9|Caught in this moment

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Alina✿—————✿

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Alina
✿—————✿

Get this straight, peace of mind was impossible to have when you're in high school.

For heaven's sake, you can't even have lunch without someone banging a tray on your table and shooting missiles at you with their eyeballs.

Tilting her head and maintaining a bossy stance, Jenny clicked her fingers in my face and hissed the words, "Go find a seat with someone in your league."

Even though I could hear the venom laced through her words, it was stupid of me to think that maybe if I were to be polite, she would have no reason to target me for the rest of the year. Being targeted by any of The Royals was equal to a sentence of eternal loneliness. No one would want to be anywhere near you once they were done damaging your reputation and whatever scrappy life you'd lived.

Deciding this wasn't worth my self-respect, I scramble up, ready to move over to another table. But then, Pablo had to grab my wrist and pull me back down on. I eyed him warily. This whole thing would not turn sour if he just allowed me to leave. It's not like I'm of any use to him, anyway.

"Excuse me? Whatever gives you the right to chase her away?" He faced Jenny, the lines of his forehead creased, and his nostrils flared.

It warmed my insides that he was standing up for me, but I knew I had to leave if I wanted to make it through sophomore year without dropping out of high school.

"Sasquatch has gotta go," Jenny answered like it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy, arching her eyebrows at me like why are you still seated there?

"Whatever your reason for saying that is, it's none of my concern," Pablo snapped. "But Alina stays right where she is."

I smiled faintly at Jenny, signalling her to have my seat as I rose. Like I said, this wasn't worth my self-respect.

"What are you doing?" Pablo questioned in a hushed voice.

I glanced around, noticing our little table had garnered even more attention. "Changing seats. It's no biggie," I told him. "Jenny, you can have mine."

Jenny's lips twisted into a snide grin as she plopped into my seat.  She dug into her meal, not the slightest bit uncomfortable with everyone staring and whispering, or the fact that she was ingesting something that might actually sprout and grow in her stomach.

"What are you eating?" Jenny arched her brows as I took a sat at the empty table next to her.

She was looking for ways to make me slip, but I wouldn't give her and her friends a reason to torment me for the rest of the year.  "Uh...French fries?" I answered.

She leaned in to get a better look. "You don't like the guacamole?" she asked, eyeing my food.

My head bounced on an invisible spring.

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