Chapter 13

"Bitches!" Penny muttered. She was scrolling through Facebook, untagging herself from all the unflattering pictures that were posted the previous night. She understood posting the cute pics where they were all looking hot, but what was the need to post the ones where they were all looking drunk and messed up. Why did they have to post that pic of her on that guys lap? They just took the picture for jokes, because him and his friends were so ridiculously over the top. Well Leonard is definitely not going to be happy when he sees this. It was totally innocent, but she knew it was going to turn into an argument. Penny knew her old friends definitely had a bitchy side to them.

Penny's eye's narrowed as she saw that Leonard was tagged in a drunk picture of her. It was from Bernadette.

Leonard Hofstadter, you are such an awesome guy. You should be with someone Hot AND Smart, not just Hot – with Amy Farrah Fowler, Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz and Alex Jensen.

What the hell was this? How dare Bernie call her out on Facebook saying that she's hot but not smart, and tagging Leonard in that. She was just trying to cause problems with her and Leonard! Were Amy, Bernadette and Alex all buddy-buddy now? Were they all in on this stupid post?

Alex. Alex…what was she doing with them? Was Bernadette so low, that she was trying to get Alex sniffing around Leonard again?

Oh, she was going to give Bernadette a piece of her mind. Everybody cut Bernie so much slack cause she looked like a cute little pint sized doll. They didn't know what a conniving little bitch she could be. Penny grabbed her bag, briefcase, and put on her best pair of heels. She was going to going to confront Bernadette at work, and boy was she ever going to get it.

It was complete at utter chaos at Johnson Medical, where Bernadette worked. Their new drug, Diaxophedrine, which had passed all their clinical drug trials, was found to have a very serious new side effect. The problem was, that they had just released the samples of this drug to all their pharmaceutical sales reps to distribute and promote. It was only released two days ago, so they were desperately trying to make sure that none of the doctors gave out those samples, and all the sales reps stopped the distribution of this drug immediately. All drug samples needed to be returned and accounted for to the company. Bernadette was swamped in her lab, trying to find out how this side effect was missed during the clinical trials.

"Bernadette?"

She looked up, it was Dan, Penny's manager at the door. The same Dan that gave Penny the job because of their mutual fear of Bernadette. He was definitely not her favourite person right now.

"What?" she said curtly.

"I've heard from all my reps about the status of their samples of the Diaxophedrine, but I haven't heard from Penny yet. Have you heard from her?"

"No, I haven't." Bernadette snapped. She didn't want to think about Penny, she was too stressed about what was going on at work. She didn't understand how this could be happening with this drug, she was so confused, it was as if the molecular structure changed after a period of time. She was racking her brain trying to figure out what happened. She needed to bounce ideas off of someone. Maybe she could call Amy and talk to her about it, she'd at least have a fresh perspective from the people here, who were just as puzzled as her.

She looked up; Dan was still pacing in front of her lab door. "Did you try phoning her?" Bernie asked.

"Well of course I tried phoning her. Multiple times! She hasn't picked up. I need all her samples back and accounted for ASAP."

"Well I don't know what to tell you. I don't know where she is." Bernie said quietly.

Penny came charging down the hall towards Bernadette's lab.

"Penny! Don't you answer your phone? I've been trying to get a hold of you all morning!" Dan exclaimed.

"Sorry, I must have had the ringer off. What's going on?" Penny replied.

"Listen, the whole thing is explained in your email. Do you still have all your samples of the Diaxophedrine? Did you give any to any doctor's yet?"

"No, today was supposed to be my first visit for that drug. I haven't given any out yet." Penny replied.

"Great! I need all your samples returned. We need to have them all accounted for here. Do you have them with you?"

"They are in my car right now" Penny said.

"Oh thank God. Can you please get them, and take them to the fourth floor lab. We are returning all the samples there." Dan sighed in relief. "That's everyone accounted for, I think we are in the clear for now." He wiped the sweat off of his forehead, and walked towards the door.

"Penny. Next time answer your phone." Dan walked out of the lab.

Penny walked into Bernadette's lab and closed the door.

"You and me need to have a little chat." Penny hissed at Bernadette.

"Penny, I really don't have time for you right now. Can't you see we are in a middle of a crisis here?" Bernadette snapped.

"I really don't care that you are busy. You and me are going to talk NOW." Penny said coldly. She looked over at Bernadette "I know that we both said a lot of crap to each other, but you have no right, NO RIGHT to try to cause problems between Leonard and I. Did you think your little Facebook post was funny? What are you trying to prove hanging out with Alex? You know that Alex liked Leonard…he's ENGAGED, and you are trying to get her interested in him again?!"

"Oh that's rich, you are doing a fine job acting the part of an engaged woman It's ok when you say shit like that to Amy, but it's not ok when it's said to you? Besides, Alex never liked Sheldon, it was Leonard she was interested in, it's like you forgot that fact when you were saying that to Amy"

"But I never said any of that to Sheldon's face. I only said it to you and Amy. You tagged Leonard in that post so that he would specifically read it! You totally crossed the line." Penny paced the lab, her face red with rage.

"Well, I didn't write that post, Amy did." Bernadette said coldly.

"What? Amy?" Penny felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Amy? Amy was the last person that she thought would try to hurt her this way. As annoying as Amy could be sometimes, she was always loyal.

Bernadette smirked. "Well Amy wrote the post, but I totally agree with everything that she wrote, and encouraged her to post it."

"So what you two are best friends now? Why did you two make up when you said just as much crap to her as I did?" Penny looked at her puzzled.

"Unlike you, I felt terrible for what I said to her, and I apologized." Bernie said curtly.

"I texted Amy, she just never texted me back."

"You didn't text her an apology. You just said we all said stupid stuff, let's forget about it. That's pretty lame, considering the nasty things you said to her. What did she ever do to you?"

"Yeah well what about you? You never apologized to me for calling me a stupid lazy slut. You said I had nothing going for me except my looks!"

"Well you never apologized to me for insulting my Howie. You called him a creepy sexual pervert! How would you like it if I said something like that to Leonard?" Bernadette hissed.

"You called Leonard a doormat!" Penny retorted.

The girls stared at each other. It seemed like they had come to an impasse. They stared awkwardly at each other. Bernie looked up at Penny and said softly "Is it true? Are you really sick of hanging out with us? Do you all just see us as a bunch of geeks?"

Penny sighed. "You guys just don't understand what it feels like to be me sometimes. I feel like I don't belong."

Bernadette looked down at her books. "You know Penny, Amy felt bad about that post. She apologized to Alex and Leonard."

"She didn't apologize to me…"

"Really Penny? Do you really expect her to after all the stuff that went down between you two?"

"I guess not…" Penny replied sadly. "I don't hate you guys. I'm just really unhappy right now about a lot of things…it's hard for me to talk about."

"Well maybe you need to take some time out, and figure out what's bothering you. Maybe when you've got that figured out, then we can all sit down and talk about everything. I can't speak for Amy, but I know that I am willing to talk when you are ready. I know that I haven't been the nicest friend either."

Penny looked down at her shoes. "I guess I'll go now. I better go get those samples from my car before Dan lays an egg"

"Bye Penny." Bernie said softly

"Bye Bernie" Penny smiled at Bernadette.

Penny walked down to her car to get the drug samples. Her car was a mess from last night. She had driven to the bar the night before, but one of her friends had driven them all back in her car. She dug around the trunk. She found some take out containers, an old pizza box, a high heel. Where was that box? She dug around some more and then saw it.

"Oh my god!" she cried.

There was the box, ripped open, and all the drug samples were missing. The box had a sparkle to it…it was body glitter. Her friends must have opened it stolen it from her the night before. This was bad…really bad.

A/N: Oh Oh…This doesn't look good for Penny…or her friends!