How Things Changed Forever.. PART - II

CH 22: The Only Two-Time World Champion that Matters...

There was a bit of shuffling as people went around looking for paper and something to write with. Hillary stole a quick glance at Cassandra.She was examining her nails, trying to look nonchalant, but from up close, the worry was quite clear, surprising her. Did Cassandra seriously think that she had a chance to win this, a newbie as someone had pointed out earlier, when she was literally one of the founding members? Somehow, this gave Hillary a bit of hope, at least it won't be a land-sliding victory, she consoled herself.

The wait for the results felt long, even though she knew it lasted only a few minutes. Lizzie counted the votes, sometimes reading out the suggestions they had for her. One voter who had voted for Cassandra had told her to sod off. Another voter who'd voted for Cassandra said Elisabeth was better off running the club better than either of them, and few others, who had voted in her favor thought her idea was cool and mentioned that the club needed new blood at the top anyway.

"Well, here's the results. Out of the twenty-five voters here today, the three of us on stage excluded, fourteen of them have voted for Hillary and the other eleven have voted for Cassandra. That was a close-call! All in all, a huge round of applause for your newest club representative!" Elisabeth announced, gesturing to her. Thankfully, a huge round of applause did follow.

She was sure Luke even whistled after the announcement, but she was too flustered to think straight. All the attention was kind of hard to digest honestly. She tried going for a humble and professional look. She wondered how the Blade Breakers made winning in front of an audience look so effortless.

This brought her attention back to Tyson. He seemed to have been trying to catch her eye for so long that he looked entirely gleeful when their eyes met. And to her utter mortification, he too whistled at her, followed by a wink! What was wrong with that guy? She quickly darted her eyes away from him, making sure that nobody saw that. How was she supposed to keep a poker face when he does that?

And that was how she looked stepping down the stage, fighting a blush so deep that her cheeks did look pink from afar and a grin so wide that she was sure her jaw would hurt later.

******

The first thing Kai noticed as Laura made her way towards him after school was that she was in an absolute shitty mood. She's generally the one teasing and playing around whenever they're together, but today it seemed that she was the one looking for a way to blow off steam.

There was absolutely nothing soft about her today. She came straight for his lips, nearly biting it off. He somewhat liked the new development, matching her energy until she took a break to breathe. "What's gotten you so wound up today?" He enquired casually. He immediately wished he hadn't.

She got into a long-winded rant upon how much of a stuck-up, pompous upstart (other choice words included) Hillary Tachinbana was and how she'd stolen the club representative position from Cassie. He didn't bother to believe a word of it. For one, the girl Laura described sounded more like herself than Hillary. And secondly, the story sounded too biased.

But he didn't let her know, especially when she was soon back to the task at hand with much more vigour.

******

Cassie tried to hide it, but she'd been hurt when Lizzie hadn't considered her for the position. But after seeing Hillary classily dismiss Laura (a hard deed in itself which she did every other day) and present her plan with such clarity, she somewhat understood her reasoning. They really did need new blood at the top position.

But then Laura went ahead and dragged her into her power-play schemes (without her consent she might add) and made her look like a buffoon in front of the whole club. And then, she had the guts to get angry with her for getting angry at her! That was crossing a line. The face-off seemed to be the only thing everyone at school was talking about, having moved on from the attacks after the party.