one by one by one. laina & cleo. clue bitz!

You've always dreaded the hallway march. Someone like you should own this space, consume it and make it your own. But when you don't have your drama kid friends with you or the likes of Stella and the protection they bring you, all you are is a little girl with a big personality, or perhaps a big girl with a small personality, surrounded by bigger kids with bigger personalities.

It makes you feel small - and the person at this school who makes you feel the smallest of them all is Cleo. Although you shrug off her remarks and smile through the pain, the bruises on your shoulders from her frequent 'accidental' bumps still ache when you move your muscles. The back of your head still hurts from yesterday's lunchtime antics - a show you'd concocted all on your own turned tragedy the second Cleo had flung that water bottle right at your head. You don't remember much, but you do remember waking up on the floor with a concussion and the giggles that followed as your cronies re-enacted your inelegant fall from center-stage. 

When you see a flash of your long blonde hair you duck your head down, wishing you were anyone but Elaina Keyford. Mask off, you make yourself feel small. Hunched shoulders. Eyes to the floor. So far away from the girl you are in class. Somehow, you think glumly to yourself, no matter how small you make yourself Cleo will still find a way to pick you out of the crowd.