With enough pent up anger to boil an egg, Heather sat in study group, the same group she had bemoaned, rejoiced in, and now loathed. Four students thrown together by the capricious whims of Ms. Stone, 8th grade English teacher from Hell.

Hadley, her Hadley, sat diagonal from her, oblivious to her hurt. He had been hers, for a short, short time. She had reveled in him, thought to lay down in the warmth of his affection forever more. Such are silly school girls dreams, dreams destroyed by the supplanter.

Jacklyn, the whore, sat across, smiling smugly over her book. She’d ripped Hadley away just as love seemed destined to fully bloom with her flippant charms. Heather whispered a secret curse upon her house forever.

At least the foreign exchange student seemed nice, the hitherto ignored member of the group on account of Hadley’s sweet, chestnut curls. He sat doodling to her left, oblivious by choice or by language barrier to the drama before him.

“Bjorg,” Heather asked, “Have you ever been to France?”