Framed

One.

"Lauren! Hey, Lauren!"

Lauren Jauregui sighed as she turned from her locker to see who was shouting after her, only to see Brad Simpson, curly haired basketball jock, full on sprinting towards her. At this point, it was far too late to run, so Lauren did her best to internally prepare herself for the inevitable conversation, praying to whatever god was up there that she could get this over with in five minutes or less. She closed her locker and turned towards the jock, who was staring at her the way a dog would worship a bowl of chicken broth with its eyes.

"Brad. Wasn't expecting to see you here. I thought you were moving," she lied.

"Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, just around."

"Oh, okay. Well, it's our first day of junior year, and we haven't really talked these past two years, and I was hoping that I could get to know you better. Maybe we can go hang sometime -"

"LAUREN! Girl, I've been searching all over campus for you! I found your homeroom, over at Negovanlis's class, and she told me that she needs to see your sorry ass ASAP! Come on!

"Dinah," Brad acknowledged the sophomore grudgingly. "Can you give us just a few more minutes?"

"I have to go, Brad. It's urgent Editing Staff business." Lauren said as seriously as she could without grinning. She stood there awkwardly for a moment before taking off, running as fast as humanly possible, with Dinah fast on her heels. Brad wasn't able to get a single word in edgewise, which was what Lauren intended to happen.

Once they were absolutely sure that the basketball jock was out of sight and earshot, Lauren revealed her ear to ear grin. "Holy shit. I'm so happy that's over. Thanks for saving my ass over there."

"That's what friends are for, Ralph." The two friends stopped running and tried to catch their breath.

"He was going to ask me out, Dinah. I could tell by the look on his face."

Dinah let out a chuckle as her friend visibly cringed. "Out of all the girls at San Diego High School, he chooses the one gayer than a herd of flannel wearing unicorns all doing the macarena on all the rainbows that the world could provide. You are gayer than any other gay that has ever gayed, and he tries to ask you out." Dinah can't stop herself from snickering at this point, and Lauren tries, but fails, to hate her for it.

"I better get to homeroom," Lauren deadpanned, and Dinah groaned dramatically as they made their way to Room 116. Along the way, they compared schedules. While the two were a grade apart and didn't share a homeroom, they had both Chemistry and History together.

"I want to explode at least one thing in one of our labs, just one thing. That'll make Miss Tooker lose her shit for sure."

"I'm not looking forward to having you as a lab partner, Dinah."

"Maybe we can find you a girlfriend in that Chemistry class, and you can finally get laid again. You need it."

All Lauren did in response was roll her eyes.

The two girls arrived at Lauren's room early, and Ms. Negovanlis smiled as her favorite raven haired student walks in the door.

"Nice to see you here, Jauregui. You too, Hansen. And I hate to start off this godforsaken year with one of those shitty questions every single run-of-the-mill teacher asks, but how were your summers?"

"Good," Lauren and Dinah said simultaneously.

"I wrote some stuff here and there, read some books, hung out with friends, went to the beach. Classic cliche John Hughes-esque summer things," Lauren continued.