Chapter 2

“You’re joking me,” Kat widens her eyes.

“No, I’m not,” Mel draws her magic eye smile.

“Melanie…”

“Yes, my dear Katherine,”

“This is hella a whole 10 person feast…” Kat says as she starts to count a stack of pizza boxes that arrived in front of her room 5 minutes ago.

“No worries Kat, I have nine persons in my tummy to gobble down pizza” Mel beams her most charming smile to her friend that is still counting the boxes again and again. Kat is still in disbelieve that this brunette girl legit be ordering 10 boxes of regular pizzas for their weekend movie night.

“If they are not emptied by tonight, I’m going to brush your teeth with these pizzas tomorrow” Katherine warns as she walks past by the pizza boxes, still in awe.

“Holy cow, that sounds deliciousssss I don’t mind it at all!” Melanie shrugs her whole body excitedly.

“THAT IS DISGUSTING AS HELL DEAR DAUGHTER OF HARRIS!” a loud shout was heard from the inside, makes Mel thrilled even more to annoy her red friend.

She brings in the pizzas with a huge smile on her face, probably one of the biggest ones she ever wore, regardless of having heavy boxes on her weight.

“How to make Melanie Harris smile? One, pizza. Two, pizza. Three, annoy Katherine Noah to the max,” monologues Melanie as she giggles happily while hugging those pizzas in a stack.

Once she reaches Kat’s room, Mel puts away the stacks and arranges them accordingly by her side. She still can’t hide her smile thinking about how delicious these pizzas are going to be.

“Other foods can extinct and I don’t mind eating pizzas every single day for the rest of my life!” she exclaims as her hand picks up Katherine’s blanket and stuff her body inside.

“Oh my dear Lord please don’t listen to this brunette girl’s wishes. She is very high. Amen,” Kat who is working on the projector that is beamed onto the ceiling shakes her head real hard as the thought of eating only pizza for the rest of her life appears. That can never happen! Not on her watch.

Hearing those words that come out of Kat’s mouth didn’t even make Mel flinch or scared, thanks to the third pizza slice that she is already having while waiting for the projector to set.

As the projector is ready to go, Kat joins Mel under the blanket to start their movie night. 5 minutes into the movie, suddenly a loud shriek can be heard in the room. Kat presses the pause button and all of a sudden it becomes silent.

“O..kay what was that?” asks Katherine as she moves her body closer to her friend.

“Wait,” Mel tries to assure her.

“Wait for what?” suddenly they are whispering.

“Wait for the smell,” Mel put her index finger on the lips as a sign to shush and wait.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

“HOLY SHIT DID YOU JUST FART?!” Kat bursts while she is struggling to get out of the blanket.

“Thanks to my beloved veggie pizzas that have lots and lots of onion,” Mel crossed her legs while enjoying her tenth slice of pizza. Her lips refuse to stop smiling because pizzas are just right and always right as she would never leave them.

“MAY YOU ROT IN HELL MELANIE HARRIS, IT SMELLS LIKE ONION FARM IN HERE,”

“May you rot in hell too Katherine,” Melanie says with a smile as she presses the play button to continue their movie session.

***

Both of her hands are dead cold. As the body keeps on building up the adrenaline rushes, the eyes won’t stop looking at the clock as if her life is depending on it. She fiddles her legs once in a while to ease the tension, however, nothing seems to work even a tiny bit. Her whole body is screaming ‘restless’.

She is the first presenter that day, which makes everything look even more worse in her eyes than how it should be.

“It’s just a presentation, it’s just a presentation,” Mel chants the same sentence under her breath over and over, just as it’s a spell to heal something.

“Hey, you good? Never knew that you decided to play corpse today,” Kat laughs seeing the current condition of her friend and expecting Mel to reply with a more savage answer.

Somehow, Melanie did not respond as she would always do. Her mouth shut tight, looking so pale, sweat droplets can be seen on her forehead. Like, who the hell is sweating inside an air-conditioned room?

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Kat starts to worry seeing her non-stop talking friend being unresponsive.

“I- I-” Melanie stutters.

Her fingers are visibly shaking as she learns to wipe her sweaty forehead. Seeing this kind of Melanie is the first for Katherine as their friendship is just like, one month old.

Fidgeting legs, shaking fingers, heavy breath, cold sweats.

Katherine works on her brain on how to help her friend though she is yet to know the reason.

After a minute of silence, her eyes start to twinkle.

That’s it.

She stands from her seat and calmly holds Mel’s hand then drag her out of the classroom. Melanie just let her legs move with Kat leading ahead as her brain has completely shut down. All the way from the classroom, across the hallway, and finally they take a break on a small garden that happens to exist right next to their current building.

“Sit,” Kat points Mel to a white bench and she obeys without a single objection. Totally not Melanie at all.

“Feeling better?” Kat asks shortly as she takes a seat beside the brunette girl.

“I supposed?” Mel’s mouth finally starts to function again.

“…”

Though there are so many questions inside her brain, she decides to let Melanie take the lead on revealing it. Putting some sort of pressure is the last thing she wants to do when her friend was just having a panic attack.

Both of them take a moment of silence as they don’t know how to start breaking the ‘just friends' wall and move onto the ‘best friend-zone’. Cold sweats are still quite visible on Mel’s forehead, though not as bad as earlier. Not to mention that her expression has also relaxed a little bit compared to the corpse-mode face inside their classroom minutes ago.

“I got scared easily” Melanie finally breaks the silence. She mingles around her fingers to ease down the remaining anxiousness that is still building up.

“You want to talk about it?” Kat looks into Mel’s palpitating eyes. Her hand moves to rub the latter’s back softly, providing all the reassurance that she needs.

“I…have always scared to be in the spotlight,” Mel starts slow.

She waits for a few seconds to see if Kat is saying anything, but as the silence remains, she continues to speak.

“I can’t when everyone is having their full attention on me all at once…” she exhales heavily. As if there is a rock being held onto her chest.

“..I’m afraid that they will see what I’m trying to hide…”

Melanie takes a quick pause to swallow the suffocating breathe that has been stuck ever since.

“..Those flaws that I tried my best to lock up in a deep-down safe that no one should be able to open nor find it..”

The more she tries to swallow the choke, the more it seems to suffocate her.

“I’m scared..” she whispers as her voice breaks.

Katherine pulls Mel closer into her embrace. She can feel how Melanie’s body begin to melt as she hugs her tightly.

“It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here,” she rubs Mel softly.

With that, the dam that Melanie has been trying to retain so hard finally breaks apart. She sobs silently onto Kat’s shoulder and the latter just lets her be, though it means that her shirt is getting wet out of Mel’s tears and snots.

After Mel has calm down, they both release themselves from each other. Kat helps to wipe Mel’s tears with her shirt’s sleeve.

“You got to buy me a new shirt,” says Kat jokingly, follows by Mel’s chuckle.

Seeing her friend’s smile ease Kat’s heart that has been worrying nonstop.

“Not to forget that you also need to upgrade my title from just-friend to best-friend,” Kat exclaims cheekily.

“I also can’t believe that I actually cry my eyes out to you of all people that exist in this world,” Mel replies with a smile on her face.

"You son of a-" a small flick land on top of Melanie's forehead.

Both of them laugh as the original Melanie has returned to take her throne back as the best one in deceiving people.