Algid (#TronnorAU)

Chapter 8: A new friend

Some would say that High School was the best time of one's life. The friendships you make, although seldom everlasting, have a long term effect on who you are as a person. It's the time of your life in which you would discover what it is you want to do with your life, you face your childhood fears and decide to become your own hero. Some, of course, would be wrong, according to Connor.

He didn't see what was so big and mighty about hours and hours of sitting down in a boring classroom filled with boring people talking about boring stuff. Who cared who had made out with who or when. Who gave two shits about the photosynthesis of the ameabas they saw in class (which Mr. Cole kept insisting were not ameabas, but protists, whatever the hell that meant anyway). And most importantly, who cared about the fact that Alexa Losey, the head of the cheerleading squad and one of the school's queen bees had been spotted somewhere downtown on Friday night whilst her then boyfriend Cameron was allegedly at some football team party in the nice part of the city. Connor didn't care, obviously.

Lilly on the other hand, certainly did care.

-"It's just the gossip of the hour!"—she said while the two sat together during lunch—"Everyone's talking about it!"

-"Huh. Now kidding."—Connor said as he chewed down his pizza, that Monday's lunch special—"Listen Lilly I'd love to pretend like I really cared about the love life of the jerk platoon's head, as I kindly remember you called him, but... I don't."

-"Pfft. Relax, bad boy, I'm pretty aware you don't give a rat's ass about any of this."—Lilly said, taking a sip out of the green juice she had brought that day in her unicorn lunch box—"It's just that these days things have been just spicing up and my lady brains URGE me to gossip about it! And since you're my best buddy, well I'm sorry but you kind of have to deal with it."

By that point, Connor was already well aware that Lilly had branded him as her best buddy. She had already established that a couple of times. Personally, he didn't complain a bit about it; he didn't see how it would change anything anyway.

The girl of the baseball cap and the unicorn lunchbox seemed to be so outgoing and friendly, it was strange she had gotten such a fixation on being friends with him. Some would say she liked him, but that wasn't it. It was complete dude talk, not even close to anything romantic. For all he knew Lilly could secretly be a boy. That was one of the reasons that made him shut his mouth on the first place. She didn't really seem to have any female friends. She did get along with the female teachers, especially miss Ballinger, but no girls around seemed to be able to deal with her. She had many guy friends, and she was very tight with The Brits band, apparently, but that was about it. No girls.

And another thing Connor had managed to notice was that she had some very strong opinions about what he assumed was the popular clique. It wasn't just the jerk platoon, she seemed to spite the cheerleading squad a lot. On that Monday, when they were walking down the hall, they ran into a couple of girls in their cheerleading uniform, whom from the looks of it were in their year, which meant they were probably Alexa's teammates or even friends. As soon as they crossed paths, the two girls made an ugly face towards Lilly, and she gleefully flipped them off in return. Connor didn't make any sort of comment, but it was pretty obvious that she didn't like them one bit.

But, when it came to bad blood, Lilly had but one particular clique she loved to hate.

-"Ugh. Look at that."—she said while they sat on their English class with Ms. Ballinger, as she gestured towards a sign-up sheet by the door that certainly hadn't been there last week, and a row of giggling girls cueing to sign up their names on it—"Isn't it sad? How their minds are so blindly drawn to that paper, as if they had any chance at all..."