The Four

As it turned out, escaping the cafeteria wasn't equivalent to escaping the general student body. Immediately upon sliding into a seat in my Romantic Poetry class, a hush fell over my classmates. I looked around timidly to find sets of eyes peeling away from me. Whispers and giggles spread like wildfire. I took out my planner, clicked a pen and rested my chin in my hands in a vain effort to ignore the stares. Ages later, the professor made his entrance and peace was restored.

At the end of class, I felt a finger lightly poke my shoulder from behind. I swiveled around to face a beautiful caramel-skinned girl with long silky hair. She tucked a pen behind her ear and flashed a smile.

"You're the girl that threw her drink on Travis Vanderbilt, aren't you?" She asked in a voice smooth as chocolate.

"Oh, uh, y- yeah. But I - "

"Everyone's talking about it on The Fed. I mean, The Four is always talked about, but it's there's a lot of you these days," she said, arching an eyebrow.

"It's the second da -"

"Do you like him?"

I blinked at her. "No."

She giggled, "I've liked him since last year. I was behind him in the deli line in the cafeteria and he left the last caesar wrap for me."

I couldn't have understood her correctly. "He gave you his caesar wrap?"

"No, like, he took one and there was one left. Just for me," she said proudly.

I hadn't been mistaken. "Ah."

She laid her hands flat on the row and pushed herself up. "There's a big group project coming up in this class, and I think we should be partners."

"Oh, um, sure."

"My name's Victoria, by the way. I'll see you around!" And with that, she flipped her long curtain of hair and headed toward the door, leaving me dumbfounded in my seat.

She hadn't even asked my name.

---

I was starving after class, but rejoiced that I had my half-eaten sandwich from my interrupted lunch. You couldn't pay me to go in the cafeteria at this point, so I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and find a spot on the bleachers overlooking the campus basketball courts. I didn't have a lot of time to spare, but this beat eating on the train any day.

I'd only taken a single bite when a high-pitched shout rang from my right. "Hey, coffee girl!"

I turned to look in the direction of the shout to see some blonde, surrounded by three other richly-dressed girls, pointing unashamedly at me from across the bleachers.

"It IS her!" They broke out into giggles, whipped their phones out and started snapping away.

I shielded half of my face with my hair, staring at my feet and chewing anxiously. Was there anywhere on this campus I wouldn't be bothered?

"What a coincidence," a deep male voice rang from below. I peered down and, to my horror, beheld The Four glaring up at me from the foot of the bleachers. Striking as they were in their boyband formation, they did not look pleased to see me. Travis's arms were crossed, the caramel-skinned one held a basketball against his side and the other two had their hands shoved in the pockets of their athletic shorts.

It was like they'd appeared out of thin air.

I shot up from my seat, ready to make a run for it, but Travis raised his voice at me threateningly. "Not so fast."

I froze, half-standing. He began to ascend the bleachers horrifyingly fast, long legs carrying him swiftly from step to step. The other three followed closely behind, as they were ought to do. As he drew closer, I shrunk back down into my seat, knowing I didn't stand a chance of fleeing. Within just seconds, he was standing on the bleacher below me, and his impossibly tall figure had to bend over so he could stare me down at my eye level.

A moment of excruciatingly tense silence passed between us. His face was just inches from mine, and I didn't dare move.

"You... you changed shirts," I observed weakly.

His expression didn't lighten in the least. I was certain he was trying to set me on fire with his eyes.

"Do you think this is funny?" He asked humorlessly.

I tucked the hair that could no longer protect me behind my ear. "No."

"Is that all you can say? 'No?'"

I narrowed my eyes at him, annoyed. "No, but I don't owe you anything. You never apologized for breaking my phone."

"I don't care about your stupid phone."

"Are you always this big of a jerk? Or am I just lucky?"

This was met with cold, hard silence. I cleared my throat uncomfortably, but didn't look away from his stare. I took the opportunity to continue.

"You think you can just do whatever you want because you and your -" my eyes flicked to the other three, "-posse, are popular here. But you don't fool me. You're just a bully."

In the blink of an eye, Travis snatched the sandwich from my lap, prompting me to shout and grab for it. "Hey!" Before I could stop him, he pulled it apart and emptied the contents onto my lap. I gasped, the cold, wet ingredients sliding down my legs and onto my shoes.

He scowled at me angrily and rolled the empty paper into a ball in his hands. "You're just lucky," he seethed. He threw the ball roughly at my chest, then turned and shoved past the other three, who didn't hesitate to follow him.