QQ, Amy- By Anou Swami

"LMAO, Bitch. You can't actually be serious," Amy smirked down at me.

She's always had it out for me, and I don't know why. We were friends in Kindergarten and 1st grade, when we both joined Pierre Deaumont Charter. In 2nd grade, we had been put in separate  classes, so we started to grow apart. I had never dreamt that we'd be enemies though! Yet it had happened. In 3rd grade, we were once again in different classes, but she went out of her way to find me and tease me. She had blossomed into a bully by 4th grade. Elsewhere, she'd be the stereotypical popular girl, but here at Charter, well, they're different. They don't like to admit that they have those kinds of kids too. Social hierarchy? Can't be! Not at Charter! They like to think that the Social Emotional classes they provide us with, along with the 'all round energy of peace and acceptance' -their words, not mine- have changed us all greatly for the better. They like to think that they aren’t like other schools. Well, here’s the truth: that’s just as stupid as the whole not like other girls thing. But whatever.

I glared at her and stood up. While I sat, she towered over me in her 3” heels(which she should not be wearing to school!), but when I stood up, I was taller. I’m the tallest girl in 6th grade, which annoys my parents, because they don’t want me to grow too much before I get my period and then be stunted, but it’s not like I’m that tall. It’s just that the kids here are waaaaaaaay short. Literally, the 2nd tallest girl is 4’7”. In 6th grade. Seriously. Like, what are they smoking???? JK, JK, even if we do have a social hierarchy, we truly don’t have any smokers, vapers or stoners, so that’s nice. And our school has a high school section too on the same campus. 

“Shut up, Amy. And maybe zip your fly,” I smiled, grabbed my books, my four person group of friends stepping in besides me on our way to advisory. Amy wasn’t even wearing any zippers, except for the one on her leather jacket- REAL leather, talk about horrible!- but she hadn’t realized that yet, so ha! I know, I know, how immature, but I couldn’t help myself! 

“Forget about her, Anusha. That witch will move on soon if you ignore her. You need to stop humoring her, or she’ll keep annoying you,” my friend Aalini fancies herself some kind of psychologist. It’s usually hilarious, the things she says, but also often annoying.

I playfully swatted her arm, “Aali, bbg, don’t you see that lovely look on her face though? She’s still trying to figure out where her zipper is!”

Lana, Athena and Norie laughed with me, but Aalini just rolled her eyes. Our laughs sounded so interesting together. My deep chuckle, Norie’s sweet giggle, and Lana and Athena’s high pitched cackles. They are twins, and though they’re, like, SUPER different in every other way, their laughs and voices are exactly the same. They moved here to NorCal (that’s North California) from Greece 2 years ago, but they only joined Pierre Deaumont last year, in 5th grade. After a while, Aalini finally joined in, snorts popping up in between her sharp bursts of laughter. I knew she’d give in, since she can never be upset for more than 5 minutes. I remember one time, in 3rd grade, when we first became friends, we had met because she was mad at her brother and was ignoring him. No joke, 3 minutes later, she ran back and apologized to him profusely. It had been hilarious, watching him shake his head at her. 

Suddenly, I heard the sound of something whizzing through the air, and then I felt something smack me in the back- super hard! It knocked me over and I fell to the ground, all the wind knocked out of me. I heard my friends turn and start shouting at Amy and her idiot squad of jerks, who were tittering. Norie bent down beside me. “Are you ok? Of course not, here let me help you up. I’ll take you to the office, ok? Yeah, and then we can tell the teachers- sorry, educators- that it was that horrible witch and her sniveling sycophants. Ooh and then we can tell them about all their other horrible deeds!” Two things to know about Norie- she is very caring and kind, but she also doesn’t really listen to people and she almost never stops talking. She’s also the only one of my friends who doesn’t get upset at me when I use- in their terms- fancy smart person words. Instead, Norie goes as far as to adopt them, peppering them through her speeches. I swear, she’s gotta have some sort of, like, notebook somewhere, where she documents all the ‘fancy smart person words’ (like sniveling sycophants) that I say, since she can’t seem to remember, like, anything else.

I turned onto my side to face her. “Norie, bbg, I’m fine, well, I’m not, but I just need some rest. You can help me to get to the office, but I don’t want to deal with anything about that idiot right now. My head hurts too much for me to care enough. It hurts too much for me to get this sentence out!”

She smiles at me. “Okay, I can do the talking. You just rest, and I’ll carry you there- actually no. I’ll call the girls and we can all carry you! It’ll be a team effort, like this school loves!”

I craned my head to look at our other friends, who were still bothering the jerks. Aalini was shouting insults - I was astonished that the teachers hadn’t yet arrived!-, Athena was writing a list of all the things that the witch and her jerks had done to us- it was fixing to be very long. It was already up to her waist!-, and Lara was recording the whole thing, while bragging to Amy about how she had the newest phone, while Amy had last year's model. She never talked like that to us, and we didn’t have any phones(well, I had the model from 6 years ago, but that doesn’t count!). 

“Um, okay. Norie, sure. But first I have something to say,” I winked.

She beamed at me and helped me stand up. Then, she supported me and we waddled over to where Amy and her jerks were still standing. She saw me and turned from my friends, poking her minions in the back. The 6 of them glared at us, then smirked. “What do you want, idiot?” she sneered.

“Just a quick question, honey,” she looked confused, “Why do you hate me so much?”