Chapter 6: Paint the Town White

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VI.

"Oh my god, why the hell are you still here?"

The boy was a year older, and stood just a few inches taller than Camila. He had an NYU hoodie on, and a matching hat that smushed down his short dark hair.

"Because we agreed that you would do your part of this fucking assignment!" Camila said sharply as she grabbed his arm and turned him around. "Listen Andrew, you told us that you would at least submit something, even if it's just bullshit, we can work it around what we've already got. Just do something for god's sake!"

The boy's eyes flashed menacingly. "It's Austin, you sophmore. Get it right." He growled. "I have more important things to deal with, and I don't need you riding up my ass about this. Just fuck off and figure it out yourself."

"So what the hell do you propose I do?" Camila exclaimed, completely exasperated. "You failed this class once already, are you seriously looking to fail a second time?"

Austin just wrenched out of her grasp and backed away with a mocking look on his face. His eyes were widened and his lips pursed in a small "o" shape. To really piss her off, he made a few humping motions into the air before disappearing around the corner and out of sight. Camila's blood boiled, but she knew there was little she could do about it, so she turned on her heel and made her way out of the library with her hands stuffed in her pockets and her head down.

***

"I HATE GROUP PROJECTS."

Camila stormed through the door and dumped her bag on top of the shoes that sat scrambled by the front hall. With five girls on the lease, the entrance to the house looked like a graveyard of unused shoes, or at the very least a messy garage sale.

It had been a week since the visit to the hospital, and things were slowly starting to get back to normal. The girls were being bombarded with end-of-term papers, marks before finals were being tallied, and worst of all, group projects. In high school group based assignments were fun. You got together with your friends, you met after school, and you got to hand in something that exemplified teamwork. With everything past the safe barrier of teenage-hood, you were thrown together with three other random students and forced to be cheery around each other until you produced a mediocre term paper, or an awkward two minutes worth of oral presentation to a less than interested TA. Then you would part from each other, get lost in the sea of students, and never see each other again. None of that was appealing to Camila in the least.

"Hey, it's good to see you too. My day was fine, how was yours?" Normani grinned as she opened the microwave and snatched up a steaming bag of popcorn.

"Seriously Mani!" Camila whined as she tore off her jacket and tossed it over the handrail to the upstairs. "I can't stand it! I've got this god-awful project to do on soybeans for my Ecology elective, and we have to write up this bulletin on all the interdisciplinary aspects of growing the damn things. Do you know how soybeans were genetically modified so they can be used for people allergic to lactose?" Camila stabbed a finger into her chest. "Because I do!"

Normani ripped open the bag and popped a hot kernel into her mouth. "Mila, I'm really not listening." She said with a sad shake of the head as she made her way into the living room. Camila rolled her eyes and followed her, stopping to sit at the dining room table. The open floor plan of the house led every room to be a portion of a larger one, so conversation could easily be made from wherever you sat. It was both a blessing and a lesson.

Camila let her head hit the wooden table with a long groan that was muffled by the finished wood. Ally, who was sitting just on the opposite end of the table looked up from her notebook with a set of sympathetic brown eyes. She pulled her earbuds out and tilted her head to the side with a smile. "Okay Mila, talk to me. What's going on?"

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