Redundant Relationships

The clicking of her pencil was a tick that she normally hated when other people did, but Alice was bored out of her mind and was surrounded by girls who loved nothing more than gossip. It was downtime anyways waiting for the class to end since the teacher had stepped out for a moment and had yet to return.

Alice placed all her materials away for class after looking at the clock once more to decide that the class was likely done for the day. Packing up her notebooks, she left her pencil out and another random worksheet that she needed to recycle anyway.

"Alice, your hair is so pretty today," the girl sitting across from her gushed with her expertly done hair and makeup. Her fake tan was a little too stark against her bleached hair but to each their own.

Alice met Lainey's gaze and ran a hand through the soft strands of her milky tea-colored hair. "Thank you."

"You must have spent hours on it," Lainey said. "I only need to take thirty minutes because my hair is so fine."

Alice didn't respond to the compliment fishing instead shifted her body forward so that she could preoccupy herself with the other chatting going on in the classroom and her ever-growing lead length before she pushed it back up into the pencil again.

She could see Lainey's dissatisfied expression from the side, and if she was with Claudia, she would have laughed outright at their readable faces. But Alice needed to get through this one class before lunchtime and reset her morning to finish off the day with the tedious afternoon classes that were less work.

Alice didn't have a social group, but instead, kind of floated around and did her own thing since she didn't have anyone that she could truly call a friend besides Claudia since others that tended to flock to her were those that were snobby and inconsiderably rude.

Her mother would say that people were attracted to what they were, but Alice seriously hoped that wasn't the case for her. Maybe she was being naïve for wanting it to be so. But she would have to try harder to pull away from them since she never wanted to be accompanied by them anyways.

She knew how to navigate through people, so that they didn't hate her, but it was exhausting trying to keep up with walls that she built around herself for protection.

Alice mentally faceplanted and wanted to accuse Claudia of leaving her alone at school for the fun of it since Claudia knew what her reaction would be when she was tossed to the hyenas.

That wasn't the case however since Claudia was gone for the day because she had to attend her grandmother's funeral on her father's side. There wasn't much news, only a natural death, and Claudia had to travel up north with her family. Not a matter to be to joke about, so Alice mentally moved on from the topic.

Claudia had texted her that morning that she wouldn't be there with a sad face, and Alice knew she was being a wimp for sulking over it. It was fine. She was fine.

Alice definitely dug her own grave from the get-go by not going out of her comfort zone the first year that she transferred, but she would rather not tip-toe around others and fake a smile whenever conversating. Then again, she was doing it either way, so she couldn't complain.

Alice wanted to plug her ears when the loud laugh that sincerely could be heard through the hallways always elicited both an awed expression from students as well as pinched ones. One could never get used to her laugh.

Melanie Novak didn't have any depth to her except for the money that her parents raked in for her as celebrity realtors that showed up on television every now and then. Alice didn't want to be rude for thinking the truth, but she had to say as she saw it.

Shifting her attention elsewhere, she palmed her phone for help, but it died earlier since she broke her charger last night after frying it and didn't have time to get a new one from the convenience store since she was running late after meticulously curling her hair into waves with cute white ribbons that were barrettes clipped to the side of her head, carrying a graceful and cute look for the day after seeing an inspiration picture on social media.

It was a little dolled up for her taste, but she wanted to try something new. Alice got compliments on her way to school, so she assumed that it looked nice.

The laugh resounded through the room again, and Alice was on the brink of a headache. Melanie was boisterous, carrying a signature laugh that was not to be mistaken as anything other than loud.

She fluffed her brand new golden blonde hair from the salon and leaned forward with a devious smile. "That's so ugly. I can't believe Parker Compton was wearing that."

"The kicker was that he was twining with Norah Herrera," Katherine snorted. "Couple goals who?"

Lainey rolled her eyes along with the other girls, as she glanced up from her phone and directed her gaze straight to Alice. "I saw the posters in the quad today. What is the activity you're doing again?"

Alice shrugged since she didn't want to project her homeroom's full idea yet, considering that some homerooms were keeping theirs a secret. Others told theirs, but Alice didn't want to be the one to do so.

Luckily, she didn't need to answer since Melanie interjected. "Noah Park looked so fine on the posters."

Alice tried her best not to cringe at the swift change of topic and smoothed her expression into a cool façade when all the girls immediately agreed.

"I saw," Lainey agreed. "Is he dating anyone yet? With a face like that, he could get anyone."

"He's perfect from his looks, grades, and extracurriculars," Katherine said with a grin.

Melanie cast her eyes down to her red nails and flicked them back up. "Alice is always fighting for first place on the academic poster wall with Noah."