"Alright, I believe you," Zoe ruled. "But you've only got like ten minutes before first bell, so you'd better hurry. Zelda?" Zoe turned to her friend with authority, "let Sarah borrow from you."
The other goth obliged, and Sarah spent the next ten minutes carefully redoing her makeup, soaking in teen goth energies, losing more of her own energy to Zoe.
But then the first bell rang, and Sarah reluctantly returned all the product she'd borrowed from Zelda. In the commotion of the exchange, she also managed to slip a small bundle of twigs into Zoe's messenger bag. It was attuned to Jon, bound with fabric from Jon's boxers, but Sarah hoped that this investment would pay dividends somehow. If she'd done everything right, it should make Zoe increasingly more open to Sarah's suggestions as the day went on.
Sarah looked at herself in her compact mirror as the other girls left: the pale white foundation, heavy eyeliner, and black lipstick were a far cry from her normal face, and probably didn't quite match the rest of her look, but it gave her comfort somehow. That comfort was concerning.
As soon as Zelda, Stephanie, and Zoe were out of the hallway, Sarah retrieved her leather pouch from her backpack and inhaled several times. This was not good. She let her head clear slowly, could feel the gothiness draining from her, ounce by ounce, replaced by her natural McMillan self-assuredness. But she didn't have time to get back to her full self, she had to get to class.
Sarah put everything away and dashed down the hallway to her first period English class. It felt good to run. It helped her work out her anger. Why was she angry? Who was she angry at? Sarah wasn't sure, but the feeling seemed important.
When Sarah got to the classroom, everyone was looking at her. But it wasn't the way she was used to. They weren't looks of admiration or jealousy or respect. They were looks of confusion.
Whatever, Sarah didn't need the acknowledgement of those kinds of sheep.
She blinked. What was she thinking? She lived on the acknowledgement of those kinds of sheep. Of her classmates, she corrected herself. Respect meant power, and power meant influence, and influence meant that she could keep doing whatever she wanted. Sarah had a feeling that she wouldn't be paying a whole lot of attention to the poetry of Maya Angelou that morning.
She sat down, but people were still staring at her. She didn't like it. What were they-- the makeup! She was still wearing goth makeup! But somehow, despite knowing that this is why people were giving her sour looks, it felt important to her that she keep it on. Not that she could reasonably remove it during class anyway.
Sarah furrowed her brow. She didn't want to eat through her resources so quickly, but if she could get through today she'd have all the resources she could ever want. So, using the late bell as a distraction, Sarah quickly pulled a small tablet from her backpack, crushed it into a powder between her fingers, and flung it into the air over her head.
Hopefully this shroud would cause people to simply accept whatever they saw when they looked at her.
