Love Next Door

"Oh my God." The three words were spoken by my best friend, sitting across the table from me. Rebecca looked across the table at me with eyes dancing beneath dark hair. Alec, she said slowly, broke up with Melanie king. So who was back at the party after all. My other friend, Samantha, sitting beside her, lifted her brow. "Show me that," she said as she snatched away a copy of the Seaview High Gossip Review. The Seaview High Gossip Review was our school's number one source for all the latest gossip. From breakups to overdramatic couple fights, and who was supposedly sleeping with who, it was all in that one paper every week. It was basically our high school's equivalent of Gossip Girl. But oh, the secrets in here, were the same. I looked at the front page of the paper and saw the headline was written in big, bold letters: THE GOLDEN BOY DUMPS KING FOR ANOTHER GIRL "You knew that, didn't you?" Samantha questioned, her grey eyes questioning my reply. "Yeah," I said nodding. I was terrible at lying to my friends, so I didn't bother trying. "He was coming home drunk on Friday, and told me he'd dropped her." "What happened?" Rebecca squealed. "Tell me everything!" I explained all about what happened, but I wasn't actually listening to the story. My gaze kept wandering off to the table where Alec was sitting. "I just can't believe you did that for him," Samantha said. "It's like each time he gets home drunk and depressed, you help him like he's a little kid, and then the next day he's got another girl." Rebecca shot Samantha a pointed glare. "Well, I think it's sweet. She knows everything about him, and then he'll finally realise she was the right girl for him all along." "GOD, Rebecca! There's nothing romantic about Clara's life, waiting just around the corner," said Samantha and she rolled her eyes. " Oh, please!" Rebecca said, glancing at me. " I think he dumped Melanie for you." "Yeah, just like he dumped Christy and Kate for you," Samantha said sarcastically. In the meantime she waved her hands in front of my face to get my attention, but I was not the least interested. 'Clara, there's a world of difference between what you are doing, which is blatantly ogling, and giving a quick glance.' That snapped me out of my trance. Samantha and Rebecca were complete opposites; they could not have been more different. Rebecca was the type of girl who simply knew that her Prince Charming would come into her life by riding up on a white horse, and whisk her away to live happily ever after in a castle. And Samantha was the girl who'd look you dead in the eye and say, "I hate horses." I still wonder how I ever came to be friends with those two. "Oh, as if!" exclaimed Rebecca, looking up at her classmates. "If anyone should be the role model that we should be following, it's not you. When you're not giving us lectures about how to stare at guys less and talk about them less, you're staring at Matt shamelessly!" Samantha's grey eyes widened. "I DO NOT!" she protested. Matt Hendricks was a jock. He played football, but he was never all that popular because he was never all that controversial. He was cute, too, with his sandy-brown hair and, unlike all the other boys on the team, besides Alec, for example, he was not a retard. " You bet I do!" Rebecca and I yelled together. "Fine," Samantha said with some difficulty as her face was as crimson as her hair. "How long have you known." Rebecca and I used to love mocking Samantha when she had a crush. I mean, with her skeptical attitude about both of our conceptions of love, mine with Alec and Rebecca's with a guy from a Mills & Boon novel, it was shocking that Samantha dated more than either of us. "Well, you can't really miss it," I grinned, taking this time to give her a dig about guys. "Particularly when the two of you are gazing into one another's eyes in Mr Murdoch's class." Composing herself, she was starting to respond when a voice cut her off. "So, how are my favourite losers doing?" I froze, looked up and saw Natalie Anderson smirking at us from right in front of us. Natalie Anderson The queen of the cheerleading squad, the hot girl at school, and the girl whose whole life revolved around making mine a living hell. It was as if, on some perfect day, she just woke up and ploughed down all over again her old BFF. Natalie and I were best friends in Jr. high. We had remained close during the first few months of high school, but then something happened at Nick's party one night, and she turned into a b***h. I wasn't sure what exactly happened that night. When I attempted to bring it up to her, Natalie scolded me, just like she used to do to all the other girls I used to be friends with. Four years later, Natalie was the captain of the cheerleading squad. I was the lonely, introverted girl no one would notice if not for Alec who always greeted me and spoke to me. Not that it scored me any more brownie points. In fact it probably just earned me some stares from all the girls who, like me, had a crush on him. But the one who hated it even more than everyone was Natalie. For all, she and Alec had been dating for two years before he broke up with her for teasing me so hard she almost made me cry. That mistake in front of Alec sealed the deal on their breakup. Apart from that, nobody was even aware of how close Alec and I had become. Natalie had come to the bathroom like always to make a fool of me and Alec saw her. Just like that, it was the end of their union. Good riddance. From that point on, everyone knew me, but those moments of five-minutes-of-fame went right out the window when Alec found a new girlfriend and shattered me into a million pieces. From that point on, she had been harassing me constantly, especially whenever Alec wasn't there. Clara, I just want to tell you that I am so, so, so sorry for everything I have done to you. Wait. What? If I was mistaken, hadn't she called us losers, like, a second ago? Samantha gave her a deadpan stare. "You just called us losers five seconds ago." It was as if we were telepathic. "I said 'favourite losers'," Natalie replied. She faced me, threw on the best innocent smile she could muster, and said, "I'm really sorry." My friends looked just as surprised as I was likely to have been. I pinched myself to make sure that I was awake, and no, Natalie was still there with her large eyes staring at me as if to beg. I whirled around and saw Alec staring at us. Of course, that made perfect sense. She was trying to reunite with Alec. I stared at her, trying not to laugh. I wanted to scream that I knew everything. I could see that her tactic would never work. "I'm truly sorry, Clara," she said again. "I swear I will make it up to you. I love you so much. But I've got to go, my boyfriend is ringing me." She drew out the word boyfriend as she trotted towards Alec's table. "Why is she coming over to Alec's table?" Rebecca interrupted in panic. All eyes turned towards Alec and Natalie. Alec grinned when he saw her and stood up. He leaned over and said something quickly in her ear, she nodded in return. And then he kissed her. Cell phones have already been retrieved from pockets by students trying to snap a photo. Yep now we knew what the front page of next weeks paper was going to look like.