“Lynn!” I heard a familiar voice call.
I looked up from the game I was playing on my phone. Running up to me was… Justin?
“Hi. What are you doing here?” I asked, eager to get back to playing the game.
“How’s life?” he replied. Wait, what? He replied to my question with a question? That’s just weird…
“It’s okay, I guess”, I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Why?”
“Nothing”, said Justin with a grin. “You just looked like a loner, that’s all.”
I stood up angrily. Did I mention that I was sitting down before? Well, I was. ‘Was’ being the keyword. Justin was about a few centimetres taller than me, but that didn’t really matter.
“You’re calling me a loner?” I asked.
Justin slipped his hands into his shorts’ pockets. “Yep”, he said triumphantly.
“You make me cry!” I said, wiping a fake tear from the corner of my eye. Justin smirked at me. But I hadn’t finished yet.
“You’re all grown up!” I said tearfully, patting him on the head.
His face filled with confusion. “What?” he asked, one eyebrow so high up I was betting it would fly off his forehead.
“You know what, I once watched this thing”, I said, going back to normal. “And it was like a guy moves in to his ‘friends’ house. Then the ‘friend’ wants him out, right, so he thinks that if he punishes the guys’ kids, then the guy will be so horrified that he would leave. And then when the ‘friend’ punishes the kids and the guy comes into the room, the guy says, ‘what are you doing?!’ and then the friend thinks this is when the guy gets out of the house. But then the guy says, ‘Now I know that you’re not my friend, but my BROTHER! You punished my kids when they did something wrong!’ and then the ‘friend’ goes ‘WHAT?!?!’ It was really funny.” I made air quotations every time I said the word ‘friend’.
“And what does that have to do with what you just said before?” asked Justin.
I glared at him. “Gosh, you are dense”, I puffed angrily.
“Well, sorry for not being a mind reader”, said Justin sarcastically before walking off.
“Yeah, goodbye to you too!” I called to him.
I looked around the playground. I couldn’t see my friends anywhere.
Maybe that was because I came ultra early to school and was the only other kid there other than Justin and a bunch of other kids scattered around the school grounds.
I waited for a few minutes, looking at my ‘watch’ (that didn’t exist) every few seconds. Then my patience grew so thin that it soon became as thin as a... thing of cotton. You know, one of those little strand stuff.
Fibre, that’s it!
Then my patience disappeared altogether and I ran off to see if one of my friends had arrived and somehow appeared somewhere else.
Because of my extremely high levels of luck, I bumped into Zain.
Wow, aren’t I lucky!
Note the sarcasm.
“Wow, someone’s in a rush”, he smirked at me.
“Exactly, so au revoir!” I shot at him, starting to run off again. But then Zain put his arm out in front of me and I would’ve fallen flat on my face!
...if only Zain hadn’t used his other hand to pull me upright.
The said face burned in embarrassment. Hey, who wouldn’t blush if their new found arch enemy just saved them from sudden death?! Okay, that was a hyperbole, but STILL!!!
Thankfully, because of my ‘skills’, I turned my embarrassment into anger.
“WHAT WAS THAT FOR, HUH?!?!?!” I screamed at him. “I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!!! WHY’D YOU DO THAT?!?!?!?” Okay, I was exaggerating. But a little bit of exaggeration never hurt anybody! Right...?
“No reason”, Zain smirked. And then he stared at me.
I stared back at him for a few seconds. Then I looked right.
Then left.
Then right again.
Then I looked back at Zain, who was still staring at me observantly, looking deep in thought.
“You know, I’m not exactly an art exhibit that you can stare at all day”, I said after a few seconds of continual staring.
“I know”, he said still not blinking or moving.
I made my expression all sweet and I batted my eyelashes, making my voice all nice and sweet as well. “Well then if you know that, then why don’t you STOP STARING AT ME?!?!?!” I said, shouting out the last words and making my face scrunch up with anger.
He still didn’t react, even though there was a little temperamental midget blasting off her steam in his direction.
“You know,” he said suddenly, breaking the silence, ”you look familiar.”
“Oh really?” I mocked. “Duh, I’m in, like, all your classes. Why wouldn’t I be familiar?”
“NO”, he said in desperation, rolling his eyes. “I mean you look a lot like someone I’ve seen before I even met you or even before you even came to this school.”
“Oh, really?” I asked suspiciously, wondering who he could be referring to.
“Yeah”, he replied, a smile starting to stretch onto his face.
By this time, a small crowd of people had gathered around to see what the commotion was.
“Oh really?” I asked. I bet I was starting to annoy him now with all the ‘oh, really’ s.
“Yes. Really”, he said forcefully, obviously annoyed.
“Oh really? Who?” I asked, pretending to be curious.
Even though I knew he was absolutely annoyed - to the core! -, he plastered an evil smile that looked as if it came straight from the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.
“I don’t know. Maybe one of the princesses”, he said simply, but his face was lit up with his grin.
I was shocked, but I covered it up with a confused expression. “What?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, to be more exact, you look a lot like the oldest one. You know, Lizzie”, he said, still grinning.
“Don’t all of them look the same?” I asked, confused.
“Not really”, he replied with a smirk. “They’ve got certain features that make them more... you know... them.”
How would you know which one of us is which if our own grandmother can’t tell? I was tempted to ask, but I let my question slide. I didn’t want to blow my cover. Not now.
“What features?” I asked instead.
“Well, for starters, Lizzie blinks at an average of 53 times per minute”, he stated.
I stared at him as if he had a million heads, my mouth wide open.
“I feel sorry for the poor girl”, I said after I found my voice, shaking my head. “She gets stalked by random strangers. Like seriously, the amount of times she blinks per minute? Where did you get that from?”
“Hey, I found it on a website, okay”, he said, trying to sound offended.
“So you go on websites that stalk innocent poor girls so that you can... um, I don’t know... use it against others?” I said. I was actually pretty shocked. Who the heck would found out how many times Lizzie – I mean me - blinked? And Zain actually checked how many times I blinked?
Creepy stalker.
“No! I just do it for... informative... purposes...” said Zain, nervously looking around at the crowd around us.
“Oh really?” I asked mockingly. “And how do you know how many times I blink?” I was getting the upper ha-and!
“Look here”, he said finally, his anger line breaking. At least, I think there’s such thing as an anger line... “Stop trying to go away from the fact that you are Princess Lizzie.”
I blinked at him. The whole crowd seemed to have gone silent.
“Should I be honoured or offended?” I asked finally after about half a minute of silence.
“Offended”, he grinned. “Because I’m gonna call you princess for as long as you’re at this school.”
“Jeez”, I said, holding my head with one hand and cocking it to the side. “I just don’t know what to say. It’s not every day that your enemy decides to call you a princess. Let alone a real one. Let alone one that blinks 53 times per minute!”
“Yeah”, said Zain sarcastically. “Whatever. See you around, Princess”
Then he just walked off, through a gap in the crowd.
“Woo, that guy is SOOO weird!” I heard someone say. Someone that sounded a LOT like Janette.
I whipped around and I saw all 5 of my friends behind me.
I smiled. “Hey, what took you guys so long?” I asked jokingly.
“It’s you that’s super early!” said Chanelle in reply, knowing what I meant.
The crowd had now disappeared, leaving us by ourselves.
“Anyways, back to the topic”, said Amanda. “What was THAT all about?”
“Seriously, I have no idea myself”, I said truthfully. Okay, half truthfully.
We walked back to our spot, talking about how much of an idiot Zain was. I was chatting along with them, but I was actually thinking about how spot on Zain had been. Like, how many times I blinked? I shivered inwardly.
As soon as we reached our spot, the bell for the beginning of homeroom went. All 6 of us groaned. Our homeroom teacher, Mr Zimmerman, would give us a detention if we came more than 5 minutes after the homeroom bell went.
We rushed up to the room and sat down at our usual seats. I took out my school diary (we had to) and looked up at the door for some instinctual reason.
Zain came into the room and he made straight for the tables at the back, his usual minions in tow. Today, he passed the desk Janette and I shared.
“Hey princess”, he said.
I gritted my teeth. He really wasn’t joking.
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I’m gonna try to upload once a week!
