More murmurs about Connor travel down the hallway to reach Tomika Mochrie stuffing art utensils into her already-crowded locker. She’s trying to hide them from the people of Junes Landing Middle School. It’s not that people don’t like Tomika for having an interest in art; it’s just that art isn’t commonplace at all. No one at Junes Landing is artistic, and the notable few that are would be bombarded with requests to do banners, costumes, and other stuff that takes too much time away from Tomika. She’s already focused on her big, personal project: a bust.
Tomika is more than just an artist with a traditional paintbrush and canvas; she’s excellent at sculpting, too. Granted, she doesn’t sculpt anything tremendously hard, especially since she’s only in seventh grade. The bust, however, is about to be the third in her collection. She’s done her dad and mom before, but she wants to do a student. She just doesn’t know who yet.
You see, Tomika doesn’t necessarily have “friends.” They are more like acquaintances. She used to have one best friend, but she doesn’t like to talk about her. Regardless, she’s not afraid of wanting to try and find more people she could call than just acquaintances. They would be more worthy of having their bust sculpted. Tomika actually has her eyes on a group of popular people: Chloe McNamara, Eliza Valentine, and Heather Schuyler. They are the most popular girls in the seventh grade. They think they run the school, but Tomika doesn’t want to spoil the surprise to them that they don’t. After all, that would ruin all chances of becoming friends with them. Tomika wants to fit in with them because she’ll finally not be seen as just a textbook tomboy. She wants a boyfriend, more importantly, and hanging out with the group would get her exposed to a lot of boys, or at least away from certain ones.
Tomika then spots the girls heading into the bathroom. This is perfect; she’ll get the chance to collect all the current gossip and possibly impress them with her vast knowledge. All she has to do is time her entrance right, get into a stall, and quietly eavesdrop on the conversation. She couldn’t do it for too long, though. That was because the girls had a tendency to be late to classes, and Tomika didn’t want to become them entirely; she just wanted to fit in long enough to get enough recognition from the more attractive boys.
So, hunched over, she makes her way to the bathroom, trying to avoid being noticed. She gets a quick glimpse of Heather, the leader, pulling out her expensive makeup from her bag before noticing Tomika. Tomika swiftly avoids any eye contact and goes straight for the stalls and shuts the door. She can hear them giggling and calling her ugly, but this was normal behavior and nothing to get worked up on.
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“So,” Heather starts, “what’s the tea, girls? You know I got grounded, like, last week for my 32 in Science and literally had no access to my phone.”
“I heard Noelle has been getting really jealous of literally anyone who talks to her boyfriend, Justin,” Chloe chimes in.
“Oh, please,” Eliza scoffs, “Noelle has always been so defensive with him. She’s treating him like he’s private property and everyone is illegally stepping on it.”
"No me digas, girls,” Heather dryly replies, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“But Heather,” Eliza whines, “we’ve already talked about anything interesting! From Greg cheating on Rory for Kylie to the major texting war between you and—”
“We do not talk about that ‘texting war’, Eliza,” Heather angrily replies, “I thought you’d know that by now.”
“One more slip like that, and you’ll be back to being like that loser in the stalls,” Chloe warns, then proceeds to bang on the stall door. “Open up! We know you’re trying to be slick!”
“W-what do you mean?” Tomika asks, knowing exactly what they mean.
“Don’t be stupid with me; we all know you’re chasing a wild dream by trying to be with us, loser!”
Tomika slams the door open right into Chloe’s face. Heather and Eliza gasp, but Tomika is already sprinting down the hallway on the edge of tears. She already knew she was the loser that no one seemed to appreciate, but hearing it from Chloe made things worse. It gave the words a whole new meaning, and it wasn’t good at all.
She continues to run with her eyes blurred with tears. She eventually runs straight into Connor, sending them both into the ground. Some of the students try to help them up, but Connor gets rid of them rather easily. Tomika and Connor both get themselves up with ease.
"After they fix themselves, Tomika starts to apologize, “Hey, um, I’m… er, well, I’m sorry for running into—”
“It’s cool,” Connor replies.
“No, it’s not cool. In fact, it was very dangerous.”
“No, no, I get it. You saw I was the most vulnerable person in your way to humiliate so you ran into me and made me fall.”
“What?” Tomika replies in disbelief, almost laughing, “Why would I do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because you needed someone to victimize today, and you couldn’t even pick someone your own size, pipsqueak.”
“Wait, no, that’s—”
“Forget it, I’m out of here. Thanks for making me late, nerd,” Connor runs off.
Tomika tries to scream back at him, but it’s no use. She drops her head and sulks to class. Everything then just chillingly goes back to normal, almost as if nothing ever happened. Maybe that’s a good thing.