Chapter Twenty-Three

Hugo and Rhea entered the class almost at the same time. Verdell and Clara were staring at him expectantly. Verdell was asking him what was going on with his eyes and Clara looked annoyed. She hated Rhea; she did not even know why.

Maybe it was because she once liked Hugo and that she did not get enough attention from him, at least, not as anything more than a friend.

And there was Rhea, who did not even ask for his attention but got it nonetheless. The worse thing was that Rhea seemed to not care about Hugo at all. She rarely looked his way and definitely, her eyes did not have the look Hugo's eyes did when he looked at her.

"You actually fell asleep like that? Are you crazy? What if you fell?" Hugo scolded Rhea angrily who was rubbing her eyes to the point of making them teary.

"Why else do you think I leaned on your back?" she grumbled, placing her bag on the empty desk that was beside Hugo's. It was one of the few times when Hugo got to sit beside her.

"You were sleepy?"

"The fact that you are not is weird," she said and sat down.

Hugo kept on saying how dangerous it had been, but she did not care. She was looking at someone else. The girl she was looking at gave her a small wave and offered her a small toothy smile through her bruised lips. She sat down on the seat right ahead of Rhea.

Everyone was looking at the girl, but not many actually cared. High school kids could be the cruelest ones. They would watch people get stabbed and would just record and do nothing.

"How are you knees?" the girl asked. She had a slap mark on her right cheek.

"Better than your face," Rhea replied.

"What happened?" Hugo asked.

"Did someone hit you?" Verdell asked.

"I fell from the stairs," Lola said, fidgeting, her head down.

"Obviously, you can make up a better lie," Rhea said.

"I truly fell," she said.

Clara rolled her eyes. She knew what it was like to be bullied. But she fought back and refused to take any shit. She believed anyone could fight back and when someone did not, she automatically felt irritated and thought they deserved it.

The teacher came and they could not continue anymore. Lola made up two stories that she fell from the stairs and slapped herself to kill a mosquito at night. If someone believed it, they would be the biggest fool.

Verdell wanted to take her to the infirmary, which Lola declined. She said she was fine and would not listen to anyone else.

"I can just drag her there," Clara said.

"Don't force me," Lola mumbled.

"Why is she so meek? What girl? A hero ain't going to save you if you don't save your own ass?" Clara snapped.

Rhea decided to take a break from all of their babblings, and as soon as the bell for the lunch break rang, she went to the washroom. She was hungry, but not for the school food. That was straight-up trash.

Leaving the restroom, she went to one of the storage rooms where she always went to just relax and get away from people. She hated the way people smelled, the way they laughed, the way they talked. She felt pressured and suffocated. For a long time, she believed she was expected to do all that too. Now that she had accepted herself as she was and did not care whether she had a friend or not, it was better to just leave. However, the uncomfortable feeling was still there. It probably always would be there, somewhere in her heart.

She sat behind a pile of boxes behind the shelf where art supplies were kept. If someone entered the room, they would not find her immediately. No one came into this dark corner after all.

She brought out two small boxes from the pockets of her jacket. She had packed fried prawns in one box and some salad in the other. She had done that a lot because the food served in school was just worse than garbage. Hugo packed his own lunch too. She had seen it so many times.

She could not even take two bites when she heard some hurried footsteps entering the storage room. Then, she heard a smack, a crack, and a cry.

If Rhea wanted to watch, she would have to move further from the boxes and peek from the back of the shelf which might or might not reveal herself, depending on the observation skill of the people concerned.

"You should have thought better before touching my sister," a cold voice rang in the air. Even Rhea almost got goosebumps.

"I did not do it," another voice said. Dude was frightened for sure.

"Your girlfriend did," the cold voice said again. He sounded playful.

Okay, it was rather entertaining. Rhea would not miss it for anything, especially when it was happening right in front of her. She crawled out of her comfort space and slowly, peeked from behind of the shelf.

The back of a brown-haired boy was facing her and in an instant, that boy was smacked hard across face and fell to the ground. Rhea moved away immediately as her curiosity was fulfilled and she did not want to get between those two boys. She had gotten a glimpse of the other boy and did not need to know more.

"Get out and tell your pretty girlfriend what I told you," he said.

Rhea heard hurried footsteps again, slowly getting away. She returned to her comfort spot and started eating once more.

"Maybe you should cut your hair if you want to hide," the voice said, now standing at the other end of the shelf, watching Rhea with his dark eyes. It almost matched the color of his jet-black hair.

"I forgot to tie my hair," Rhea said and took a mouthful of salad with a fork that she had brought with herself inside her jacket's pocket.

"How much did you see?" he asked.

"That you broke his hand and smacked him hard across the face, which will leave a bluish bruise and a great amount of pain and of course, humiliation," she replied. "And possibly, his girlfriend will learn her lesson without the need to face the same fate as her boyfriend or worse or not worse, depending on how you behave. Lola should be safe for a few days."

He laughed and walked towards her. "What are you eating?"

"Food."

"That's not served in the cafeteria."

"No."

"Your name is Rhea."

"A lot of people know my name, it seems."

"Come on now, you had a stalker who stalked you for what, like five years and had a lot of pictures of you. Everyone knows," he said, crouching in front of her. He was awfully tall, probably two inches taller than even Hugo who was quite tall himself.

'Kids grow too quickly these days,' Rhea thought. Although being a teenager herself, she viewed herself as a very old woman. Her family agreed wholeheartedly to this.

"Hmm… Now, will you go away? I want to eat in peace?"

"It's not your private property," he said.

"It isn't," she said. She felt frustrated and angry that she did not get her fill of food and quickly packed her boxes inside her jacket. "Bye, now."

She walked past the new boy who started laughing all of a sudden.

"I quite like you, you know. You are really different," he said, standing up.

"Dude, are you flirting?" she groaned. "Get a life, honestly."