Red Herring ✔️

36. Loose Lips Sink Ships

"So are you gonna tell me about Yazmin?" 

Her eyes blinked gently, washing the daze out of her eyes to focus on the TV which played one of their favorite movies - The Breakfast Club. As soon as the four pumpkin patch troopers returned home, Mazie nearly demanded they chill out and watch a movie, hoping that she wouldn't have to converse with Amelia because she couldn't sort out her thoughts or manage to kick herself out of the funk which barricaded her from enjoying an evening with her best friend. 

"What do you mean?" Mazie asked, furrowing her brow in confusion. 

Amelia turned on her side and tucked her legs underneath her, adjusting the blanket to cover her feet. The two of them lounged comfortably on the sectional couch in the living room with the lights dimmed, candles lit, and the family upstairs asleep in their beds. "I saw you talking to Yazmin. But you haven't said anything about it yet. So I'm assuming that she said something to piss you off." 

She couldn't really say what was bothering her. The only person that she could vent to was Christian, but that didn't seem like a possibility with the fact that half of what Yazmin said had to do with him. Mazie sat with a rigid spine and tense muscles, expecting the police to come knocking down her door to cart her off to jail for copying personal files from a professional counsellor. 

"You're being quiet," Amelia pointed out. "Which means she might have hurt your feelings or said something to make you question yourself."

Mazie snickered, dropping her head into her hands and rubbing her fingertips gently under her eyes. Within the past few days, Mazie noticed that all of the stress was taking a toll on her skin. It was dull and lifeless and the occasional pimples and zits popped up unannounced. "I hate that you're always right." She sighed, rubbing the ends of the blanket between her fingertips to distract herself. "She said I'm self-righteous first of all."

Amelia sneered at this. "Um...why? You're definitely not." 

Mazie shook her head. Suddenly, she wanted to blurt it all out and barely held herself back from doing so. "It was more so about Christian. She said that he....he put me on the map." 

"Like..."

"Like...." Mazie rolled her eyes. She hated that she was saying this out loud. "Like people didn't notice me before. Guys....guys didn't notice me before. That I'm not super popular and people don't pay attention to me. But now that Christian has shown an interest in me...it put me on the map. Now I'm a person - or a destination - that other guys care about," she explained. 

"You know that's not true, Maze. You don't need a guy to validate your importance and your value," Amelia said immediately in an attempt to comfort her. 

"Right, I know that," Mazie hurriedly replied. She did know that. But she also knew she wasn't super popular. She only had a few hundred friends on Instagram. People knew who she was but not necessarily anything about her. "She just made it sound like I wasn't anybody cool or special until Christian paid me any attention." Mazie turned her head towards Amelia to look at her. "It made me kind of mad at Christian."

Amelia sunk down further into the couch. "Why?" 

Mazie shrugged. "It didn't have anything to do with him. It was Yazmin who said all of that not him. But what if....what if he thinks that?" 

"So what if he does?" Amelia pressed her. 

"Because that's not okay!" Mazie almost yelled and remembered to lower her voice so as not to wake the family upstairs. "I don't need him to make me popular! I never asked for that!"