Cross My Heart and Hope You Cry | The Clique Fanfiction

21

The chiming bell over the door precluded Kristen's entrance into Ben's Ice Cream, the store that she and Claire had decided to meet in since Massie would never be caught dead in it, even with her current social ostracization. She herself hadn't been since before she'd met Massie, but walking into the familiar vintage frozen ice cream parlor that she had frequented quite often in elementary school sent a thrill of nostalgia through her chest.

Claire was right by the window, already halfway through a gummy-covered cup. She gave her a small smile when their eyes met and Kristen made her way over to the iron-wrought seat across from her, sitting down rather heavily.

"So . . . how'd it go?" Claire said slowly.

Kristen's eyes were troubled and she licked her lips nervously before speaking. "I got you and Cam off the Blacklist."

Claire's eyes brightened like a light inside of them had just been turned on. She beamed at her with such happiness that it almost felt foreign to Kristen, who was going through such a range of negative emotions that anything even remotely close to happiness seemed absolutely impossible right now.

"That's amazing," Claire breathed, her smile, somehow, only growing brighter.

"For you," Kristen sighed, tugging at the end of her plait.

Claire's smile immediately dimmed, her gaze questioning. "What's happening?"

Kristen's lips pursed as she tilted her head back over the edge of the iron-wrought chair. She brought her hands up to her face groaning heavily into her palms before running them down her cheeks to her neck. "I sold out the Pretty Committee," she replied softly.

"What . . . what does that mean for them?"

"It means they're ruined."

"'They' not 'we'?" Claire questioned after a moment.

Kristen shook her head, sitting up straight with a weary sigh. "And I'm not even sure if that's the best or the worst part about it."

Claire furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, absentmindedly swirling her spoon in her ice cream. "Shouldn't you be, I dunno, happy that you're not on the bandwagon?"

"They're still my friends, Claire, but after this," Kristen shook her head again, a pained look falling onto her face, "they won't be anymore. Massie would never let me back into the group—not when it's going to be so obvious that it was my intervention that caused their downfall. I'm pretty sure that they're even going to play up that angle to make it that much worse for me."

"Well, honestly Kristen," Claire shrugged, "I don't see why you want to be friends with them anyway."

Kristen looked up at her sharply. "They're my best friends," she stressed.

"Well they don't really act like good friends, do they?" Claire shot back.

"Maybe to you-"

"If they were your best friends you wouldn't have felt the need to lie to them for a year about you not being rich," Claire said, cutting her off quickly and causing her mouth to snap shut with her brutal honesty. "They wouldn't give you those little digs about not being able to afford designer and would actually make some sort of effort to understand you in that way, but they don't. They never did. We would make every attempt to fit into their world, but you know they would never do the same for us. Do you think they'd ever step foot into this store? Even if you said it was your favorite place in the whole entire world and how much it meant to you, you know they wouldn't, Kristen."

Kristen's bottom lip wobbled and Claire's look morphed from hard to empathetic. "I had to find that out for myself too, but it's not fun when you put in 100% and only get back 20% and that's what the Pretty Committee was like for us. You deserve better friends than them. I did, and that's why I left."

Kristen swallowed thickly, her eyes shining with unshed tears as she shook her head.

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Kristen," Claire mumbled.

"They've been my best friends for two years. Of course it hurts," she replied, looking to the side and out the window onto the bustling street with a sigh. When she looked back at Claire there was an air of understanding between them—a similar sense of loss over the erosion of a friend group that had once been so close, if only for a little while.

"You know, I didn't realize until yesterday just how badly I wanted them to like me," Claire said with a frown. "I needed them to like me. I completely changed myself for just a whisper of Massie's approval, and yet I know that if I did one thing they didn't like I'd be thrown away like last season's Prada."

Kristen snorted at the metaphor and Claire smiled.

"I was afraid of Massie as much as I wanted to be her," Claire finished with a shrug. "I thought of her like my older sister in a lot of ways, but she wasn't. It was more like my boss, ya know? Like yeah, she pays me —she signs my checks or whatever my dad says— but she could fire me at any moment."

"It wasn't always like that," Kristen replied, her face pinched in thought. "In sixth grade-"

"You mean when you were pretending to be rich?"

An expression of stark realization fell onto Kristen's face and she blanched.

"You know what?" Claire said, standing up promptly. "C'mon. You really deserve some ice cream after all this and mine's all melted by now. We came to an ice cream shop, so we can't leave here without really enjoying some."

Kristen blinked up at her in surprise before nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right." A smile curved her lips upwards as she stood, following Claire to the counter. "This used to be my favorite place to go for ice cream; we absolutely couldn't come here without really indulging."

"And Kristen?"

She hummed in acknowledgement as she eyed the array of flavors before them.

"You won't have to worry about being alone now either."

Kristen drew her eyes away from the ice cream case to look at her. "Why's that?"

Claire nudged her. "I mean, you could always sit with me and Layne. As long as you don't mind being an LBR?" She said playfully.

Kristen rolled her eyes with an amused smile. "The only LBRs at Octavian Country Day are Massie, Alicia and Dylan."

"You said it!"

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