Odd.

1.0 Mal

His friend Mal didn't so much as walk into a room, but charge into it.

She always enjoyed kicking his door open, leaving a permanent footprint as well as a small dent in his wall. It seemed like whenever she entered, she was halfway through a conversation.

"—believe it! I mean Janie was supposed to be my best friend but she kept the fact that Aeryn was cheating on me all to herself! Who even does that?"

He glanced up from his textbook and raised an eyebrow at her. He could normally understand her half-finished conversations because he was used to the minimal detail. She was always the Big Picture kind of girl and preferred to say it as it is without beating around the bush. That was one of the things he liked about her. She was honest.

"And now Brynn isn't talking to me because I'm not talking to Janie who, might I add, still continues to talk to Aeryn. I mean I know they're cousins, but still."

"That sucks," he said. It was his typical line, one he knew wouldn't upset her even more. It was what he told her when they first became friends back in elementary school.

They were neighbors, her apartment was beside his, and their parents were good friends, but they hadn't actually communicated till the night he saw her sitting on the stairs leading up to their building, bawling her eyes out. In all honesty he wasn't even trying to conversate with her in the beginning, she was just blocking his way home, but when she glanced up and saw him, she just started tell him the whole story about her first boyfriend and how he dumped her for Jenny, the girl with the Spongebob lunch box and light-up sketchers. And like now, he said "That sucks," and she sniffled and nodded and then scooted over and patted the spot next to her. Not wanting to make a scene he sat down and they watched the cars pass by until their parents called them in for dinner.

Ever since then he'd been her go-to guy for all of her relationship problems. It kept his life interesting at least.

"Ugh, I know." She fell onto his bed, facing the ceiling with a frown on her face. "People suck."

He picked up his pen and turned back to his textbook. "Tell me about it."