#marrera

The Kook Academy was a vicious jungle, but Kiara had learned too late that Sarah Cameron was an apex predator.

Top of the food chain, she was the untouchable, the princess of the Kooks. The Kook Academy lived and breathed as a hierarchy of power and Sarah was at the top. They weren’t even seniors yet and still, the will of the people around them always seemed to undoubtedly bend in her favor. It wasn’t hard to see why. Sarah was gorgeous, effortlessly beautiful even on her worst days. And she knew how to fake a smile, how to play the perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend.

The perfect best friend.

But it was all a lie and Kiara had found herself stuck in the middle of all of it, like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

Kie had been a fish out of water when freshman year had started. She didn’t fit in. She’d gone to the public elementary and middle schools, away from the elitism of the schools where Figure Eight residents sent their kids. But when it came down to it, she’d always been different than her friends, no matter how badly she wanted to just be a Pogue. She’d always be in the middle, a foot in both worlds, a rich kid who “slummed it” on the south side of the island. But that was how she liked it and in hindsight that was how she should have kept it.

But her parents had shipped her off to the private high school and she’d been off balance ever since. Sarah Cameron had been a life preserver when she had been drowning and next to Sarah, Kiara’s life had shifted. She’d isolated herself from her old friends, but she had Sarah.

She had the popularity, the friends, the parties, the never ending stream of feeling like she was on top of the world.

Until Sarah promptly kicked her off the very same pedestal she’d allowed her to perch on for all those months.

As she finished up in the bathroom, alone during her free period, she was reminded of just what kind of a fucking pathetic 2000′s teen movie nightmare she was living in.

Kiara Carrera's a rat! was scribbled on the stall door in bright pink sharpie, alongside multiple crude drawings, a few phone numbers whose owners probably had no idea they were there, and a mention of some guy in the grade above her having crabs. 

TMI, Kiara thought, nose scrunched in disgust.

But mostly, her eyes kept straying back to that one word, that one name that had been tacked onto her name since Sarah’s birthday. 

She figured there were worse things she could be called, but it was the principle of the situation. It had been months now. Kiara had figured that in a school like the Kook Academy, a party being broken up by the cops would have been old news by now. But when fingers had been pointed and she’d been labeled as the snitch, apparently the situation blowing over hadn’t been in the cards. 

Like, okay, sure, she technically was the one who called the cops. But no one knew that and she’d just had the crime pinned on her anyways because Sarah fucking Cameron refused to do anything about it. And what was she supposed to do? It was bad enough that Sarah had already iced her out. Kiara had been ghosted for weeks before her birthday and then the rager unfolding at Tannyhill had been all over Instagram. It was just more salt in the wound and Kiara’s jealousy had won over.

And now, she supposed, she was paying the price.

Sophomore year was like a wound that refused to heal, aching over and over again. Her distance from her newfound friends was colossal and her “Kook year” was one for the books. It was still technically ongoing, but she was back to being a fish out of water in this callous fucking school, her only reprieve coming at night and on weekends when she could fall back into the fold of Pogue life now that she’d finally gotten her old friends, her real friends, to forgive her.

But the incessant name calling, the writing on the walls, the near total isolation for eight hours a day, five days a week? A couple hours with the Pogues wasn’t enough to combat that and Kiara felt bitter, hot, angry tears stinging the back of her eyes as she shouldered her way out of the stall.

“Stupid fucking Kooks,” she muttered under her breath as she reached the sinks. Annoyance flooding through her, she aggressively began washing her hands, glancing up to look in the mirror after a few moments.

She could finally recognize herself again, the way she hadn’t been able to all those months playing make believe with Sarah and her fake friends, but she wasn’t happy here. Nothing at this godforsaken, elitist, fascist school made her happy except —

In the mirror behind her, the bathroom door burst open. “Oh, Kie, hey!”

Abigail Mitchell practically floated into the room with ease, a smile on her lips. She was in the middle of pulling her dark hair back with a brightly colored scrunchie, the red color matching the strawberry earrings dangling from her ears. Her eyes, those impossibly blue eyes that always reminded Kie of the ocean, only seemed to brighten at the sight of her friend.

Friend.

Where Sarah had been a momentary life preserver, Abigail Mitchell had been a saving grace, waltzing into Kiara’s life at the Kook Academy in the eleventh hour, right when she’d gone from top of the heap to team reject. Kiara had been hesitant, resistant even, to making another friend on this side of the island but  Abby was ... different, to say the least.

Like most of Figure Eight residents, she came from old money and she was on friendly-ish terms with some of the Kooks but the difference was all in the perspective. Despite the outward appearance and the obnoxiously large mansion she lived in, Abby had lived on the Cut for seven years before her mother died and she was shipped off to live with her grandparents. For seven years, she had known the world that Kiara had one foot in.

And although it had been years since her grandparents gained custody of her, most of Figure Eight still saw Abby as the outsider with the flighty mom. Good enough to converse with at school and at functions because of her status as a Mitchell, but not good enough for anything else, apparently. She learned how to play the part, to look the part, to make paper thin “friendships” with those around her, but Kie had been lucky enough to actually get to know the real Abby — the girl that Abby was and longed to be.

Even though they hadn’t been friends long, Kie just knew that Abby fully got what it was like to be on the outside, never truly fitting in, and not having a desire to fit in. From the picture Abby had painted for Kie, she’d never really had any real friends here, had never been able to see eye to eye with any of the facades the people around them liked to meticulously maintain.

And when Kiara had been kicked to the curb, Abby had been the only one show her actual, real kindness. Abby just ... got her, and after what Kiara had gone through, there was nothing more comforting than someone who just understood.

“Hey yourself,” Kiara mumbled, forcing a smile on her face as she finished washing hands, shaking them dry into the sink. She tried to make the expression look genuine as she turned to face Abby, although the effort was in vain.

Her lack of a good mood was apparently noticeable at the drop of a hat, a frown working its way onto Abby’s face. “Are you okay?”

Unconsciously, Kiara’s eyes flickered to the stall.

Abby caught Kiara’s glance at the stall, her brows knitting together in confusion. Her gaze shifted between the door and Kie for a moment, wheels turning in her mind, putting the pieces together. 

“Oh, come on,” she mumbled under her breath, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder as she marched over.

“Abby —”

Before Kiara could even finish her sentence, Abby had the door open, eyes locked on the words defacing it.

“This shit’s still going on?” Abby cursed, turning around on her heel to look at Kie in question. But her annoyance wasn’t directed at her, Abby’s eyes flitting to the ceiling as she continued, “I swear to God, everyone at this school has the mentality of a badly written teen soap villain.”

Kiara shrugged, rolling her eyes. “I’m used to it, everyone here hates me, I’ve gotten the memo.”

She wasn’t fine, but there was no way she was about to sob in the bathroom like a three year old just because a bunch of assholes who flaunted daddy’s credit card everywhere wanted to have her name in their mouths constantly. And not in front of Abby, especially not in front of her.

Kiara wasn’t really sure what it was about Abby that made her so comfortable and on her toes all at once. Sarah had royally fucked with her view of friendship outside of John B, JJ, and Pope, and she spent most days waiting for the other shoe to drop, to become the punchline of another joke, for Abby to ghost her too.

But then Abby would give her that look, that soft little look like the one she wore right now and the world would seem slightly less bad. Abby took short, quick steps over to the sinks, holding out an almost hesitant hand to Kiara. She looked nervous almost, like Kiara was going to bat it away, but the tension in her shoulders dropped when Kiara accepted.

Two warm, soft palms met in the middle, a jingle of multiple bracelets on either wrist as soft expressions were on either face. Their eyes locked for a moment before Abby was gently tugging her in, wrapping her arms around Kiara in a comforting embrace. Kiara’s eyes squeezed shut as the sting of tears bit at the edges of her sight as the shorter girl tightened the hug just a little more.

“Hey, look,” Abby said after a moment. She slipped loose from the hug, hands drifting up to hold onto Kiara’s shoulders, giving her a stern look. “Fuck ‘em. No one at this school is worth your time, okay?”

You are, Kie thought absentmindedly. She didn’t say that, though, the words stationary on the tip of her tongue. It was a bold statement, a heavy statement, not one for a newly blossoming friendship. But it was the truth, whether she said it out loud or not.

A small, yet vibrant smile broke out on Kiara’s face as she repeated, “Fuck ‘em.”