I hopped over the last step on the stairs as I made my way happily towards the cafeteria. Ricky had been on my mind all morning, and I was dying to talk to Ivory about him. If this had happened two days ago, I would have already texted Hailee, Aubrey and Sacha a detailed description of him and they would have stalked him on every social media site known to man. By now I would have known his full name, birth date, and all of his past girlfriends. At least, I hoped he didn't have a current girlfriend. That would complicate things a bit.
Point was: usually, I would be gossiping with my friends about any boys that popped onto my radar. But something told me that Ivory wouldn't really be into that sort of thing. She was independent, and I was, well, dependent. I needed my friends to be happy. Ivory didn't need anyone.
It didn't matter; I had Ivory now, and she had me. Whether she liked it or not.
I pushed open the doors of the cafeteria and began to scan the crowd of students for my friend. Usually I was able to find her pretty quickly; her pale skin and dark hair made her stand out from the hordes of bleached-blonde, spray-tanned girls that made up majority of our school. After doing a quick lap of the cafeteria, however, it became clear she was nowhere in sight.
With a huff of annoyance, I turned to leave and pull my phone out of my bag at the same time. I felt my elbow knock against someone's cafeteria tray, and heard a crash as the tray tumbled to the floor.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry!" I squeaked, and immediately knelt down to scoop up the remains from the floor. Thankfully the tray had only held a burger that was wrapped in tinfoil and a cookie in a plastic wrapper, so there was no permanent damage done. When the tray was fully loaded again, I handed it back up to it's rightful owner, who was some guy I didn't recognize.
"Hey Brett, what's taking so long?" A familiar face questioned the stranger. I couldn't help myself, a huge smile spread across my face as Ricky bounded into sight. He turned to me, and a look of realization crossed over his face. "Kennedy, is it? You really need to work on your clumsiness or something more important than a hamburger will get hurt."
"Something more important than a hamburger? Is there even such a thing?" Brett questioned.
Ricky and I shared smiles. Brett was little more than an irritating fly on the wall to me. In my mind, it was just me and Ricky and his dreamy blue eyes...
Brett seemed annoyed at the fact that neither of us were paying any attention to him. "C'mon Pat, let's get going. I'm starving."
"Yeah, right." Ricky nodded. "Try not to run into anymore people, eh, Kennedy?"
"I make no promises." I smirked. The moment he turned his back on me, I practically skipped out of the cafeteria. He remembered my name! Oh, we were so getting married one day.
It was weird having all this exciting news about a guy and no one to share it with. I hadn't seen Sacha, Aubrey or Hailee during my quick scan of the cafeteria, so they were probably eating out somewhere. Ivory clearly wasn't here, and I didn't have anybody else that I really considered a friend.
With a sigh, I decided to walk to Starbucks and eat lunch there. It wasn't that I was hoping that my old friends would be there... No, it wasn't that at all. I was just simply going there to eat. I was over living in Aubrey's shadow.
The early autumn air was chilly, and I wrapped my sweater closer around me. The walk to Starbucks seemed a lot longer when I was by myself. As I was quickly being surrounded by kids walking in packs, I felt more and more alone. To make myself feel better, I untangled my earphones and shoved them into my ears.
I shuffled through my playlists until I decided on One Direction. The music put a bounce in my step and before I knew it the Starbucks sign was within sight.
I shoved the door open and inhaled the familiar smell of coffee beans. Ah, the welcoming scent of my homeland. A quick scan of the store told me Aubrey, Hailee and Sacha were nowhere to be seen. I bit back my disappointment and found a place in line.
After ordering, I stepped aside to make room for other people and checked my messages on my phone. I noticed that Ivory hadn't even texted me to explain her absence, which I supposed shouldn't have been so surprising. She didn't seem like the type to be constantly on her phone.
Suddenly, a familiar voice caught my attention. Ivory! What was she doing here, at Starbucks, without me? Whatever, the important thing was that now I could ask her about Ricky!
I tapped her on the shoulder, and when she turned around I immediately noticed her bloodshot eyes. Clearly, something was wrong. "What happened to you?"
She skillfully avoided my question, and I figured that if she didn't want to talk about it now, there was no point in trying to force it out of her. Besides, we had Ricky to talk about!
When I asked her if she knew him, she said the name sounded familiar and she might have known him from summer camp but she wasn't sure. It didn't seem like I was going to get much more from her than that.
"Look, I have to go," Ivory said, while grabbing her coffees and backing out towards the door. "I'll see you at school."
"Yeah, see ya!" I called after her. I picked my pumpkin spice latte up from the counter and walked out of the opposite door Ivory left from, preparing for a lonely walk back to school.
.................
Back at school, I leaned against my locker and sighed happily. At the end of the hallway, just inside my line of vision, was Ricky. It was weird, I never used to see him, but ever since I bumped into him I was noticing him everywhere.
I was so focused on staring at him that I didn't hear Sacha approaching me from behind.
"Who's got your attention?" I jumped at the sound of her voice and turned to face her.
"Sacha...?" I questioned, and quickly glanced around, searching to see if Hailee and Aubrey were nearby.
She shrugged. "Hey, just because Aubrey's mad at you doesn't mean I have to be, right?"
"I guess..." It's just usually you can't think for yourself, I added silently.
Sacha paused like she was waiting for me to say more, but gave up when she realized I wasn't about to crack. "Anyways, are you going to tell me what guy you were checking out?"
"It's really none of your business." I crossed my arms over my chest. There was no way in hell I was about to trust Sacha, not after everything that had happened last night. She didn't stick up for me, and that just proved to me that I couldn't count on her.
Sacha arched her eyebrow. "Wow, you're going to be like that? I see how it is. All these years of friendship and you trust a girl you met a few days ago more than you trust me."
"Are you talking about Ivory?"
"Of course I'm talking about Ivory! I thought we were best friends, Kennedy. I didn't realize that one little argument would end up with you finding new friends. Clearly you were just looking for an excuse to get rid of us." Sacha sniffed.
"That's not true! I never said that!"
"You didn't have to. We all know what you meant." She turned to leave, but paused for a moment longer. "Oh, and I would stop staring at Patrick Dawson with your mouth open like that... he's gonna get the wrong idea."