Like Smoke

0.1 Odd

That brown hair looked so... so chocolaty. The head turned and revealed the face of Marsha Hutch, her classmate.

Gabrielle tried to smile at her, but the girl had already moved her attention to someone else. She wondered why it was so hard for her to just lift the sides of her lips, sometimes.

It isn't hard. Just press the centers of your upper and bottom lip lightly, and lift the side of your lips, one by one.

She repeated the steps in her mind, as she looked down at her open notebook, half covered by her textbook. There.

I did it. She felt her cheeks pushing at her eyes. It wasn't so hard.

She felt a harsh nudge on her humerus, making her suck in a sharp breath, as she prepared to hiss at the culprit, only to glimpse at the latter, and follow her gaze to the front.

Mrs. Tennessee was staring right at her, with both her eyebrows rising above her frameless spectacles. She looked like the cartoon version of Maleficent, whose eyebrows were basically like mountains drawn above those beautiful green eyes. The former had hazel eyes, and she would've looked gorgeous, except for the grimace on that face that elongated her face more than it should.

She had an urge to laugh. And she almost did.

"Something funny, Ms. Parola?"

"No, ma'am," she surprised herself by speaking in a calm voice, fighting the itch in her tummy.

The teacher took it at face value before turning with a stern nod, and continuing to explain the judiciary in the state level.

Turning to her partner, she widened her eyes in relief.

"Cora," she hissed, as the girl in question grinned and sent a sadistic wink, while shrugging a shoulder.

"You could've told me earlier, you know," Gabrielle continued to whisper, before displacing her books about for comfort.

"Were you punished?" Before Gabrielle could reply, Cora continued, "No, so chill the fuck out."

Gabrielle paused to glare hard at the annoyingly 'chilled' raven haired girl. Her fringes making her eyebrows vanish under their thick texture.

After a few seconds, Cora turned. "What?" She raised an eyebrow.

"What did I tell you about cussing?" Gabrielle tilted her head to the side.

She watched as Cora rolled her eyes and shook her head, before nudging her head back up with her fingers. "You keep doing that, and you'll end up breaking your neck."

"It's exercise!" she replied flatly.

"Not in odd angles, you little poop!" She watched Cora's grey eyes roll.

The sudden screeching of a familiar plastic and a thud of wood over a wall broke their bubble, before splashing the whole room with tension.

Heads had snapped up and turned to the source of that unwanted noise. Two people were standing upright, having, what suspiciously looked like a stare down.

Recognizing Mrs. Tennessee's bun and high collared shirt and cardigan, Gabrielle moved her eyes to the second person.

Her vision was met by a combination of a large faded T-shirt, dark jeans, and an olive green hoodie covering what looked like a skinny form of a boy. The head had a mop of dark hair, mussed in all directions.

But the second the head lifted up, her teeth pressed harder onto the side of her lower lip, as her eyes widened slowly at the features slowly giving way to a very familiar image of someone she knew.

Someone, everyone knew.

Gavino Abelló.