“I know she’s your best friend, and I’m sorry, but I wish Lin Jiaying wasn’t coming to the picnic today,” a classmate said to Shi Nuan as they crowded the girls’ room mirror.

Shi Nuan was refreshing her mascara, and the surprise of it made her poke her eyelid, leaving a brown smear.  “What, you too?”  Shi Nuan was slightly on the short side, and in terms of looks, thoroughly adorable, with peach blossom eyes, dimpled cheeks and prettily shaped, pouty lips.  She also had an angelic singing voice and was considered a school flower.

“Yes,” the classmate said, looking unhappy.  “I mean, she looks so angry all the time.  She’s like an emotional black hole that sucks all the fun and life out of everything.”  

“Try being stuck with her for the last seventeen years,” Shi Nuan got a touch-up wipe from her bag and swabbed at the smear.  

“But you’ve been best friends forever,” another classmate said, “I remember back in kindergarten—.”

“Our mothers were best friends,” Shi Nuan corrected her.  “So they made us be best friends.  Of course, then her mother died, so it was, ‘She lost her mom, so we need to cheer her up.’”

“Her mother died?”  the first classmate wrinkled her brow in sympathy.  “I’m sure I saw her with Jiaying at the art show.”

“That was her stepmother.  Her birth mother passed away over ten years ago,” Shi Nuan said.  “She was an artist, and some solvent or something got mislabeled at the factory. Anyway, it was an industrial concentrate instead of regular strength, so she died of toxic fumes.  They got tons of compensation.  

“Anyhow, ever since then it’s been, ‘We can’t leave Jiaying out, she’s going through hard times.  Her dad’s getting remarried.’  Then, ‘Her stepmother’s cold to her.’  ‘Her grandfather died.’ ‘Her stepmother’s having a baby.’  ‘Her father died.’  ‘Her grandmother had a stroke.’  ‘Her grandmother had another stroke.’  She’s so pathetic!   

“And she hardly ever wants to do stuff I want.  She gets motion sick, so we can’t go to amusement parks because she throws up on the rides. She dropped out of dance classes last year because she ‘doesn’t enjoy them anymore.’  So my mom wanted me to drop out too!  I had to fight to get to keep on going!  She says she doesn’t have time to make videos for Weibo anymore—I mean, all I want her to do is film and edit them, she doesn’t have to come up with the ideas or choreograph and star in them.  But she won’t help at all, and she knows how important they are for my ambitions. 

 “She doesn’t take care of her skin, she doesn’t have enough self-respect to dress up and do her make up when she goes places. It’s embarrassing to be seen with her.  And I’ve been shackled to her my whole life!  I can’t wait to finally go to a different school and get away from her!” 

As she listed off her grievances against Lin Jiaying, her voice rose in volume and pitch, silencing all the other chatter in the girls’ room.  There was a moment of silence when she was done, broken by the sound of someone flushing their toilet.

Then a stall opened.  It was Lin Jiaying herself, her face dark with anger.  She spoke quietly into the silence. “You don’t have to wait to go to a different school.” 

“Jiaying! But—but—wasn’t your exam in the East wing? What are you doing in the West toilet?”  Shi Nuan stammered. 

“Closed for cleaning.  Somebody threw up all over the place.  Exam nerves,” Lin Jiaying explained. “It wasn’t me.  After all, it’s not like we’re having the exam on a roller coaster.”

A few classmates murmured to each other as Lin Jiaying went to the sinks and washed her hands carefully, like someone who relies on routine to keep from doing something off the rails.  In that moment, sheer force of personality kept all of them silent like a palpable force oppressing them. Lin Jiaying had gone from being a black hole to a silent supernova of cold anger.

Then she reached into her purse and took out a ‘Best Friends’ charm and a few other trinkets of the kind that girls who are friends exchange.  “Here.”  She dropped the handful on the floor in front of Shi Nuan.

“I’ll return everything else you ever gave me tomorrow.  Give them to whoever is your real best friend or do whatever you want with them.  You can keep whatever I gave you.  I don’t want those things anymore. Don’t worry,” Lin Jiaying looked around the room at their other classmates.  “I won’t go to the picnic.  I don’t want to ruin it for everyone else.”  Her voice broke a little as she said the last words.

She left, leaving the rest of their classmates behind, slightly in shock.  For a moment, Shi Nuan stood frozen, hearing Lin Jiaying’s footsteps running down the hall.

Then she realized. If they broke off their friendship, her mother would find out.  Her mother would be angry—no, worse, disappointed in her!  Shi Nuan’s mother loved Lin Jiaying like another daughter, for her late friend’s sake.  Deep down, Shi Nuan was afraid that her mother loved Lin Jiaying more than her because Jiaying was all that was left of her friend.

Panicking, Shi Nuan took off after her.   “Jiaying!  Xiao Jiaying, wait! I didn’t mean it!  It’s just with exams and all—!” 

It was too late.  Lin Jiaying was gone.   She turned back to see that her classmates had come out of the washroom.  The expressions on their faces were…interesting.  They were looking at her as if she were a specimen mounted on a slide for a microscope.

“You know, Shi Nuan, we don’t think you should come to the picnic either,” one of them said. 

“Yeah.  We just can’t breathe for all the fragrance coming off of you,” another chimed in.

“Fragrance?” Shi Nuan asked, taking a sniff of her blouse.  She never used heavy perfumes.

“Oh, yes.  Pure White Lotus,” tittered the one who said she smelled too strong.

“I thought it was more like Green Tea B*tch,” said another girl.  “Anyway, everybody knows if you’re going to hate on somebody in the girls’ room, first check the stalls before you say anything.  Rookie error in Mean Girls 101.”

“I am not! I’m not a White Lotus or---any of those things.  I’m just tired and, and, stressed out!”  Shi Nuan protested.

“Ooh, imagine being tired and stressed out plus having a so-called best friend who wants you to spend hours and hours shooting and editing her videos and going to dance classes when she’s struggling with stuff at home.  Imagine how bad that would be.  Face it, Nuan—you’re a bad friend.”

A/N: A White Lotus is a girl/woman who projects the image of being a lovely, delicate flower while secretly being mean and vindictive.  A Green Tea B*tch looks pure and serene on the surface but is anything but.  A School Flower  is one of the most, or the most, beautiful and admired girls in school. The male equivalent is the School Grass.