Role Reversal

5. Surprising Laughter

"Be. My. Boyfriend. Ri. Ri," she repeated, enunciating each word.

So I had heard her right. Wow. This day couldn't get any better, could it? I sighed again; it was becoming a bad habit. But funnily enough, only around Megan.

"Yeah I got that, Megan. But the "what" was a way of asking you to expand on what you just said, not to repeat what you just said," I said, rolling my eyes. This back and forth business was really getting on my nerves- why did Megan always dodge my questions? Did she do it on purpose to piss me off? Well unfortunately, it works, I thought, grinding my teeth.

"Oi, no need to be so rude, or you'll get hit again. Ok, well it's kind of a long story. And it's complicated. And probably kinda weird for you." She hesitated, but seeing that I wasn't about to go anywhere, she continued. "Well, as you can guess, I live on my own here. But that doesn't mean I don't have parents. Because sadly for me, I do."

I didn't quite get where she was going with this, but I nodded at her to carry on.

"I hate school- I don't see the point. So I don't try as hard as I can, like my parents want me to. Which gets them annoyed. At one point, all the arguments and yelling got too much for me so I ran away. So cliché right?" She laughed without smiling, so taking it as a rhetorical question; I kept my mouth shut and kept listening.

"Anyways, doing badly in school is just one of the ways I like to piss them off. It's funny to watch them get all angry and huffy. Especially my dad. He still thinks I'm his little princess," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I see. But what does all this have to do with anything? I mean, I would love to sit here and listen to you babble on about your childhood as much as the next person, but can you just get to the point?" I then instinctively scrunched up my eyes and held my breath, waiting for the impact of her first to collide with my tender skin and leave a shiny purple bruise.

But nothing happened.

I heard her chuckle as I opened my eyes, surprised. "You're such a coward Ri-Ri. Don't be such a chicken, you'll get nowhere in life." I started to get up and grab my bag and make for the door, when I felt Megan kick my ankle. It felt like she had launched a brick at it. "Stop. I'm not done."

I begrudgingly sat back down again, rubbing my sore ankle. That's gonna hurt in the morning.

"As I was going to say, the point is, that, me having a boyfriend would really tick them off. Which is where you come in," she finished simply.

Well, it sounded simple. I didn't know whether to feel relieved or scared. I was glad that she didn't actually want to go out with me, but pretending to be her boyfriend would be just as bad.

"Why did you ask me then? And what's in it for me?"

Megan flicked her fringe out of her face and studied my face (which still made me nervous) before answering. "I dunno. It's 'cause I've known you since we were five, so I feel that we have a close enough relationship, y'know?" she said, grinning widely at me.

"Not that that answer makes any sense whatsoever, but you didn't answer my other question," I pointed out. "What's in it for me?"

Megan stretched out her legs and leaned back on her arms, tilting her head to the side to look up into the corner. "Hmm…what's in it for you? I don't know, I didn't think about that. What do you want?" she asked, looking back to me with little expression on her face.

What did I want? An apology for all that she'd done to me? Money? A car? Or even just a candy bar? A candy bar? Really Adrian?