The Teenage Guide To Popularity [COMPLETE]

Chapter 28: Welcome To My Life,

There wasn't much to do but stare. Stare at the face of the guy who had asked her out on a date. Leigh, while very bold with hairstyles and fabric, was unbearably reserved when it came to the opposite sex. So when Aiden asked such a question, Leigh was left weak in the knees. The act of someone asking her out, her, the girl who still fantasized about marrying Indiana Jones or Prince Caspian, was like something out of a fairytale.

"Leigh?"

"Yeah?" Leigh said, trying to blink away her shyness.

"You haven't said anything for, like, two minutes."

"Oh. Sorry. You caught me off guard. I wanted to talk about the text. Just the text," she replied with as much confidence as she could gather. She wasn't there to be asked out. She was there to discuss Carter's situation. That was it. Aiden's good looks and boyish charm shouldn't veer her in the wrong direction.

"Okay, look, I deleted it right after I read it, and I know it's not true. It's Ashton making stuff up, like she always does."

"What did it say?"

"It kind of went on about how her and Jack Echolls... how they went at it, last week. She went to his house, got drunk, and... well..."

"What? That is not true. Why would anyone even believe it?"

"Because Echolls is sort of telling people it really happened."

"Why the hell would he do that? What is wrong with this school? Why does everyone believe everything they hear? What if Ashton sent a text message telling everyone that there were leprechauns and unicorns in a magical kingdom up north, they'd believe it?" The anger was pushing through at an alarming rate, challenging her reason and generally fun-loving nature.

"Probably," Aiden shrugged.

Leigh glared at Aiden, noticed that he was attempting to lighten the mood, and it made her even angrier. "This isn't funny. This is really screwed up. No wonder she didn't show up at school today. She probably got the text and freaked out. And here I am obsessing over some guy who'll never see me as anything more than some dumb friend of hers."

"Huh?"

She hadn't meant to blurt that out, but considering the circumstances, and the fact that Aiden wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, it didn't really seem as if it mattered. "Nevermind. I need to go."

"Wait, there's one more thing. I also got this other text, with a photo attached to it."

"There's no way Ashton could have a photo of Carter and Echolls together."

"No. That's not it. Here..." He shoved his phone into her hand and waited.

***

If Carter could give the aftertaste of a downfall a flavour, it would be bittersweet. Bitter because she wasn't exactly sure how to recover from it, how to find herself again through all the high school theatrics and stupid rubble of a circumstance. Sweet because it had given her a taste of what being popular was like. Exhilarating and dangerous, almost like sky-diving. Or at least that's what she assumed - not like she ever tried sky-diving. At the end of the day, she knew it wasn't her world, and if she had to do it all over again, she wouldn't bother. Or would that create some sort of time-loop, or mess with the time-space continuum? she thought as she made her way through the doors of Newton High on Wednesday morning.

What happened next was definitely something out of a movie, because there was no way it would've happened to her had she lived a normal, mundane life. It was like there was a weird, visually enticing glue on her, because every pair of eyes found her almost immediately. They stared at her. Quiet. Curious. She walked through the hallways as if everything was moving in slow motion, as if the world had decided to become abnormally quiet. Great. What now? What else could they have possibly said about me?