Girls Chase Girls | #1 [COMPLETE]

chapter 4 (new)

Phaedra

Phaedra was opening her locker to retrieve her Calculus textbook the next morning when something slid out and fell on her boot. She recognized it as one of those kiddie Valentine's Day cards.

She picked it up to read it: "'I like you, Doo you like me, too? Say you Scooby-Dooby-Doo.'" Phaedra leaned away from the card. It was decorated with a famous cartoon dog and his stoner best bro. "Okay, what's happening here?"

Stevie plucked the card from her hand to read it herself, casually filching the attached lollipop before handing the card back. "Dweeb's got a crush on you."

Phae glared at her nosy friend. She'd been planning on saving the candy for class. God knew she needed something to look forward to in the Dungeon of Doom otherwise known as Honors Calculus.

"It's January. Who starts sending cards this early?"

"Dweebs."

"You'd know," Sable quipped, passing by them both on her way to her own locker. Tré rolled her eyes and ignored them both, loping over to slump against the locker next to Phaedra. She swept her dishwater hair aside to keep it from getting stuck into the locker door vents.

"Who's got you in their sights this time?"

She showed the taller girl the card she'd found. "No clue. Somebody with a sense of humor."

"You pulling middle schoolers nowadays, baby Phae? Shame on you."

"That's at least preschool level," Stevie opined around her stolen cherry lollipop.

"You'd know," echoed a passing knit-capped wonder named Alayna Hu. Sable tried not to stare longingly at the class president's back to no success. Stevie glared at the same. They didn't get along. Sable was in love. Alayna was, presumably, straight. Stevie was jealous and doing a lousy job at hiding it. Phaedra wanted no part of that disaster in progress.

She led Tré from the squabble brewing, again, for the third time this week and it was only Tuesday, between Sable and Stevie. This is why you don't date within the crew. Speaking of which...

"Anyway, this is what's going on with me. What's your deal?"

"Lucia, the bookworm queen." Tré, libero of their volleyball team, the tall one, Ms. Abercrombie & Fitch herself, was the actual worst at dating. She was worse than Sable and that one crushed on straight chicks with scary regularity.

"You make me sad, babe."

"I make me sad. She's right there all the time. This shouldn't even be hard." Tré groaned miserably. "I need a smoke."

The late bell sounded and the hall rose into a cacophony of squeaking soles on sneakers as students lunged for their classroom doors.

"Do you need detention?"

"It's good for meditating."

"You mean napping." Admittedly, that was as good a use for the time as anything.

"To-may-to, to-mah-to." Tré hoisted a shoulder, indifferent.

"Whatever. Ask her out already or shut up about it. You know she's going to UCLA. Get into UCLA." Useless advice, but nobody actually expected Phaedra to be good at this. She was a classic love 'em and leave 'em wanting more type, even if she was nice about it.

"I'm not that good," Tré lamented. Irritating as it was to see, Phae felt for her. She knew a little something about being head over heels for somebody who looked right through her.

She bumped Tré's bony arm. Leather-clad as it was, it still poked, blunt as a bamboo stick.

"What you are is lazy. That's the difference. Stop dragging the team around by the lead and maybe the scouts who come to see Garvey'll pay some attention to you."

Tré's depression turned to panic in a blink. "Oh, great, let's talk about the future, I feel a million times better. Thanks, Phae. I need a cigarette, I need a whole pack of cigarettes. Save me a seat."

Tré made for the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall. It led to the back of the gym, prime stoner real estate and not a bad place to snag regular cigs either if you knew who to ask. Until the campus cops make rounds.

That'd be another detention on top of two this month. Tremaine wouldn't be playing v-ball until halfway through the season, at this rate. She jammed a fist into the door of a banged up locker.

"Girls are freakin' complicated and I do not have time for this today."

Phaedra stalked back down the hall to drag Stevie to class by her elbows. Girl didn't have the first idea how to talk to a crush. Sable looked like she was about to bash her face in.

"Come on, idiot. That was the late bell."

Stevie grunted, staring back over her shoulder.

Phaedra was forever cleaning up her friends' messes. This was why she didn't do the love thing. It was just heartbreak. Phaedra didn't need heartbreak; all she needed was cars, bikes, and the game.