(25) checkmated
Marie receives a text message from Luke:
”Hey, I heard that friend of yours Lucy or something started helping out?”
She ignores the message and proceeds to walk towards school. She sees a flier for the upcoming school festival posted on the surrounding wall that reads: Only three weeks to go before the party of the century begins! Oakland University’s Founding Festival on the 8th!
Marie inspects the flyer, admiring the effort done to it and at the same time, thinks that whoever made this is an great at using intricate colors and designs, it was unlike the amateur flyers they used to make in high school. She almost commended Airi for doing a great job asking for their help but somehow, this realization ends up making her feel more hollow.
The internal turmoil starts again. How could she do such a great job? Considering everything she put Nina through? Someone like her shouldn’t even be trusted with something like planning and supervising the school festival to begin with.
Whenever this happens, she perceives the hollow growing more larger inside her that she clutches her chest, as if attempting to close it. She knows what she should be feeling but something is wrong. She knows what it is but refuses to acknowledge it since she’ll lose her place if she did. She didn’t want to be abandoned by her friends a second time.
Her phone ring once and she absentmindedly lifts it to her face. She frowns to see that it was from Luke. Again.
”Seriously, what’s her problem?” So the news of Lucy bullying Airi during club meetings also reached him. Another message from him comes flying in.
“You better go talk to her Zoey is about to loose it!” It reads.
Lucy has only been helping out for a day and already she’s a huge pain in the ass. At least, that’s what she thinks the others are thinking. She doesn’t take orders from anyone except Nathan and criticizes Airi more often than not. Her criticism already borders on harassment that she almost had a fight with Zoey. It was something about telling everyone not to trust Airi since she’s a huge liar. The atmosphere in the club room has been horrible ever since.
Honestly, she doesn’t know why Nathan even admitted her knowing for a fact that she is the absolute worst candidate to work with Airi. She hates her enough to possibly sabotage the school festival just so she could get a kick of what Airi’s reaction would be.
When she arrived at the club room, she hears voices from the other side of the door. It was unfamiliar and familiar at the same time that she fears the worst. She opens the door and just as she feared,
“Oh, hey there Marie!” Ruth says.
“What took you so long?” Sam says.
It was her friends. “What are you guys doing here?” She asks, her voice almost shaking.
”Lucy asked us to help out, you see, so here we are!” One friend says happily. “What’s wrong? You don’t look very happy.”
Her breathing is ragged and feels the ground crumbling beneath her. This is what she feared. She scans the place and sees Nathan casually sipping coffee with Lucy. They were talking, with Lucy being oddly flirty towards him. They barely notice her presence.
Nathan turns to her and she clenches her fists, almost frustrated at how uncaring he is. “Nathan, is this okay with you?”
He smiles, “it’s fine as long as it’s okay with them not getting anything out of it.”
She sees his stare towards her, that slithering stare she always gets with him as if he’s out to bite her, forcibly get something out of her. What the fuck is his deal?!
”If you’re looking for the others they already left, it seems Airi already assigned a job for them to do for the week.” Nathan looks outside the window, mildly amused for some reason.
Lucy pouts, dishearted, “I though I could at least tell Airi what I thought about her idea about the staging preparations.”
Marie almost snorts, thinks it would just probably be all abuse and attack instead of actual criticism.
“By the way, she also has something for your group to do.” he says, taking out a piece of paper and in it were instructions.
”Wait, I didn’t tell her I’ll be inviting everyone,” Lucy says, shocked. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
”Apparently, she knows you guys act as a single-celled organism,” he says, sarcasm apparent in his voice, “not exactly surprising if you think about it. Anyway, she wants you guys to be in-charge of the stall placements. The bidding will be tomorrow morning in Economics Department, Room 6. She left the list of bidders and stall placements in the table over there. Be sure to leave Stall 3 open since it’ll be our club’s stall. Nathan make sure they’re doing their jobs.” At this point he was just reading the instructions Airi written. Everyone made a face.
”How haughty, the nerve of her,” Sam snorts.
”How idiotic, I didn’t join to help out, I want to torture Airi.” Ruth says, “This isn’t what you signed us up for Lucy!”
Lucy laughs, “well, we could always ditch, right? Imagine what face she’ll make.”
At this, the others laughed with her. Marie clenched her fists, doing as Lucy said and imagining Airi’s reaction. She would be disheartened. She remembered her being troubled and stressed about it, taking into account each clubs availability. All that hard work would be for nothing, not to mention the anger she’ll get for making everyone wait for nothing.
She wanted to tell everyone this, how hard she worked for this. And just this once, let everything she did slide and just look at how hard she’s working to make this event possible!
This is it, she thinks, gathering her courage, this is the day she’ll tell everyone what she really thinks. She clench her fists and unconsciously lets her mind wonder. What if they tell her she’s being ridiculous? What if they start avoiding her?
What if they start harassing her as well?
Her fists unclench and her shoulders drop. She realized deep down the reason why she doesn’t want to speak up.
It was all to protect herself.
A loud bang fell on the table, startling everyone.
It was Nathan, his fist lay firmly on the table. His expression dark and angry that everyone suddenly had the good decency to back away and think about what they just said.
”I don’t mind you wanting to playing a prank on Airi or whatever, but if it results to compromising the preparations and planning for the school festival that’s where I draw the line.” He said, his voice devoid of any tone of playfulness, a complete switch from earlier.
“Did I make myself clear?” It was like seeing another side of him and they all wonder where did this side of him come from. “You know what would happen if you do don’t you?” Everyone collectively gives a nod, and one by one leaves, making lame excuses. Nathan reminded them one last time about the bidding tomorrow, tells them he’ll be there to make sure they come.
It leaves him alone with Marie. As if it could not get anymore awkward. If it wasn’t for their duty of accepting applications, she’d follow everyone out in a heartbeat.
Nathan slides further in his seat, sighing. “Kids these days, seriously.”
Silence ensued with only the creak of the chair sliding in and out as she takes her seat beside him could be heard. How she wished an applicant would come sooner.
The silence was almost deafening. It leaves her contemplating on what happened earlier.
”How could you say that it’s okay to bully a student.” Marie then finds herself saying. While she did appreciate him telling them off on what they’re about to do, it was still wrong to say something that could be interpreted as ‘it’s okay to bully and harass Airi’.
Nathan looks over at her from his book and straightens himself in his seat, “I think you guys are underestimating Airi. She isn’t one to be bothered over something like this,” he adds with a shrug. “It’s not like this is all new to her anyway. She’s stupid if she’s still be acting like a defenseless victim despite everything.”
By ‘everything’ probably means that he also knows what she did, Marie assumes. ”Still—“
”If anything,” he cuts her off, “you’re the one who should’ve done something.”
She stays quiet, remembering earlier and how she retreated into her shell, into protecting herself more than anything. He feels his gaze fixed on her, as grabbing her by the neck. She can’t breathe.
The door slides open and she feels relief wash over her, until she turns and finds Luke.
”Marie, why didn’t you reply to my messages.” He says with that familiar tone of voice, as if she isn’t actively avoiding him. Just her luck. She just happened to be here during the rare times Luke comes by the club.
Out of all the people she’s avoiding, Luke is the most troublesome one. With Airi and Neil, being quiet works simply because they usually just leave her alone. Something she is mildly appreciative about. Unlike Luke who always seems to test her patience by annoyingly trying to talk to her, making unnecessary conversation she doesn’t need, wishing he could take a hint.
Except he does take the hint, he just doesn’t conform by it. She feels checkmated by being alone with the two most annoying people in her life.
”I need to head to my next class.” She makes an excuse to head out.
”But your next class isn’t until after lunch.” Nathan points out matter-of-factly. She finds herself glaring at him and him sticking out his tongue playfully.
She didn’t respond to this and just takes her bag, heading out to the door. She hastens her pace and instinctively knows that Luke going after her. She knows and she hates it.
Seriously, why does he always bother. Always. It’s annoying.
She doesn’t deserve it.