonchalantly, looking up at the flustered Chinese-American over her shoulder.
"Oh, it's just awful... You missed a real scandal! Someone's been spreading stuff that's probably from Mrs. Peabody's journal, mostly stuff about Pinky and Mandy!" the other girl sputtered. This piqued Lola's interest.
"Ha, serves them right... But is there anything about me?" she inquired, wondering if she should be worried.
"No, I don't think so... There were prints slipped into students' lockers and attached to the bulletin board, but the prefects and teachers have tried to confiscate them all...", Angie explained, although she was annoyed by the way Lola shrugged off Pinky's and Mandy's distress.
"So, who pulled this off?" Lola asked, turning around to fully face her junior.
"I don't know... And I'm sad to say it, but I think the staff's priorities are totally skewed! They should concentrate on catching whoever stole the journal, but they're more interested in destroying the prints...That, and everyone's on Mrs. Peabody's case! Sure, I always thought she was pretty creepy and I'm not exactly sure how legal her record-keeping was, but she doesn't deserve this!" Angie ranted with a concerned tone. Lola, however, was amused and was fighting an urge to smirk – she had always hated Mrs. Peabody.
"And poor Pinky and Mandy! I haven't seen Mandy all morning but I'm sure she's crushed, I know I would be...", the pigtailed girl continued.
Right around this point, Lola lost interest in Angie and decided it was time to go to someone who probably knew the juicier details.
"Righty-o. Angie, would you happen to know where Christy is?"
Finding Christy was no chore, neither was getting her to share what she knew about this incident. Conveniently, she even had copies of the journal that she had stashed under her shirt when the prefects had gone from class to class, telling students to empty their bags.
"It's awesome stuff, isn't it?" he redhead giggled as Lola examined the prints. She ignored most of the text for now, only looking for any kind of mention of herself before delving deeper into what other things were written there.
"I heard that Pinky and Derby immediately called their lawyers and they've been on Dr. Crabblesnitch's ass ever since... Mrs. Peabody is in soooooo much trouble, I hope she gets fired!" Christy drawled happily.
Lola concluded that there wasn't anything about her in the nefarious prints, which she found somewhat strange. If one wanted to make as big of a splash possible, one would typically include something about her – she was the girlfriend of Johnny Vincent and there must have been something worth mentioning about her in the journal, after all. The suspicious brunette started reading the text from the beginning again, this time with more thought, but she was interrupted by Christy:
"Oh, by the way, your boyfriend wants to talk to you. He was waiting for you at the caf, just so you know."
A chilling thought slithered into Lola's mind at that very moment. For a while, she pretended to be sternly focused on reading about Mandy's bulimia and STD's and Pinky's embarrassing special needs and hereditary oddities, but in reality her attention was elsewhere.
"Okay, I'm done. Thanks Christy", she said after a while, handing the papers back to the redhead.
"Nooo prob. Gotta show this to Zoe next so... Bye!", Bullworth's gossip girl said, feeling accomplished now that she had spread the word again.
Deep in thought, Lola started walking towards the main building from the fountain, which was where she had found Christy. A certain scene haunted her mind: she had teased Johnny with the pregnancy issue a few days ago and had probably gone a bit overboard. When she had playfully asked him to come up with suitable baby names, he had stormed out of the abandoned tenements, seeming angry and determined. She hadn't thought much of it then, but in hindsight...
Upon accepting the possibility that Johnny could be the perpetrator and that the truth could be out, Lola felt a surge of anxiety. Then, slowly, it was replaced with a sense of relief. She herself hadn't been all that sure where she had been going with her fake pregnancy, so letting it go was like shaking off a big weight off her shoulders. She had come up with it on a whim and it would've been exposed to Johnny eventually, unless she had gone to extreme lengths to stage it of course. It had been a dud from the very beginning.
Her social life in general had been like that for a while now: her coming up with more and more complex ploys and finding herself struggling with said ploys more than usual. She had no sense of scale or moderation anymore – it was hard for her to see if her roles had become more difficult to pull off or if she had become sloppier in the execution. Whatever was the case, it was taking its toll on her. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered with it, but it was hard to just stop in the middle of something. And she, of course, always had something going on.
Excuses, excuses. Lola herself knew it was just that: an exemption for her to do what she liked without having to change her ways. But, from Lola's point of view, that was what human life seemed to be about in general – finding a comfortable lifestyle and using something, anything, as an excuse to keep it without having to give up anything or to exert any more than the minimum amount of effort. The way the greaser queen saw it, Hal Esposito didn't love food and being fat anywhere near as much as he tried to convince himself, it was just too much of a trouble to change his eating habits. Johnny hadn't continued being devoted to her because he thought so highly of her, it was just easier than admitting that he had made a bad investment. Lola's grandmother didn't believe that she had been corrupted by the devil or whatever because it was the best answer, she just couldn't handle the possibility that something like Lola and her mother had originated from her. Therefore, the only real flaw Lola was truly apologetic for was that her excuses and lies hadn't stood the test of time all that well lately.
With this in mind, the young woman's thoughtful slouch had turned into a confident stride. When she walked through one of the side doors and into the student-infested hallway, she felt herself graceful and light compared to who she saw as bumbling, awkward fools around her. The moment she saw her boyfriend, leaning against a wall right by the cafeteria entry and looking for her from the crowd with his excitingly angry and gloomy eyes, a mysterious smile tugged her lips.
"Johnny? I heard you wanted to talk", she chirped as she approached him from the side.
When Johnny turned his gaze towards her, there was hardly anything but contempt in his eyes. Under the surface, though, Lola saw his usual desperate hopefulness and somehow, it had started to feel uninviting to her. Realizing her disappointment, her smile was washed away and replaced with a blank expression.
"Figured that even a man-eater has to eat somethin' else once in a while. C'mon, let's go", he grumbled darkly and nodded towards the door before grabbing an umbrella that leaned against the wall right next to him.
As the couple faced the cold rain under the same umbrella, a few students noted that, rather uncharacteristically, neither Johnny or Lola had their arm around the other or even looked at each other as they walked.
Author's Notes: I needed some time because I was really hung up on Johnny's and Lola's relationship and how to present it, but wait a sec... Is this seriously the first time I've actually written Johnny and Lola interacting with each other directly? I... I think it is... o_o *feels awkward*