"Hey, where's Romeo?" Jeraud asked, partly because he was truly curious, partly because he didn't want his friends talking to the gorilla anymore.
"He said he needed to take a leak." Tim answered.
Then, as if on cue, all three boys turned to the girl expectantly.
"What?!" she asked, wide eyed, Mikey's hat still crooked on her head.
Mikey shrugged. "Usually, girls say something about washing hands whenever a guy goes to the bathroom."
The gorilla girl’s face twisted in disgust. "That's a weird thing to talk about..."
"Maybe you're the weird one..." Jeraud muttered irately. His friends shot him a death glare, and he realized what he had said. It just slipped through his lips, he didn't even think about it.
But the look that really made him flustered was the creature's huge eyes, begging him not to say a thing.
Jeraud remembered her angry promise yesterday as he gazed at her pleading eyes. 'I'm normal. You just watch me.' So far, she's proven herself right. She is acting normal, but she sure is a normal weirdo. He dropped it almost as quickly as he said it, a scowl planted on his face.
As Jeraud turned away, he spotted Romeo heading towards the group, confidence oozing from every strut.
"Romeo’s back." Jeraud informed everyone behind him.
"Romeo!!" Mikey called out eagerly, waving toward him.
Suddenly, Jeraud felt a tight grasp around his arm, and he jerked reflexively. He turned to find the mountain gorilla clutching onto him, and he growled with a cutting comment at his lips, but the distant, horrified look in her eyes made him swallow his jeer. He followed her stare to a frozen Romeo who’s usually calm and cool appearance instead mirrored the same frantic and mortified look in hers.
Jeraud raised a brow in suspicion. Something was obviously up between these two.
"Romeo?!" Mikey called out again, snapping the three of them back to reality.
Romeo bit on his lower cheek and cracked his neck before walking back toward them, his eyes glued to the ground. The circus freak's grip around Jeraud’s arm tightened, and he thought he heard her mutter profanity under her breath.
He let her hold on for a bit so she could blow off some steam, but a few seconds more and he felt like his humerus had gained a hairline fracture. "Hey, mountain gorilla. That hurts."
Realizing what she was doing, she immediately released her grip. "Sorry..." she apologized, looking down.
He simply hummed as an answer, turning back to Romeo.
"Hey!" Mikey joked, putting an arm around his friend's shoulders. "Meet the new girl! She's wearing my hat." He smirked in a smug tone.
"We never got your name, by the way." Tim smiled back at the mountain gorilla. Jeraud glowered at him disapprovingly. He doesn’t think Tim has ever smiled this much in a single day, not in the two years they’ve been friends.
"Rosalind, what are you doing here?!" Romeo suddenly burst, molten lava in his tone.
Jeraud’s jaw automatically dropped.
“Just so you know, I was adopted, Romeo." She stressed every syllable in his name, breaking it into three different words.
"Yeah, you just ‘happen’ to be adopted here?” He retaliated with skepticism in his fiery tone.
“My new family lives here, so I can’t exactly just get up and leave. But you can, so why don’t you? You're the one living alone." she pointed with a covetous attitude, her expression that of ancient betrayal.
"You think I just have it made with where I am now, don’t you? You've got everything backwards." he informed her before strutting off towards their classroom, obviously heated.
The beast turned her back to him, pouting.
Jeraud’s jaw was still dangling wide open, and he turned to find Mikey looking just the same. Tim was the only one who kept his calm composure.
"You know Romeo?" He asked the freak.
She could only manage to nod her angry head. “We don’t really get along." she added, her expression now graying a great degree.
Jeraud cleared his throat before shaking the surprise from his mind, regaining his composure. He should be relieved to have at least on friend who wouldn't be drooling over the circus freak. "You better learn to like him." He stated in a blunt tone.
Her body stiffened up, and she turned to him in dread. “Why?”
"He's in all of our classes." Jeraud smirked as the beast’s face crumbled in despair.
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