Killer Instinct

6 | Mary

Naturally everything had to be going swimmingly until the nerd walked up.

Mary turned to take in the fact that everyone was staring at the group of five milling around next to each other, her eyes taking in everyone's faces so that she could socially exile them at a later date. She shrugged off the negative energy she was feeling and looked to the two people who were doing absolutely nothing to help their situation, and were in fact making it worse: Roland Green and Lindsey Marcum.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Mary hissed at Roland before getting a light glare from Jordan.

"He's just wondering how everything's going, Mary. We do all have a bit of a connection here."

"Not one that I'm willing to acknowledge." Mary snapped, "If he hadn't walked up, then no one would be staring at us right now."

"So yell at everyone else." Michael suggested, shrugging and gesturing to the students around them. "You love yelling at people. Yell at more of them."

Mary took a deep breath and nodded before turning her attention to the throng of idiotic children occupying the hallway.

"Do you have nothing better to do than stare at the pretty people? Shoo!"

People began to disperse, for no one was going to do anything that would even remotely resemble arguing with Mary Hadden. The queen bee shook her head as everyone began to walk off to their different homerooms, some still daring to glance her way as they went.

"Alright, get out." Mary snapped at Roland as the hallway began to empty out. "You caused this mess."

"Chill out, Mary." Jordan, one of only two who would dare to disrespect Mary—Kate being the second—rolled her eyes. "We did all go through the same thing to an extent. It's alright for us to talk about it."

Mary didn't want to talk about it. With anyone. She knew what she had lost and she knew how she felt about it. No one else could even hope to come close to understanding how she felt.

"Why don't we all get together for coffee after school instead?" She suggested, trying her hand at being civil to the likes of Roland Green and Lindsey Marcum. "I think that would be less of a public spectacle than all conversing in the middle of the school hallway."

Jordan grinned widely, clearly glad that her best friend was trying to be kind for once in her life.

"That sounds great." She nodded, "Want to say Gino's at three?"

Mary looked around the group and everyone nodded slowly, some of their eyes trained down so as not to look her in the eye.

"Fine." She agreed with Jordan's suggestion, "Gino's at three. We can talk about our... feelings." She spit out the last word. Feelings were the last thing that Mary Hadden knew anything about, and she absolutely hated talking about things that she wasn't an expert on.

"Now leave." Mary huffed, turning on her heel and smiling slightly as she heard Jordan scurrying along behind her to keep up.

Gino's at three would surely be nothing of worth.

***

"I'm regretting this. They're probably not even going to show up."

"You're the one who suggested this, Jord." Mary reminded her, "Don't complain to me. You're lucky I'm here at all."

The two girls sat by themselves in the middle of Gino's Coffee, the closest shop to Barnum Prep and the only place that Mary would ever get her coffee—nothing else compared. She had an iced caramel mocha sitting in front of her, but she refused to touch it until everyone arrived, eyeing Jordan in annoyance as the blonde sipped on her double chocolate skinny mocha loudly.