RAYNA Chapter 7: The Latte

Rayna finds herself being bullied when she loses Airyn as a friend.

That night I twisted and turned about Airyn. I just couldn’t get in one exact position for three seconds. My blanket kept tangling and getting wrapped around my legs as I squirmed. I had to keep neatly laying it over me until I finally fell asleep. Since it was a Saturday I slept nearly twelve hours after to getting to bed which was approximately two thirty in the morning.

When I woke up Mom and Dad were already dressed and were baking apple pie for desert after dinner. Glancing at the clock disoriented, I realized it was practically two in the afternoon. I had missed two meals already. A groan tumbled out of my mouth and my stomach growled. I dragged my feet to the kitchen table and feebly fell on the seat. Every muscle in my body ached as I moved. I moaned louder. Mom ran over to me.

“Hon, are you okay?” She helped me sit into the chair and she patted me all over. Suddenly, without thinking, I slapped her searching arms away. “Are you hurt?” she murmured apprehensively.

I sat up straighter and groaned again even louder than before. “I’m just… sore,” I grunted, cringing in pain. “I just didn’t sleep well. I’m hungry for… anything.” Mom didn’t reply; she dropped everything she was doing for the apple pie and started making my breakfast.

It felt like less than a minute that my breakfast was already on the table. Bacon and eggs were neatly arranged on the sides of a pancake slicked shiny with butter. The word syrup ran through my brain and suddenly I felt nauseous. My legs were too sore from walking too much yesterday to go and get it but I didn’t want to sound like a spoiled five-year-old. Before I even got a word out of my mouth the syrup appeared in front of me.

“Thank you,” I mumbled. I began eating and didn’t stop until there wasn’t a crumb left on my plate.

My main location for the weekend was on the couch or in bed. I was too sore to walk around and get stuff done. The weekend felt like two sick days in a row even if I wasn’t actually sick.

Something very surprising happened Monday morning after I got ready for school. A car covered in faded red paint was parked on the street. Airyn. Hurriedly, I shoved my legs into my old ripped jeans and ran to the front door. I peeked out the window. Her hair was unusually tied back in a messy ponytail and she wore casual sweatpants which is an article of clothing she never wore. She probably was still upset. 

Mom came out of her room, her heels clunking on the wood floor, talking on the phone. She put her phone down for a minute as I sped across the hall to my room. “Rayna, what are you doing? School starts soon!” She went off into the kitchen, continuing her phone conversation. She didn’t even let me answer.

 I peeked out my curtain and could see Airyn looking directly at me. Shoving my curtain closed, I curled up in my bed. My plan was to pretend I’m sick so Airyn would go away. I didn’t want her here especially after making me so stressed and sore. She was the reason I had to walk like five or six miles that whole day.

Knock, knock, knock! “Rayna! I know you’re in there!” she yelled. She pounded her fist on the door harder.

“Bye Rayna. Have a good day! And get that door for me, would you?” Mom asked me passing by my room to get to the garage. She slammed the door shut and I continued to hide out. More slamming and pounding sounded, as I almost drifted off to sleep. Airyn did not give up. She forced the door open with her shoulder I was guessing and it rattled the whole house.

“I’m coming in!” Then a loud exchange of noises that sounding like Airyn was unlocking the door. Darn! How’d she get a key? She shut the door, drying her boots on the rug, and hanging up her coat. “Get out of there.” Her eyes studied me peeking out from under the covers.

I shoved the covers back over me and in a muffled voice I shouted, “I’m sick.”

“Come on! I have known you for nine years! You’re never sick. When you want to get away from a tough situation you hide under your covers and pretend you’re sick,” she scoffed and yanked the covers off of me. “Since I have known you that long in case you gave me a key to your house.” She held up the key, shining in the eerie sunshine that peeked through the shades and made an auburn color. The brightness made her lustrous black hair look like a musty brown color.

We didn’t speak for a while. We just sat there deep in thought- or Airyn was waiting for me to apologize or say something. I would have apologized but I didn’t exactly have anything to say. She’s the one who made it awkward by coming over. Then my gut kept telling me it was my fault and that I should say something. But of course Miss Popular is more outgoing and she started the conversation, heavily.

“Want a ride to school?” she asked. We argued back and forth about things after she had said that but she ended up taking me to school and I regretted so badly. In the car she said I was obnoxious when I trying to cheer her up. When she wasn’t looking I secretively made a list.

Here are a couple of reasons why she hates me now:

1. I came to her 16th birthday party undressed.

2. I ran out of her house angrily with her special robe.

3. I ignored her phone calls all weekend.

4. I wouldn’t answer the door for her and she had to key her way in.

She dropped me off and then drove over to the parking lot next to all of her junior friends’ cars. She pretty much ignored me the rest of the day, actually the rest of the week. She mostly hung around Leesa and her obnoxious voice. And her obnoxious clothing and eyes and everything. Everything Leesa said made me want to puke.

I was hiding, cowardly behind my locker as Leesa walked up to Airyn’s locker, four lockers away and said, “So did your dad say yes about the sleepover on Saturday?” Grinding my teeth together, I looked in my locker mirror and stared back at myself, miserably. Airyn only allowed me to have sleepovers with her. For all of her normal friend she just had them over for a few hours. The other thing that revolted me was that she usually thought of Leesa as a friend, “One of my more annoying friends, but a friend” she had said. Now they were always around each other, laughing, singing, and joking. The jokes were mostly about me. They mostly ignored me and never noticed me so they always ended talking about me when I was concealed behind my locker.

“Okay, you are like the best friend ever!” Airyn exclaimed. Leesa nodded coolly and they leaned in to hug each other. “See you after class! Sit with me at lunch!”

“See you! Is… that Beast sitting with us?” She looked back at Airyn. By beast she meant me. Airyn referred to me as the Beast because beasts are usually vicious and cruel.

She sighed and walked casually back to Leesa. “Have you not learned? She is not a part of me anymore. Gone. Drifted away. You’re my best friend now.” She waved at Leesa excitedly as she made her way to class. My heart sunk to my stomach. There was a hint of grief on her face as she waved. Suddenly I felt bad for her. She was still hurting from what I did to her. I wanted to run away from everything and cry. I wouldn’t even care if Airyn hated me or forgave me. It didn’t matter now that I had hurt her so bad. We have had fights before, of course. Every best friend has fights. But this time was different. Before Airyn never replaced me as her best friend. She always moped around until one of us called each other saying we were sorry.

The week went on slowly. I continued sitting alone at school and crying when I got home. She stopped picking me up to go to school and taking me home. I started riding the bus again. Back in freshmen year Airyn and I rode the bus together. She mostly sat with her other friends anyway but she defended me when some senior kid whose family can’t afford to buy another car for him to drive picked on me because of how I looked. Even the senior boys thought Airyn was pretty so they always stopped if she protected me. This time there was no one to defend me.

My backpack was sat up straight on my lap and my cheek touched the cold, condensed window. Aaron, the junior last year who had picked on me was now a senior, and I could hear his weird, scratchy voice from behind me. “You know, Hailey,” he said, a mention of sarcasm in his voice. Hailey was his girlfriend, who you might have guessed if also a senior and is one of Airyn’s friends. “At lunch, I went out to McDonald’s and got a chocolate latte with whipped cream on top. But at lunch, I had so much fun with my friends- my many, many friends- and forgot about it. I saved it in my locker and then took it on the bus. But you know what?” He paused and waited for her to reply.

“What, babe?” she asked, cheerfully and pecked him on the lips quickly. Her milky blue eyes gazed into his ugly, hazel eyes.

“I saved it for the bus,” he went on. “But because I’m nice, I decided to give it to that loser that has no friends. What’s her name again? Rayna? Rayna Feingold?” I shut my eyes tightly and thought, Oh, yeah. You’re super nice when you call someone a loser that has no friends. Even if it is true. Keeping my eyes closed tight I reached my hand around the seat to grab it when something bumpy and gross touched my hair and slid, like a mudslide, down my face and dripped down my chin and onto  my shirt. My stop was only five seconds after that and I ran off the bus, sobbing. Loud guffaws came from the bus. Aaron shouted out the window, “Good luck having a future!”

When I was home, Mom saw me all gross with melted whipped cream and chunky day-old latte all over me and she gave me a towel to wrap around myself. She decided to put an end to all of this. On Saturday night when she was off work, she bought a gift basket and brought it to Airyn’s house. I hoped it would work to have her being my best friend again.

Reviews

[CarmenT]

Thank you

[Tom W.]

Forgive me in just reading ths chapter I find myself having a hard time feeling pity for the main character. unfortunately I do identify with her teen angst . children and especially teens are psychotically vicious in the face of weakness. though their is no true pack mentality it feels like that to the victim who feeds it by continuing to act like prey .
eventually it does become pack bullying simply because everyone picks on that loser.

this kind of writing is just not my cup of latte as it were , that being said it is extremely well written with solid believable dialogue both internally and externally . now that I have read I may come back to check on how this all develops just hope our protagonist stops hiding behind mom and gets positive self image. the fact is most young ladies and women can transform themselves into stunning beauties with a little positive attitude and in some cases a minor makeover to accentuate the positives they never realize they have , I just have a special place in my heart for plain girls who do not realize just how beautiful they can be if they believe in themselves