Booksmarts

chapter 011

"COME ON, LET'S GO." AURORA SNAPS. Yanking Mason's hand so hard you could see the grip of her hands leave dark red imprints of her fingers on his skin. She drags him away to another side of the mall, leaving her trash on the table.

"And she litters too? Wow." Benjamin shakes his head in disbelief and starts picking up the garbage scattered across their area. "She's such a messy person, look at this!" He holds up a ball of probably nine to ten napkins. "Literally how did she use this many? No sane person uses this many napkins to eat half of a froyo cup." He pauses for a moment and looks inside the disposable paper container and grimaces. "EW! She puts bananas in her froyo?! She's an abomination to society." He walks over to the trash bin and throws away the trash, then rubs his hands on his leather jacket to remove any trace of Aurora...or bananas.

I roll my eyes at his melodramatic reaction. "Ok that's enough Benny, can we shop now?" Tugging on his jacket sleeve.

"Even after the situation that just happened like, ten minutes ago? You still wanna shop?" He whines. Despite his complaints, I grab his hand and pulled him along to several different stores throughout the mall. I don't miss the cautious and wary looks around each store to inspect for anyone we know. He always does this, he hates seeing people we know outside of school. Last month we went to the movie theatre together and I swear you could see the color drain from his face when he saw Dylan and his sister walk in and sit behind us. I pull two dresses off the clothes rack and turn around.

"Be honest, which one?" I held up to my chest a light fern-colored satin mini dress that fell a little above my knees. I lowered the dress down and lifted the other dress, it was a flattering dandelion-colored mini dress with a polka-dot pattern and frilly straps. I have no clue what event I'd wear these to, but buying another dress won't hurt.

"The greenish one for sure, 'cause the yellow one washes you out," He says. I look back on both of them once more and hum in agreement. I walk over to place the yellow dress back when I bump into someone.

"Crap! I'm so so–" I stop mid-sentence when I find out who I bumped into.

"Ah! I'm sorr–" The girl does the same. Looking up to see who I was, she rolls her eyes.

Really?

Thirty seconds of absolute stillness go by. I shift a little from Aurora's glare and start looking around the store to avoid eye contact. A little later, someone finally decides to break the agonizing silence.

"How long does it take for you to put back a- AGH!" He shrieks. Benny clears his throat and scratches his neck. "I mean...hey Aurora?" He then starts to ramble on and on about how he didn't mean to scream when he saw her and go on and on, jumping from topic to topic.

"–You know you look really nice right? I love the hair," He looks down to divert the cold stare she was giving him. "And the shoes! Very cute." He looks back up with his eyes pleading for me to help him out. Instead of doing so, I walk past him and head to the cash registers. Deciding to shop a little more, I browse the shelves containing small accessories and candies. The shelves held the large candy bars in wooden crates, each box had the labels organized in alphabetical order. I make my way to the only good candy out of the selection and walk on over to the 'R' boxes, crouching down to further examine for my candy. I finally find the one I was looking for and frown.

"They're out of Reese's?" I groan. I crouch down further and look underneath the boxes, just in case they'd magically appear out of thin air. "Who's the idiot that took the last one?" I whisper. "Ugh." I stand back up and flatten out my dress with my hands. I pick up my shopping bags and navigate back to the registers. I turn around and stumble back a bit, witnessing the lengthy line of people in front of me.