"I can't believe that jerk," Tricia stated exasperated, shaking her head and lowering her eyes to the mound of glorious vanilla ice cream peaking towards her like a rounded hill. The streets were unusually unactive for a late Friday afternoon, a few cars hobbling past them was all that held their interest. A cool wind danced around her bare ankles, tingling them with a sensation like her first love...McKenzie.

"Nothing surpises me anymore," McKenzie admitted with a heatwrenching sigh, resituating her seat on the freezing granite steps outside of Dolly's Dairy, her cup of Rocky Road ice cream clutched in her shaky left hand. She smoothed her right hand down her green cargos and licked her lips, a few smudges of ice cream clinging to them like icicles to a roof. "I'm getting ritual, derogatory gawks and snickers from every junior I pass. I even found a repulsive note in my locker yesterday."

"It disgusts me," Tricia informed McKenzie boisteriously, staring down at her ice cream distastefully, her eyes hardening like onyx at people's ignorance and fear. "Zach has them wrapped around his finger. Stupid Fuck." She scraped the finishing scoop of ice cream from her styrafoam cup with graceful elegance, chucking the empty cup for a 3 point shot in a green wastebasket conveniently located to her left. She tossed a smile over her shoulder, but it was discarded from McKenzie's intense eating habits. The smile quickly melted from Tricia's face as she tugged her long, black hair behing her ears. "Did you talk to Principal VanHassen?" she asked curiously, resting her hand with loving intentions on McKenzie's arm, but McKenzie acted as if her hand was just a fly taking a breather.

"He didn't do anything," McKenzie informed her softly, stirring her ice cream unhastily with her short pink spoon, not taking the chance to look Tricia in the eye. "It seems as though everyone's against me."

An unintended blow was poised for Tricia's gut, her dark eyes dulling at that hurtful comment. Immediatley Tricia went on the defensive, placing her hands on her curvy hips and congering up some kind of response. The silence was hovering over them heavily like a swarm of bees ready to attack. The attack may be numbing, neither of them knowing how to react. "You say that like it's a bad thing," Tricia informed her, desperately wanting McKenzie to look her in the eyes and say something uplifting.

McKenzie gazed up at her, Tricia's glacial expression forced McKenzie's heart to sink to her knees. "What?" McKenzie asked befuddled, rotating her body to Tricia and holding the spoon snugly in her mouth.

"Well, I'm getting the impression that you're having second thoughts about our relationship," Tricia stated matter-of-factly, crisscrossing her arms across her chest and staring deep into the setting sun, her face cool as ice but her eyes stinging and electrifying with this new development.

"I don't mean that," McKenzie responded, her voice teetering on the edge of despiration, "It's just really hard the way everyone's treating me. They're treating me like I'm diseased, that I don't belong..."

"You don't think it's hell for me too?" Tricia interrupted brashly, snatching McKenzie's glare with hers, trasmitting an uneasy sensation through McKenzie's veins. Tricia weaved her hands through her long hair and slipped out a breath of realization. "Welcome to our world, Honey. Besides, why do you care what they think?"

McKenzie's mouth opened, but no words flowed out. She clamped her mouth shut, chain-reacting Tricia to grimace with fustration. "I...can't help it. I guess I do care what they think a little."

Tricia had enough. With McKenzie's last spoken syllable, she grasped her purple Mudd backpack and sprinted down the granite steps to the sleepy sidewalk, running her fastest to temporarly releive her of what might come once again. A few too many of her relationships ended at sudden doubts of sexuality, or morality. She didn't want this one to drown like that; this one was different. McKenzie fumbled for her backpack and chased after her, her mind unbelieveably fearful of what might come.

"Tricia!" McKenzie yelled, every step executed toward Tricia stretched Tricia father away into the dusk night like she was on the other side of the ocean. "Please, stop!"

Tricia moaned and panted at the next corner, not having an inklin to talk to McKenzie about this when she was in such a state of confusion. McKenzie came to a short stop, her adidas sneakers scraping against the pavement. "Why are you..." McKenzie began, laying her hand on Tricia's arm sweetly.

Tricia shrugged away violently, turning to McKenzie, the wind picking up speed as the tension combusted on that corner. "Do you know how much I care for you?" Tricia asked in a heated rage, thrusting her hands into the air. McKenzie didn't respond; it would just lenghten this inevitable verbal assault. "You odviously don't feel for me the way I feel for you. The way that I'm giving up all I have to be with you..."

"That's not true!" McKenzie cried in protest, her backpack plunging from her shoulder to the ground as she advanced to Tricia, grasping her arms with clenched, forlorn hands, her nails inadvertantly piercing like needles into Tricia's flesh. "I haven't made any friends. My mother hates me. Jesse looks down on..."

"Then what's the problem?!" Tricia asked, tears cripling her vision as her hands blanketed McKenzie's. "I mean, this is what you want, right? Us to be together for each other? Why do you have so many doubts about us?"

McKenzie couldn't answer; the truth would slash Tricia to ribbons. Tricia fiercly peered into McKenzie's soul, trying to depict the feelings winding inside her, McKenzie standing there weak and helpless against Tricia's silent analyzation. Tricia touched McKenzie's round face gingerly, her eyes narrowing to squeeze through the little McKenzie could tell her. Then, Tricia's mouth fell like an anvil, her hands cupping over her mouth to guard off a sob. "There's someone else, isn't there?" she whispered, nailing her clinched fist to her chest.

"No!" McKenzie shouted a little too quickly, a smidgen of suspision dribbling from her timing. Greg's face flashed through her mind, the memory of the night with the orange moon causing her to squeeze her eyes tight to rid his memory. Greg wasn't someone else as Tricia presumed, he was just a friend. Constant reminders of that wore away that possible false fact like water erodes sand, that maybe he was different, maybe he was more...

Tricia shook her head in defeat, not able to catch any words to make this alright. Shelding her hands over her watery eyes, she abruptly turned and began pacing down the street with a racewalker's percision, her head attracted to the ground as she vanished in the darkness like a ghost.

"Tricia," McKenzie called, reaching out to someone who wasn't there.

"Please Kenny," Tricia begged, raising her head and whipping it around, barely making out McKenzie in the speckled darkness. "I...I just need to think now."

McKenzie dropped down to her backpack, holding it tight as she held her teddy, her world popping more and more seams from its perfect knit. The darkness sheilded the world from seeing more tears spill uncontrollably to the pavement, her heart soar and torn because of what she believed it, something she could never change. 'I can't lose her,' McKenzie thought with determination. 'She's the one, not Greg. I love her.'