Friendship and affinity

Their friendship couldn't be called one, it was mostly Reagan being meddlesome and Roseanne, tolerating him for the sake of not having him expose her ugly secret. For a time, he tried to force into her brain the idea that making herself vomit was dangerous. Roseanne wasn't stupid. Who didn't know it was unhealthy? But, she thought, it was something she controlled and it was something she did sparsely, no need to fret about her collapsing or suffering any backlash from it.

It wasn't easy for her to regain her footing as queen after that video, considering that she was always ordering people on what they could eat or not. Her image as untainted had been torn apart too when photos of her kissing Eyton surfaced, then photos of her with Venezio on compromising positions were made to light. It wasn't that she had an affair with Venezio, but when she was learning how to seduce from him, they had demonstrated the postures with their bodies, and the angle from the photos was taken from really excellent, emphasizing all the more the ambiguous scenes. The image of a cheap girl had been pasted to her then. The school, expulsing her for a couple of days didn't help.

Her mother had lectured her and forced her to undergo a pregnancy test, then a battery of tests such as HIV and the rest, greatly stating how much she was disappointed.

By the time she went back to school, from a queen she became a recluse. Venezio who had been expulsed the same numbers of days as her didn't seem all the more bothered by it. Roseanne didn't go out of her way trying to regain her position either nor did she try to stick to her brother as her mother had asked or more ordered. For once, her mother was actually the last person she wanted to hear from. Her recent notes weren't all too brilliant and recently she started making herself vomit more and more.

The only one who knew of it was constantly on her back and recently started threatening to inform her parents.

"I'll stop, okay," she ended up compromising when she saw how utterly serious he was.

The two who were hanging more and more started studying together, while Roseanne was doing her best to pretend nothing else was wrong around her. In her desolate state, she felt good to have someone by her side. Is she was still in the mood to used her usual cheesy metaphor then, it would that, in her deserted palace, he was the only one who willingly stayed. No vassal, no assistant and none of her noble friend. This commoner was the only one who accompanied the queen as the castle was burning, and tried his hardest to extinguished the flames.

From there, their relationship got better. More than with his friends, Reagan was hanging with her. And while she was regaining her footing with her notes, she couldn't say the same concerning her other friendships. Slowly though, she was regaining her confidence and that new person who had installed herself as queen, even though at the beginning Roseanne didn't care, she now responded to her provocation and didn't herself be undone anymore.

*

Roseanne asked Reagan out, one night, quite out of the blue. They shared mostly the same interests and from their talks, she could see that they had quite a similar point of view on many things.

Reagan, looking from the corner of his eyes at the faraway disappearing silhouettes of Eyton and Pam, wondered a bit if she was trying to distract herself with him. How impolite would it be to blatantly refuse being used?

"I invite," she hastily said, not catching him looking at her former friends.

What an annoying person she could be sometimes. He could imagine that frown on her face was at the thought that he could bring her in those poor quarter where microbes run freely as she liked to say. Far from being offended, he gave her a smile and complied. It wouldn't hurt to go along with her once in a while. It's been long since he last went to see a film or went out simply for that matter, it would benefit him too. Even more, now that he wasn't the one paying. A brush of fresh air on his skin definitely wouldn't be bad in those conditions.

"Look at you," she had criticized, "you'd think the poor boy is allergic to the sun, are you trying to become some kind of vampire or what?"

Well, Reagan had always been more of an indoor than an outdoor person.

*

They arranged a place to meet, and he waited for her there. It was six thirty at his watch. He didn't have to wait for long, that she came with her chauffeur and Reagan twitched at the car she brought. Just where in the world was she planning to bring him? With a bit of apprehension, he entered as the chauffeur opened the door for him.

Inside, Roseanne was sitting, for once, her hair wasn't intricately held but merrily left to the wind and she wore what she certainly thought was casual but Reagan would beg to differ. She did make some efforts anyway. They exchanged some pleasantry and she still kept her mouth sealed concerning the place she was taking him. A surprise she had said. And when he asked if his dressing was good enough for the place, she responded that it didn't matter, they were going to be let in no matter what. Reagan's mouth twitched again at that. He had spent some efforts to dress okay? Look at his neatly combed hair, look at his new shirt, look, look... clearly he needed some kind of praises!

On the road, her phone vibrated, and even if he didn't really mean to, but from where he sat, Reagan could easily peek at what was written. "I'm in front of your house, can you come, I want to talk." He hastily retracted his eyes before she noticed and when she looked up at him, her eyes had a myriad of emotions, hope, nervousness and a bit of shame when she settled her gaze on him.

"I'ts okay to annul if you have somewhere to go," he gently gave her a way out of her dilemma. He doubted anyway, he could spend a good night if her mind was constantly somewhere else.

She had a big smile on her face then as she assured to make up to him later and asked where she could have the chauffeur let him off or if he would rather return home.

The car drove away and it seemed to him that it couldn't get away fast enough from here. Making sure the car disappeared all the way before turning around, his shoes clacking on the concrete, the only sound to accompany him in this vast sea of people. As he walked, all idea of rejoicing in this day tuned to dust, and he wondered a bit why it mattered if she was here or not in the first place. He could still very well spend a good night

*

She had been contacted by Eyton. It turned out, the blond boy merrily wanted to apologize and explained himself. Roseanne would have called him a gentleman if not for what he did with her best friend.

During the vacancy, Roseanne and Reagan lost touch. She had flown to some countries and he stayed where he was, taking part-time jobs. When the next year came, she was once again at the peak of her form, once again the queen. Reagan wasn't quite clear on everything that happened, but he knew that she had resumed her friendship with Pamela and Eyton: and more surprisingly, she professed to have moved on, no longer being in love with Eyton. They too stayed friends but didn't really spend as much time together as before. Reagan wasn't too concerned about it, he had his own group of friends and more so, between the two of them it was mostly studying together or sharing some points of view on one thing or another, like some films, music. heir taste, no matter how different they could be from one another was quite similar on various and when they had a divergence, it was stimulating, to debate about it.

That state was quite good.

Until she felt a need to turn him into some kind of confident. He had wondered then if she confused him with one of her girlfriends.

As they were studying in the school's library on a Saturday morning, though she had been distracted the whole morning, he had simply asked what ailed her, never expecting the answer to be something so... intimate! She suddenly confessed not being a virgin to him anymore and from all the people she could have lost it too, it was Venezio, that playboy! It seemed during the vacancy, they were in contact and she learned to appreciate the person behind the facade he presented himself to be.

What of a boy who grew never knowing his mother, always seeing his father changed girls every week.... bla bla bla she went on and on about how passionate and romantic Venezio was, about how no one knew the real him.

Then again, if she went out with him, she was a bit scared how it would affect her friendships with Eyton and Pam. Reagan vaguely heard that those three were in conflict though he couldn't really say why. He was actually only half listening. To be honest, all those four people's relationship was all too messy in his opinion but didn't comment as such. Instead, when she was finished, he asked her what exactly she was waiting for him to say. Angry at his unhelpful statement, she left without a word, packing her books and items of furniture. Sighing, Reagan resumed reading his book.

He was like an old man, his friends said, but he thought that, far from that, it could actually be the contrary. Maybe his pheromones hadn't quicked in yet, for he found all these teenage antics more than he could handle. Was puberty, in view of biological secretions selective? If so, he asked to be spared!

The next week, the whole story of Roseanne and Venezio was on the campus's journal. Venezio whole life and most intimate confessions to his secret girlfriend were made public. Coming to school, Reagan found them both arguing and Venezio leaving angrily, turning around to hop on his yellow sports car and driving away, clearly having no intention to assist in lessons today. Seeing him, Roseanne latched at him. Somehow, she got the idea that he was the one who tattled and promised retribution. At the time Reagan didn't even know what she was talking about and by the time he was informed, she unwilling to listen to his side of the story.