“How long are we going to fight before we can… uh, not fight?” Andrew asks me as we’re sitting in the food court during lunch on Monday morning.

“I don’t know. How long are you going to be a jerk?” I fire a question back at him.

“I’m trying my best here, Stell,” He insists, leaning over the small table so that he can talk quietly to me without anybody else hearing the conversation. Our food court has different sized tables and usually, we sit in a long booth with all of our friends but today, Andrew said that he wanted to talk so we’re sitting at a small two person table instead. “I honestly do not know what you want from me.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious what I want,” I snap at him in irritation.

“Is it to break up? Because that’s what it seems like right now,” He grumbles.

“No, I do not want to break up,” I grumble as I eat my salad. “I just want to stop fighting. I love you, Andrew, and I just wish that you’d get off of your ass and try as hard as I am. It’s like you’re not trying at all here.”

“It’s just the tournament thing, why don’t you understand that?” He asks me in irritation. “After it’s done, everything’s going to go back to normal.”

“Everything is going to go back to normal?” I wonder with raised eyebrows. “No it’s not. You have been ignoring me for over a week now and I try. I try so hard to be with you but you just don’t care at all. You’re not trying. But you know what? Lunch is almost over so I’m going to start off to English because I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of trying, so when you feel like being a boyfriend again, you can let me know.”

“Stella, we have English together, I can walk with you,” Andrew reminds me as if I don’t already know that we have next period together. It used to be really cool that we had English together and we also have two periods of dance rehearsal together at the end of the day, which was also really cool at first but now, it’s not as cool since we’re fighting all of the time.

“I’ll walk with Mason,” I inform him as I stand up and walk towards the long table where my friends are sitting. The chatter in the food court is loud because of all the people eating lunch right now and it’s busy so I have to push between chairs and tables a little bit but when I get to the table, Mason and Sienna, who are sitting beside each other, both smile up at me.

“Hey, how was your lunch with Andrew?” Sienna asks me as I stand by the edge of the table because I just want to get out of here, I don’t want to sit down and talk with everyone right now.

“It was just like every other conversation I have with him,” I sigh. “Anyway, Mase, do you want to head to class early or something? I’m gonna head out now.”

“Yeah, sure,” She nods. Mason has English with me too and usually, we all walk together to the academics building but like I said, I just want to get out of this slightly loud food court. Sienna has dance after lunch though, and her dance studio class is in the opposite direction as the academic building. Mason turns and gives Brian a goodbye kiss before scooting out of the booth. We both wave goodbye to our friends and she throws her trash away on our way out of the building.

“So we should all get together in the game room sometime this week and plan out May’s birthday party,” I suggest as we’re walking through the grassy campus. There are a few people eating lunch outside or just walking around during their lunch break but for the most part, it’s pretty calm outside. In about three minutes, the bell will ring and it’ll be pretty hectic with everybody having to get to their classes.

“Yeah, that really needs to happen. We need to go shopping for party decorations and stuff like that too,” Mason adds.

“Oh, and you just know how much I love shopping. I’m totally in,” I pipe with a smile. This is one of the best things about my friends, especially Mason, is that if I don’t want to talk about something that’s bugging me, she doesn’t push the subject. She helps me get my mind off of everything instead of insisting that we talk about it and working through it. Sienna’s like that too, she understands that I don’t want to talk about my problems all of the time and sometimes, I just need to get my mind off of things. I seriously have the best friends ever.

“Good, and make sure that you don’t mention this to Mary. It’s incredibly top secret,” She warns me.

I nod in agreement. We get to the academic building but the bell still hasn’t rung yet so we sit down on the bench that’s right beside the doors to go inside. “Right. You don’t have to worry about me telling her anything, I don’t even have any classes with her so it’ll be fine. I’m a good secret keeper anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s true. So when we-“ Mason stops talking abruptly as the doors to the building open with somebody walking out. I assume she’s just paranoid about the wrong people overhearing about the surprise party and spoiling it by telling Mary but what are the chances of that happening? Mary is really shy so she doesn’t talk to many people. There are only a handful of people that would find a surprise party relevant enough to go babble to Mary about it. We both look over to see who is leaving the building and I blink in surprise when I see that it’s those new twins. I’ve only met Charlotte so far and we didn’t really even meet, she’s just in my psychology class but we haven’t spoken at all. I haven’t even seen her twin yet but now they’re both standing there, right outside the door. They look around for a moment and then their eyes land on me and Mason and stay there.

“So we should do all of this tomorrow, right? Don’t you have a thing tonight?” I ask Mason, trying to ignore the two girls standing a little to our right.

“Yeah, that-“ Mason starts to answer my question, but she’s very rudely interrupted.

“Excuse me,” Charlotte says. I can easily tell them apart because Charlotte has brown curly hair but her twin… I forget her name, she has straight red hair. And it’s bright hair, obviously died, but it looks nice. They’re unfairly pretty and I don’t like it. “We need that bench.”

“What for?” I ask her with raised eyebrows. I don’t like her tone so if she thinks that I’m just going to get up and let her sit down just because she wants to, that’s not going to happen.

“We would like to sit down. Obviously,” She rolls her eyes at me as if that’s the most obvious thing in the world and I hear an accent as she talks that I think sounds British but I’m not too good on accents.

“Okay, well then sit down somewhere else,” I suggest, trying to sound as polite as I could but I really couldn’t believe that she just expected both me and Mason to just get up like she’s royalty or something. She’s been her for a whole four days so if anything, it’d be the other way around but even I’m not that entitled.

“Char, really, we can go find another bench. It isn’t that big of a deal,” Her sister, also with an accent, speaks up with an eye roll. She seems to think that her sister’s sense of superiority is misplaced and ridiculous as well.

“No, I want this one. When the bell rings, the whole campus will be crowded and I want to be near the door,” Charlotte explains. “Will you please get up?”

Mason decides that it’s her turn to speak up this time. “Look, we’re not going to get up. I’m not sure why you think that we should have to get up so that you can sit down but it’s not going to happen,” She turns and gives me an ‘I told you so’ look because she’s the one that said that she’d be just another Gianna. So yeah, she totally called this but I really wish that she was wrong. I’m definitely not in the mood to deal with a girl like that.

“Okay, who are you?” Charlotte demands.

If we weren’t fighting over the bench right now, I’d definitely just roll my eyes and walk off but because she wants this bench, I obviously can’t do that. “It’s none of your concern,” I tell her, trying to be calm about the situation even though she’s completely ignorant and seemingly terrible.

“Fine, well I’m Charlotte and this is my sister, Heather. The Ortega Twins,” She informs us as if she really does think that she’s royalty here. She announced their names like she thought that it’d make us change our minds and get off of the bench, which it obviously didn’t.

“That’s not going to make us get up,” I tell her with a shake of my head and then I lean back against the back of the metal bench just to stress the idea of how comfortable I am on this totally uncomfortable bench. “We will get up when the bell rings.”

“Charlotte, cut it out,” Her sister, whose name is Heather according to what her sister just said, tells Charlotte with another, more impatient eye roll. “You’re being completely ridiculous.”

“I just want to sit down,” Charlotte huffs like a two year old who didn’t get the kind of candy that she wanted at Walmart. “The people here are so incredibly rude.”

“We’re rude?” I wonder incredulously. “We are the rude ones here?”

She turns to glare at me to try and intimidate me and it really does not work. I am in such a crappy mood that no type of intimidation could work on me, especially not this new little brat who thinks that we should be at her beck and call, apparently. She opens her mouth to say something in response but before she can get a word out, the bell rings, which means that lunch is over and we have eight minutes to get to class. Both me and Mason stand up from the bench and head for the doors as Charlotte glares at us and poor Heather just sends us an apologetic frown. I feel really bad for her right now and I definitely don’t blame her for her irritating sister. If people judged other people by their siblings, everybody on the planet would hate me.

“I’m Stella, by the way,” I announce to Charlotte in my best bitchy voice (and my bitchy voice is very bitchy) and as I walk past her, I scuff my shoulder against hers a little. It’s an immature gesture but like I said, I’m in no mood to play these stupid games. “Maybe we’ll see you around.”

Once we get inside of the building, all of the classrooms are spilling with students as they rush to get to their next classes. I stay close to Mason as we walk side by side down the hallway towards the English wing.

“Well, that was weird and intense,” Mason pipes.

“Who even does that?” I wonder rhetorically and then I mock Charlotte in a high pitched, nasally voice with a bad accent. “’Excuse me, we need that bench.’ Like no, bitch, you need a freaking attitude adjustment. I haven’t wanted to punch somebody so bad since Gianna put a firecracker in our bag before the competition last summer.”

“If you punch her, just make sure that you don’t do it in front of the teachers or cameras. I don’t want you to get expelled- especially when you’re half a year away from graduating. That’d really suck,” She reminds me.

“I know,” I sigh. “I won’t punch her, I just want to so bad. If Andrew drives me any crazier though, I might end up punching something. Maybe I should start doing boxing again on the weekends.”

“So you want to work out for two hours every day during the week and then work out even more on the weekends?” Mason wonders incredulously.

I laugh and then nod. “It’s relaxing, it helps me vent my stress without actually hitting anybody. I did it last year and it was nice but I quit during the summer because we literally work out all day during the summers and that’s just too much but during the school year, it really does help. Do you wanna try to go with me? The trainers are really cute but it’s so awesome because they’re like, in their mid-twenties so they’re too old which means that even if you wanted to touch, they’d reject you. So you can’t cheat no matter what but the eye candy is amazing.”

“No thanks, Stell,” Mason laughs, teasingly rolling her eyes at me. “I’m way too lazy for that.”

We arrive in our English class and sit down in our seats in the back of the room. Like my psychology class, we got to choose our seats at the beginning of the year but we have to sit in the same seat all year. As a result, I sit between Andrew and Mason, which won’t be very fun today but I’ll have to deal with it just like I’ve had to deal with it since last week when Andrew started blowing me off for his TV and his hand.

Even after Andrew comes into class and sits down beside me, we don’t speak at all. It’s a little bit awkward, but not really because we have to take notes the whole class period so even if we wanted to talk, we wouldn’t be allowed to because Jackie, our English teacher, doesn’t allow us to talk during notes. She’s an incredibly amazing teacher but her two strict rules are to 1.) be on time and 2.) no talking during notes.

After English, I have anatomy, which is across the building from the English wing. Anatomy is okay but the only person I know in that class is my lab partner, Anthony, who also happens to be my brother. I consider him an acquaintance. Miss Hatfield is explaining the skeletal system to us and since we sit in the back of the room, Anthony asks me how things are going with Andrew and I just tell him that they’re going fine. I don’t plan on talking about my relationship problems with my brother because that would be extremely weird.

So then after anatomy, I have to go all the way across campus to the F Building, which is the dance studio where I have my dance rehearsals for the last two hours of the day. I walk with Anthony since we have our dance class together too and when we get into the studio, I go into the girls’ locker room through the hallway in the back and get changed into my workout shorts, long sleeved t-shirt, and some tennis shoes for rehearsal. I sit with my brother, Brian, and Andrew before class starts and start to stretch even though when class really does start, we’ll have an official stretching period.

“Mason told me what happened with you guys and those twins,” Brian tells me with a teasing laugh once I sit down with them while we wait for the bell to ring.

“Those new girls?” Anthony wonders. “What happened?”

“Nothing exciting,” I sigh. “But one of them is like the next Gianna as if this school just can’t go without a super-bitch. The other one seems kind of nice, I guess.”

“I think they’re nice,” Andrew shrugs.

“Do you have any classes with them?” I ask, ignoring the fact that we’re fighting because we’re in public. I mean, we fight in front of our friends and that’s awkward enough but I absolutely refuse to fight with him in public places, especially in class. That’s just embarrassing so while we’re in class, I just pretend like nothing is wrong at all because that’s the easiest thing to do.

“Yeah, well Charlotte is in my anatomy class and Heather is in my AP chem lab,” He explains. “Oh, and Charlotte is in this class. At least, she was in here on Friday, remember?”

I do remember that but she sat on the other side of the room and paid absolutely no attention to us at all, which, looking back on it, I appreciate. “Well, Charlotte’s a bitch,” I say to him.

“She’s really nice in anatomy,” He shrugs.

“You talk to her?” I scrunch my nose up at him.

The bell rings as he nods his head nonchalantly. This day just keeps getting better and better.

Mr. Lynch is our dance instructor so when he walks into the room, we all stand up and start our synchronized stretching. Every day, he picks somebody to lead the stretches and it takes about ten minutes. I notice that Charlotte is standing a lot closer to us than she was on Friday. Actually, she’s standing right on the other side of Andrew. I suddenly feel like one of those terribly jealous girlfriends and I don’t like that. I don’t want to feel jealous but I can’t help it. She’s a mega bitch but she’s really pretty and she’s obviously nice to people- I’m assuming that she’s only nice to people with a dick- which makes me feel even more possessive but I just shoot her a dirty look that she doesn’t see because she’s focused on learning the stretches.

“Wait, so do you hold her left elbow with your right hand or your right elbow with your left hand?” Charlotte asks Andrew curiously and then she bats her eyes like freaking Minnie Mouse. She’s blatantly flirting with my boyfriend right in front of me and I don’t know if she knows that he’s not available or not but something tells me that she just doesn’t care.

“Um, the second one,” Andrew replies nicely but he doesn’t stop there. He stops stretching and then holds her left wrist in one of his hands and her right elbow in the other one and places her in the right position. I can’t tell if he’s just oblivious and way too nice to see that she’s a tramp or if he’s doing it to piss me off or maybe he wants to flirt back.

When he goes back to stretching, I clench my hand into a fist to refrain from slapping my idiotic boyfriend for what he just did. In front of everybody. I never used to be such a violent person but with all of this pent up rage, I just want to hit everybody at all times. This time, when I shoot a glare at Charlotte, she sees it and then just smirks back, knowing exactly what she’s doing. So yes, she does know that he has a girlfriend and she knows that it’s me and in this moment, I wish that I was a shape shifter so that I could shift into a lion and rip her head off. I wouldn’t eat her because that’s gross, I just want to murder her with a blood bath and a bunch of witnesses.

“You’re a slut,” I whisper over to my boyfriend just loud enough for him to hear.

He lets out a deep sigh. “I was just helping her. Don’t overreact, Stella.”

“Oh, I’m not overreacting yet but just you wait,” I mumble, bending down to touch my toes. I consider jutting my ass out even more than necessary to give the guy behind me a show but I don’t’ do that. I have more respect than to do something like that but I want to so badly, just to piss Andrew off. However, it occurs to me that Andrew probably wouldn’t even notice if I did anything like that. He doesn’t notice anything that I do so he probably wouldn’t even care and that thought just pisses me off even more. I still keep my butt to myself but I’m still so angry.

I’m definitely going to need that boxing.

*If you can see the image, that's River Viiperi, who plays Andrew (: