Hype

~Chapter 6~

Holidays, the joy of the holidays.  Time went on, although school stayed the same.  Mercy Christian doesn’t partake in anything related to Halloween because it’s not biblical, so that requires no explaining.  My family isn’t too big on Halloween either.  A lot of Christian families make it forbidden, like Ginger’s.  It’s sad to think that she’s never had the joy of going house to house and receiving the sugary treats.  My parents still allow us to go trick-or-treating and hand out the candy.  Frankie didn’t want to go this year, so I took Faith and Fox around the neighborhood.  We’re allowed to dress up, just as  long as the costume isn’t anything “scary” or “evil”.  No devils, no witches, stuff like that.  Faith was a princess, for the third time.  Fox went as a little football player.  Since Mackenzie hates me that much, I’m surprised she didn’t cease the opportunity to throw eggs at my house.  However, Hayden told me that the next morning there was some toilet paper in the trees on her front lawn, but that could’ve been any vandal.     

Thanksgiving was and always has been one of my favorites.  At school, we bring in food and make baskets for needy families.  Mackenzie was accused of not bringing in anything by Mr. Basil.  This was her response: “I don’t have any time to go out and buy stuff.”  She brought in like, one thing of canned yams on the last day.  As for the Thursday feast, since we have the biggest house, everyone comes over here.  We have a total of around thirty people at our table.  It’s so awesome to see my whole family.  We all get along great.  Sometimes, on those Thanksgiving specials you see on tv, all the families fight and everything goes wrong.  Not us.  Except for one year, I spilled hot gravy all over Fran’s pants.  She wasn’t too happy about it. 

As for school, everything is still the same with our wonderful friend Mackenzie.  She’s still a loudmouth, still cheating in class, and still loved by everyone.  Isn’t that just terrific?  All those times when we were kids and they told us about the bad apple ruining the entire bunch, I always thought:  one person can’t affect everyone.  Yet somehow, Mackenzie has done it.  I look at our lunch table with all my so-called Christian friends sitting there, and then there’s her.  The dark, black makeup all over her eyes, that deep brown hair, the orangey skin she gets from going to tanning booths…she looks like the bad apple apart from the rest of us.   

For the time being, I’ve been doing my best in stay friends with everyone.  Each weekend, I try to do something with a different person.  One weekend I’ll go to the movies with Ginger, or the mall with Jana, and so on.  Right before Thanksgiving, a whole bunch of us went to a Calvary Concert.  Calvary is a Christian rock band.  We all love them.  I was starting to put together this little thing of just getting a few people together to go.  It was supposed to be me, Hayden, Jasmine, and Ginger.  So then, it somehow turned out to be me, Jana, Ginger, Jasmine, Mackenzie, Peter, Gabe, and three other people.  Hayden refused to go because of Mackenzie.  We all still went to the concert, had a good time.  Hayden really missed out.  I didn’t sit next to Mackenzie, so that eliminated a ton of tension right there.  I have no idea why Mackenzie came.  She always talks about how much she likes the modern pop stars and all the other worldly music.  I never thought she would have any interest in a Christian band like Calvary.  She probably just went to pull off her “good little Christian” image. 

Of course, she’s still faking it all.  Everyone still believes that she never did an illegal thing in her life.  Hayden and I can say as much as we want, but the more we try to convince everyone at our table, the more annoyed they get with us.  At least I have Hayden on my side.  That’s all I can say.  We’ve got each other in the battle against one of the ultimate evils: The Maniacal Mackenzie Williams.  Every time I walked by her the dirty looks kept coming, and coming.  She targets Hayden too.  Why wouldn’t she despise us?  We know her dirty little secret. But you can tell she has more of a vengeance against me than Hayden.  I’m the one who got her in trouble.  Mackenzie has multiple plots against me.  I told her to get out of her seat on the first day of school, I know the secret of her past, and I got her a detention with Mr. Basil.  Not to mention that sometimes, I critique what she says during lunch.  Like, if everyone says “Oh, Mackenzie!  Your tan looks to great!”  I do a dumb thing, forgetting to think before I speak, and say “But isn’t going in tanning booths bad for you?”  She’ll respond by giving me a nasty look and make a smart-mouthed comment. 

Time goes on.  Now I will take you to Christmas.  During the holiday season, each homeroom is assigned a family in need to buy presents for.  Mackenzie didn’t get anything, of course.  Why would she?  I don’t know how she sleeps at night sometimes.  A little kid woke up Christmas morning, with no present under the tree, thanks to Mackenzie.  How can you even live with yourself, having that on your conscience?  Don’t think she didn’t try to pull something.  We’ve always left the presents we brought in the front of the room.  I usually bring in three or more gifts.  On the last day to bring them in, Mackenzie gets up from her desk in homeroom and goes over to my stack of three gifts.  We’re supposed write our names on them because sometimes the families like to send us individual little thank-you cards.  Mackenzie tries to take one of my boxes, cross out my name, and write hers on it−just so she wouldn’t get in trouble with Mr. Basil.  She’s such a little sneak.    

Since our relatives are a bit far, as in, some living over a thousand miles away, we spent Christmas with just the six of us.  Don’t think that I just sat around though.  Since we all get over two weeks off for Christmas break, that’s when our family takes a vacation.  This year, we decided to go into new territory: Canada.  Dad wanted to drive up, and go sightseeing in Toronto for a few days.  I wasn’t too crazy about it.  Five days of work I missed, just to go freeze on Toronto.  I can’t stand the cold.  I want to live in the tropics.  All the colleges I applied to are either in Florida or California.  Even though Toronto was freezing, I still managed to have a good time.  I love seeing new things. 

            So, that was my month of December.  Everything still remained the same with Mackenzie, up until February.  It was the end of the month, and we were given a very rare, take home test in math.  Our teacher gave us the test Monday morning, and we had until the end of the day on Friday to turn it in.  Like usual, I was limited on time.  As I mentioned, or think I mentioned, I’m not really much of a sport fan except for basketball.  I totally love basketball.  I’ve played on Mercy’s varsity team ever since I was a freshman.  I think it’s pretty logical considering I’m so huge.  My coach tells me that the school would be at a loss without me.  I’m not that good, but last year, I learned how to dunk.  Even though I’m a bit uncoordinated, I can do some pretty amazing stuff on the court. 

Anyway, back to the take home test.  Since math is a breeze to me, I was able to get the entire three-page test done in study hall that day.  I handed it in and got it back with my grade on Wednesday.  I was glad because I put in almost no effort and got a ninety-nine on it.  Being next to me, Mackenzie got a load of my grade and said “Hey Freya?  Do you think you can help me out with my test sometime?”  Being the idiot that I was, I felt bad that Mackenzie was failing math and decided that I’d help her on Thursday. 

Now we can move on to Thursday.  Study hall.  I brought my test, and Mackenzie brought hers.  It kind of annoyed me that her entire test was blank.  She didn’t even attempt to do any of the problems.  Lazy idiot.  So I held in my aggravation and tried to help her work through the first problem.  I basically did it for her.  But, that wasn’t good enough.  She told me “It would be like, so much easier if you just gave me your test.”  That got me annoyed.  Before I could answer, she was already reaching her hand over to swipe my test away.  I snatched it in my hands, and said “Forget it!  Why should you get the same grade as me, when I actually did the work?” 

Annoyed, she got up, and went to copy her test from someone else.  She had chosen Jasmine, who only made out with a seventy.  When she got her test back on Monday, she wasn’t too thrilled.  She told everyone at the lunch table that she needed at least an eighty-five on the test to move her grade up to a passing level.  Of course, that made her even more annoyed with me.  Had I let her copy my test, she would’ve had a ninety-nine. 

While it seemed impossible, things only got worse from there.  Mackenzie went from giving me nasty looks, to not even looking my way at all.  Yet, although the looks stopped, that didn’t mean that Mackenzie had called a truce.  The first week of March, I went in the room for English and I found a wad of white gum stuck to my backpack.  I was then that I knew the severity of this situation.  Mackenzie was looking for any way that she could to get back at me.  The Bible says to never seek revenge, and I’ve never had the desire to do so on anyone−until now.