Mr. Forgettable #Wattys2016

11

Mondays should just go die in a hole. That was Larkin's first thought as she trudged to school in the morning, alone. She had texted Greta on Saturday, and on Sunday, too, but she never replied to any of them. This morning, she had waited until the last possible minute for Greta to walk out of her house, but she never did. So Larkin walked to school alone.

Larkin sighed before trudging up the steps in front of her school. She opened the door, and was hit with a blast of cool air from inside. Right as she entered the building, Larkin heard the warning bell ring, and all the students milling around in the commons area started to rush to their classes. She scanned the faces she passed, looking for Greta.

"Silvie!" Instead of finding Greta, Larkin spotted Silvie among a sea of tired faces.

Silvie glanced in the direction of Larkin's voice and stopped. Larkin briskly walked to Silvie's side, and they continued walking to their lockers.

"Have you heard from Greta this weekend?" asked Larkin.

Silvie glanced over at her friend with a frown on her face. "No. Why? Did something happen to her?"

"I don't know. We went to see a movie on Friday and everything ended on a sour note. I texted her on Saturday and Sunday but she never responded," explained Larkin.

"Maybe she's already in class."

"I suppose." Larkin didn't believe her own words, though. She bit her lip as she made her way to her first class of the day, wondering where Greta was and hoping she was okay.

()()()

By the time Larkin arrived at the cafeteria for lunch, she was sure Greta wasn't at school. It worried her because Greta was almost never sick and always texted when she was going to be gone. That's just how the two friends did it. Larkin considered the fact that Greta might just be mad at her and didn't want to communicate in any way with Larkin-the-Terrible-Best-Friend Knolls, but quickly dismissed that idea. We didn't really fight. It was more of a disagreement.

That's what she told herself to calm her guilt.

Larkin walked to her usual lunch table and sat next to Silvie. Finn was already sitting down with a tray of food, but the other boys had yet to make it through the line. She pulled out her sandwich and attempted to eat something. She sighed multiple times before Silvie elbowed her in the gut and told her to stop moping.

"Honestly, Larkin, you look like someone just killed your puppy. You and Greta are too good of friends to be broken apart from one tiny fight," assured Silvie.

Larkin only frowned harder and grumbled under her breath. She tore into her sandwich with a ferocity that would rival that of a lion's. She was angry at everything and everyone for passing this off as if it didn't matter. It did matter. It mattered more than she actually let on.

"No need to kill your lunch, Larkin!" joked one of Jacob's friends, Evan.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Lunchmeat is already dead, you nimrod," she growled. The hostility in her tone couldn't have been mistaken for joviality under any circumstances, so Evan simply shrunk in his seat a little.

Larkin could vaguely hear Finn describe a vacation he had gone on over the summer, in which he had accidentally been left at the airport, but she didn't really listen. She could hear the constant rumble of voices in the cafeteria, but none of it meant anything. At first, she thought she was just too out of it to try to participate in the scintillating conversation about the pros and cons of flavored water, but it was something else.

Larkin was uncomfortable. She could feel herself sweating like she would be if she had just run a 5k. She felt jittery, like she had had one too many cans of Mountain Dew. Larkin got up from the table without saying anything to her friends. She couldn't say anything. She felt like her mouth was stuffed with cotton balls.