Well...Not Anymore.

Well...Not Anymore: Chapter 13

"So this is the how the most popular girl in school lives," I think silently to myself as Destiny treks across the soft white carpet of her bedroom. It's the afternoon following the morning that I woke up in Lucas' bed, and although I'd been thoroughly enjoying our renewed friendship-and his shirtless chest-I needed to leave eventually. I couldn't just stay there all day. So when Destiny texted me around three in the afternoon asking if we wanted to work on the project for class, I quickly agreed.  

Luckily Lucas' mom was kind enough to drop me off so that I didn't have to walk and so that Lucas didn't have to drop the girl he slept in the same bed with off at his girlfriend's house. Although he offered and didn't seem the least bit awkward about it, I knew that deep down it'd get underneath his skin at least a little bit. 

And now here I am, in a place that I'm sure half the guys and almost all of the girls at the high school would love to be. I'm in the princess of the high school's bedroom. It's really not as bad as I thought it'd be. Like the judgmental toad I am, I thought the room would be all pink and frill and stuff, but it's actually not. The only pink thing in the room is the floor length mirror she has beside her dresser. Besides that one little blip, her room is decorated in a light blue and a sea foam green. It's actually kind of adorable. 

Destiny ends her trek by sitting down at her computer desk, the computer being a largely-screened Mac, and then tells me, "You can sit wherever. I don't have cooties, I promise." 

I give a soft laugh, happy that she's not making this uncomfortable, and then take a seat at the foot of her large and fluffy bed. Looking around the room, I realize that this girl really isn't that much different than I am. Sure she has much nicer things than I do, and it looks like much more thought was put into the decoration of the room, but the basis is the same. Tons of music, a TV, clothes strewn everywhere, pictures of a certain guy on just about every other surface.  

The room looks just like mine did two years ago. Now, though, all of my pictures are just ashes sitting at the bottom of our old fireplace. I don't have any pictures of him anymore, not even one. I kept them for a couple of months, the months that I was hoping he'd come back and say he wanted to be friends again. But when that innocent naivety wore away, I knew that he wasn't coming back. 

So I torched them. 

"Naomi?" a sugary voice breaks through my thoughts, effectively erasing any mental images that I have of fire and past memories. 

"Yeah?" I ask her, peering at her after moving my attention away from the bottom of her desk chair.  

She gives me a teasing laugh, "You just totally zoned out right there. You okay?" 

"Yeah!" I nod, probably just a bit too convincingly. "I'm fine, I just...I zone out a lot. Sorry."  

"Oh I know what you mean," she says, waving one of her hands diagonally as if forgetting about it. She continues, "I do it all the time. Since I don't usually have time to sleep at night, I've learned how to do it with my eyes open." 

I laugh, asking her, "Is it really that bad?" 

"You have no idea," she says in a jokingly serious, almost threatening tone of voice. She continues, "When I'm not cheerleading, I'm doing school work, when I'm not doing that I'm studying so that my dad thinks I'm not slacking, and when I'm not doing that I'm watching out for my brother, hanging out with my friends, or talking to Lucas on the phone. Well...I used to anyways." 

Even though I know that asking about this will probably come back to bite me in the ass, I ask her, "Is he still being...cold?" 

Her expression gone from being that of a perky, happy-go-lucky blonde girl with one of the best lives ever, she nods and says, "Yeah. I haven't talked to him over the phone in a week."