Life Of A Bitch

36

The same evening, I pay a visit to Brenna's house again.

Aaron is there too, thoroughly confused and very unwilling to give up his phone to me.

"I'm not giving my phone to her," He argues like a child- it seems he will throw a tantrum next.

"Please, do it." Brenna says, folding her arms across her chest- something which I find very intimidating.

"I won't." He snaps. "And why are you suddenly so interested in her case? It's because you think Michelle did it and you're glad to do something to punish her, isn't it?"

I turn to Brenna to see how she responds. But she just purses her lips together, walks towards Aaron and kicks him hard in the shin. I flinch.

"Ouch! Why would you do that?" He yelps out in pain and grabs his leg. She snatches his phone from him and hands it to me.

"Bought the cover?" She asks.

I nod, taking it out of my bag. I'm honestly ashamed of showing it to them, I don't why. It's so-

"It's so pink!" Brenna yells in disgust. I nod and quickly put it on my phone. "It's got even a bunny on it."

"Well, Lana chose it for me," I say, trying not to cringe myself. This cover was fine all these days. So why do I suddenly feel embarrassed about it?

"Deformat the whole phone," she orders, opening her laptop. "Here, access your photos from iCloud and load them onto the phone. What was the wallpaper?"

I deadpan, taking the laptop from her. "You know, whatever we're doing, I'm sure that the apps, the photos and the wallpaper don't matter."

"Every detail matters!" She shouts into my ear. "Do it."

I groan and start de-formatting the whole phone. I kind of feel sorry for Aaron, who just sits with an old phone in his hands, scrolling through it and sulking at me every now and then.

But if whatever plan Brenna has plays gets me my phone back, I'm sorry Aaron but I don't give a shit whether you're sad or not.

It takes a while to just download Instagram as her WiFi is slow, so I try to strike up a conversation.

"Hey Aaron," I call him. He looks at me, narrowing his eyes and growls, "What?"

"Heard from Brandon yet?"

"What do you care," he huffs, lying on Brenna's bed and pulling up the blanket on him, resulting in Brenna shouting at him to fold it back the way it was.

"Just asking," I say, shrugging.

Aaron is silent for a moment and looks at me. "I texted him," he says after a while. "He says he is fine."

"Obviously he isn't," Brenna says with a genuine pout. I look at her, while YouTube is downloading. She looks up from her phone and we make eye-contact.

"You know what," she says suddenly. "You're not that bad of a girl, you know? Aaron what do you say?"

"She took my phone and deleted everything from it," he said, staring at the ceiling. "She's bad enough."

"You can get back everything from the cloud, stop whining," she says and looks at me. "Like, not praising you or anything; you're still dumb but you aren't rude as you are at school, you're not that arrogant and now that I look at you without makeup, you're actually pretty."

I try not to blush and keep my expression blank. Aaron looks at me too and agrees, adding, "But I hate her for taking my phone."

"Michelle is totally changed, man." Brenna says, after a while. "Like, I kind of figured something was up when we stopped hanging out after school. She was always making excuses like- oh, today I gotta tutor a student, oh I got cheer practice today-""

Wait.

"She's in the cheer team?" I asked, shocked. They nod but I still don't believe it.

"Nobody told me anything about it," I say, frowning.

"Because you aren't important anymore." Brenna says, standing up and doing some stretching exercises.

"I could say the same to you about Michelle," Aaron says, smirking. "You aren't important to her anymore."

"Shut up, dickface," she snaps, throwing a pen at him. He yells at her to stop being so violent, but she pays no heed and keeps on throwing pens at him.

I look at them and smile. They are so cute.

I then realize that even on this gloomy Sunday evening, I had much more fun just watching Aaron and Brenna banter about trivial things than I had with my girl gang for all these years, even with Stephanie.

After an hour of laughing and quarrelling over stupid things, I present Brenna with an exact clone of my stolen phone.

"Okay, jerks," she announces while Aaron is still rolling on the bed over a very dumb 'That's-what-she-said' joke. "Time to tell you the plan!"

We all lean in to listen to the overly-dramatic narration of her plan. I don't know why we lean in like that, as there is no one else in the room except for us.

But after Brenna finishes telling the whole plan to us, we stare at her.

I don't know who's got more cunning, Callaghan or her.

As if sensing my thoughts, Brenna smiles smugly and says, "Darling, birds of a feather flock together."