< Friday >
"Alright class," Miss Bustier raised her hand up for silence. The class stopped talking to each other, stopped doing what they were doing and turned to her, their ears opened for what Miss Bustier was about to tell them all.
"Today we have a new student joining us," Miss Bustier explained. "She will be here shortly, as she is still picking out her locker, but her name is Savannah. Like I say with the rest of the other new kids; treat her nicely and make her feel welcomed."
"Whew," Alison seemed to wipe sweat off her forehead. "For a second there, I thought the new student was going to be Lila. But it's a good thing it's a different girl joining."
"I don't think Lila would come back to school after what happened," Chloe let out a small laugh. "She would just be embarrassed out of her mind, and probably end up leaving the school for the second time again."
Marinette looked up when she over-heard the girls talking. She felt a little disturbed, feeling as if she was the only one who didn't know who Lila Rossi was. Sure, last year, she never got in Adrien's business, wasn't close enough to him to bother to care about what was going on in his life. She never really cared about the press conference he held, or the news that were going online. But she still felt that she should have known who Lila Rossi was, just like everyone else.
If I asked Adrien, would he be willing to talk about it or would he brush me off?
She took out her phone at the sound of it buzzing from the new message she got. Realizing it was from Alya, she clicked on it to see what it said.
☆☆
☆☆9:10am| A - I won't be in school today, so if you can bring in my homeworks for me, that would be great. A lot is happening at home
right now.☆☆
☆☆
Marinette couldn't erase the worries from her eyes. She hadn't seen Alya in a while. Actually, she hadn't seen any of her best friends, because she had been so caught up with hanging out with Adrien. She felt bad and guilty for not realizing that her friends could possibly have some troubles just as her.
☆☆
☆☆9:11am| M - what's wrong though? You okay? Anything happening at home? Do you need me to come over just in case you want to talk
about it?☆☆
☆☆
☆☆
☆☆9:12am| A - no, it's fine. You don't have to come over after school to talk about it. But later on if you're not busy at all, come by. Maybe at around 6 would be okay. I need help looking for Etta☆☆
☆☆
Marinette re-read the message. Before she could reply back though, the voice of Miss Bustier spoke up.
"Class, this is Savannah," Miss Bustier smiled as she looked at the girl that had just walked inside the classroom.
The girl had a chocolate cherry retro bob with tucked in textured curls. She was wearing a pink off-shoulder top with blue shorts and pink sneaker, huge round glasses on her eyes.
"Hi," The new girl seemed a bit shy. "My name is Savannah. Savannah Fleur."
The girl's eyes seemed to quickly dart over to Adrien, who was busy at the back of the class, writing something down, not listening about the new student, seeing that it was just another girl.
"You sound a lot like Lila Rossi!" Someone pointed out, and when the whole class turned, they realized it was Alison herself that had spoke. "Do you know her?"
Savannah nodded. "Who doesn't know her? I do sound like Lila, yes, people have told me that, and that's sort of offending, seeing as Lila is the biggest liar in the entire world. Please, while I'm here, don't compare me to that girl. I'm not like her!"
"Ooh," Alison chuckled. "I like you already. There's an empty seat right beside me. You can sit down here."
"Alright, alright, don't talk so rude about others. I know what Lila did was wrong, but don't hold grudges against her," Miss Bustier exclaimed as she watched Savannah go to sit down.
"You're just too nice," Alison muttered.
While they chatted with each other, Marinette took this chance to get out her phone and finally search up who this Lila Rossi was. A few answers came up on her screen and she tapped on one site.
There was picture of a girl, which Marinette assumed was Lila. Lila stood at average height with olive green eyes and long, hip-length chestnut brown hair with bangs similar to a horse mane. Her hair was loosely tied at the tips with orange bands where she had two shorter strands of hair.
She was wearing red-orange wristbands on her right arm. She wore a red-orange jacket over a dark gray romper that has tiny white spots. Additionally, she wore light gray tights and brown high heel boots.
Looking at her for the first time, Lila didn't exactly look like a bad person, but reading the comments people had posted of her, she could tell that Lila was not a very well-liked person.
Though as she looked from Lila to Savannah, she could see the similarities between them. Their faces looked a bit alike; the only difference was that Savannah Fleur had freckles and glasses while Lila Rossi did not.
"Alright, so we're doing this," Miss Bustier got out a stack of papers from behind her desk. "You all will be writing at least 5 pages on what you think the meaning of love and pain is.
"You could write it as in what you've experienced, or what someone else has experienced. You can work with a partner but you both must have your own 5-paged work."
"5 pages?!" A boy whined. "My hand is going to fall off before I even reach to the 3rd page!"
"Mark, now is not the time for that. This will be 15% of your grade, so you better work hard on it," Miss Bustier warned. "You can do a bit of sketching if you'd like, but that would have to be on a different piece of papers, so I still want a 5-paged writing of what I asked for."
Marinette looked down. Pain? Love? She doesn't necessarily mean that type of romantic love, right?
Miss Bustier must have had some special powers and read her mind, because her next sentence surprised Marinette, answering her question.
"It can be any type of love, doesn't have to be necessarily that those of romantic love. It could be brotherly or sisterly love, or could be motherly or fatherly love," Miss Bustier explained. "Just as long as it explains about love and pain!"
Motherly? Fatherly? Suddenly Marinette knew what she should do, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to go with it.
"I'll give you 2 weeks to finish this, so the next 2 Fridays, you'll represent what you collected with the class. If you don't want to represent in front of the class, you can always just come to me and do it privately," Miss Bustier continued. "Alright now, before you start brainstorming, just to remind you that the Survival Week is starting on Monday."
Marinette widened her eyes at that news. They did Survival Week every year in this school. It was basically for having fun, but nobody knew why the principal named it 'Survival Week'.
"Alright, you can start brainstorming."
Marinette realized—never in life had she ever said 'I love you' to her adoptive parents. She remembered saying those words to her real mother as she left, but for some reason, she forgot what her real mother looked like.
Students in class were moving around, finding partners, or finding somewhere more comfortable in the room to work alone in. Marinette looked back at Adrien, who stayed alone at his desk, still writing down God-knows-what.
She was about to stand up, when she felt a girl brush past her. She looked up to realize it was Savannah, walking up to Adrien, and it made her sit back down.
Her curious mind couldn't take it anymore after 2 seconds, so she moved closer to the two of them, to hear what they were saying.
"I'm still so sorry for bumping into you when I walked inside school. I was just so excited and nervous for my first day that I didn't watch where I was going," Savannah was saying.
"It's fine," Adrien waved her off, before returning back to what he was writing.
"I hope you don't hate me."
"No, as long as you apologized, there's no reason to hate you," Adrien shook his head, not looking at her.
"Thanks." Savannah looked down. "Um, besides Alison and Chloe, you're the first one I've talked to here. I kinda. . . Feel nervous around everyone else."
Adrien looked up, knowing this was going somewhere.
"Alison and Chloe are already working together, and there can only be 2 people in a group. I don't really want to work alone, so I was hoping-"
"I knew it," Adrien muttered.
"Oh, I'm sorry if this question is bothering you," Savannah quickly said. "I promise I'm not like those other girls. I'm not going to do anything, I promise. I just want a partner."
That was when Adrien noticed Marinette not too far away. When the two of them made eye contact, Marinette quickly looked away in embarrassment.
"Actually, I'm already working with someone else. Sorry," Adrien then replied. "Besides, I'm sure if you asked Miss Bustier, she would allow you to work with Chloe and Alison."
"Oh, who are you working with? I just never saw you talk to anyone, so how did you get a partner?" Savannah asked. "Obviously you're lying, but that's fine. You didn't have to lie, you could have just told me no. I get it. I'll go find a different partner. Thanks for your time." Savannah stood up from the seat and started heading back towards a new person.
Adrien looked back at Marinette after Savannah was away from him. He motioned for her to come over, and Marinette started heading towards him.
"You have a new partner, huh?" Marinette chuckled.
"I just didn't want to work with her," Adrien looked up at her. "I mean, I just have this weird feeling whenever she comes that close to me. She sounds like Lila, but she's. . .different."
"How different?"
"For one thing, Lila wouldn't leave if I told her I had a new partner. Instead she would stay and try to find out who that new partner is, then she would try to convince me to be her partner."
"This Lila Rossi really sounds awful," Marinette shook her head. "Before I didn't know who she was, but I searched her up. What she did was terrible, but I kinda feel like people are over-reacting ."
"W-what do you mean?"
"I mean, the thing happened a year ago," Marinette said, "and yet everyone still hasn't let it pass. Sure, what she did was horrible, she lied, made fake pictures of you and her and posted them, but people need to stop thinking about it and think of it as yesterday's news. It's kinda going too far with all those mean posts as well."
"I agree, I swear I do, but it's not like I can stop all those mean posts. I've tried taking them down, but there's only one of me and well. . .too many of them." Adrien spoke. "Oh, and by the way, Savannah is walking over to us now."
Marinette looked behind her, and sure enough Savannah was walking towards them. She looked back at Adrien, having the thought that Savannah was going to cause trouble.
Savannah reached over to them, and looked at Marinette, before she looked back at Adrien. "So this is your partner, Adrien? Wow, that's nice."
"Y-yeah," Adrien muttered.
"She must be an incredible girl for you to pick her," Savannah spoke up again. "I mean I thought your partner was going to be a boy, because you're never close to any girls in this school."
"Yeah," Adrien said again.
"So, is Marinette your girlfriend? Is that why you're never close to other girls?"
Marinette widened her eyes at the question. How could Savannah even have the guts to ask that?
"Oh sorry. It's just that I've seen pictures online about you and Marinette," Savannah said. "You haven't done anything to take the pictures down, so I thought the rumor was true."
Marinette clenched her fists. Those girls never took those pictures down?!
"Marinette isn't my girlfriend," Adrien said, answering the question. "It's just that she's the only girl I'm that close to. Don't believe everything you see online!"
"Thanks for the advice then," Savannah had a huge grin on her face. Then she wiped it off and turned to Marinette. "I wasn't trying to be rude or anything. I was just curious."
"Yeah, yeah," Marinette brushed it off as if it was nothing, and soon Savannah left them alone again.
"Okay, one thing that she definitely has in common with Lila is that she's so annoying!" Adrien rolled his eyes, then sighed. "Alright, let's not focus on this girl. Why don't we actually brain-storm for the writing we're doing."
"So we're actually working together?"
"Do you want to?"
Marinette smiled. "Yeah, sure." It would be great to work with Adrien, maybe this time she could try getting closer to him.
Maybe this time Adrien could actually soon become her best friend.
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