"Again?" Parker looked down at me, his countenance a mix of forced disappointment and amusement. 

"Would you stop following me?" My voice sounded choked from holding back sobs. And with that, I stalked off. 

"Ariel!" Annabelle called for me across the courtyard, turning all heads to my tear streaked face. Despite that, I ran over to her and crashed into her arms. The school eventually became uninterested in my heartache and turned back to their own conversations. Annabelle and I didn't really say too much, I just sat there with my head against her chest and she stroked my hair, shushing me like a mother. 

"Are you, like, okay?" Parker's voice mumbled. I couldn't see- Annabelle's arm was in the way -but he sounded way to close for comfort. By Annabelle's body moving so much, I could tell she was rapidly waving her free arm to get him away.

"No, it's okay." I sat up and dried my face before anyone else could see. The tears could come later, but for now I had to deal with Parker, Leira and Josiah. "I'm fine." I gave a thin-lipped smile to Parker, dismissing him. He shrugged and sauntered away to a group of his buddies.

"I'm about to explode into a million question marks." Annabelle's voice sounded suspended, as if each word she said was a part of the dam holding back her flow of questions breaking off.

"You'd better turn them into commas, because this is going to be a run-on sentence." I stood and marched over to Leira. No one seemed to be paying attention to the newly dumped freshman dragging someone who looked just like her across the crowded courtyard, headed for the garden closet.

I slammed the door, leaving Annabelle outside. She seemed a little hurt, but gave me an understanding nod and skipped off, probably about to go pound Josiah's face in. 

"What is it with you and closets?" Leira complained, dusting her shoulders off. 

"What is it with you and meddling in my life?" I retorted.

Leira clutched her chest and gave me a hurt look, which was clearly faked since I- well, we weren't very good at acting. "You're going to accuse me, a poor newly single girl, of your problems? What a shame. No wonder Josiah cut it off with us." Leira smirked at me, opening the door and leaving the closet with a triumphant slam. At least this time you couldn't lock the door from the outside.

Annabelle stepped in moments later. "What's going on?" She asked me, breaking the 'no questions' rule.

"Yeah, who was that girl?" Parker poked his head in through the door.

"Get out!" I growled, slamming the closet door on his face. "I have a feeling this isn't going to go well." Grabbing Annabelle's hand, I dragged her out of that musty closet into the fresh air, where my life was about to be butchered. Thankfully, Parker wasn't there and had scurried off to somewhere else. 

One of the sophomore girls I had chemistry with was already sitting very close to Josiah. Figures. I scanned the courtyard with a new determination to find Leira and get her back to wherever she came from. Annabelle was right by my side, pretending to be looking for whatever I was searching for, which was silly because I never told her in the first place. At last I spotted Leira, twirling her hair while talking to Parker.

"Go get her." I pushed Annabelle in the direction where Leira and Parker were and stomped off to the food room, which at Mogermentry High was basically a food court but we were banned from calling it that when companies started to try and get a 'spot' at our school. I got a strawberry smoothie to calm my nerves and found a table and sat alone. Lunch was almost over, and after that I only had to survive chem and English. Not too hard, right? 

That girl from chemistry- I think her name was Emiline -was still sitting next to Josiah, twirling her hair without a care in the world. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, picking up speed, and my blood heated with rage. A lightbulb went off in my head and I looked down at the smoothie in my hand, smiling. With a new found courage I stomped over to Josiah, pulling the lid off of the cup. He stopped talking when I arrived, rolling his eyes and turned to face me.

"Can I help you?" Josiah sighed.

"Actually yes. There's something in your hair," I was cut off by Josiah frantically searching through his locks. He always had a thing about cleanliness.

"Where?" He asked, turning to Emiline.

"Right," I pretended to point to a spot in his hair. In doing so, I tipped my empty cup over so the pink liquid spread all over his hair and down his shirt. "Well, everywhere." Satisfied, I stormed off, leaving Josiah to deal with his new 'do.

Annabelle was frantically waving me over, holding someone else's wrist. As I neared, my hopes were lowered when I realized it wasn't Leira's, but it was in fact Parker's? Why he had shown up three (now four) separate times in the past hour I had yet to find out, but it was getting quite annoying. 

Annabelle and I had some sort of weird what we liked to call 'ability' where we could have mental conversations with our eyes. It went something like this:

What are you doing?!

I couldn't find Leira, but Parker said he knew where she was!

Like I believe that for one second. 

Why not?

Not to brag or anything, but he's obsessed with me. Release the jock back to his natural habitat. 

In response, Annabelle stopped waving Parker's arm around and whispered something to him. His face fell and he walked off, head hung. I ran over to Annabelle, who was picking at her nail, a habitual thing she did when she thought something she did was wrong. 

"He'll be fine." I told her and dragged her to our lockers to get books for the next class, chemistry. Yay, Emiline.