Melody heard the sound of thundering footsteps coming up the sidewalk behind her and sighed internally. Of course it would have to be Jenna taking the bus to class the same day Melody's car broke down--she didn't even need to turn around to know who it was, she'd recognize the sound of those clomping steel-toed boots from a hundred yards away. Fucking Jenna. Fucking weird Jenna. Fucking Jenna who actually thought that everyone going around calling her "Weird Jenna" was a compliment, fucking Jenna who wanted so badly to be a pale consumptive goth even though her pudgy cheeks got all red and shiny any time she had to run more than twenty steps at a time, fucking creepy 'found objects artist' Jenna, fucking pervy lesbo Jenna who somehow thought she was hiding the crush she had on practically every woman on campus. Fucking Jenna.
Fucking Jenna who had a massive semester-long group project with Melody that was forty percent of their final grade. That fucking Jenna. Melody turned around, a bright plastic smile on her face, just as Jenna shouted, "Hi, hey, hi Melody, I made you something!" on the final hundred feet of her clomping approach to the bus stop. Even though there was nobody else there, even though there was barely any traffic at this time of the morning by car or on foot, Melody winced at the over-exuberant display. It was just so... so fucking Jenna of her to have exactly zero chill about anything, least of all their extremely one-sided friendship of the last few weeks.
But because Melody's grade and her scholarship and her whole college career relied on socially engineering her relationship with Weird Jenna for another two months, Melody kept her thin lips frozen in that same pursed, polite smile that she just knew the chubby awkward brunette couldn't tell from genuine interest and said, "Oh, really? What is it?" in a tone of forced, overly cheerful interest that dripped with barely concealed condescension. Then waited for Jenna to catch her breath because of course she was panting and sweating like she just ran the entire ten blocks from her apartment.
When she could finally speak again, Jenna reached into her messenger bag and brought out a small object wrapped carefully in multiple layers of crinkly tissue paper. "It's an effigy," she said, her voice hushed and reverent and so unbearably fucking pretentious that it was all Melody could do not to roll her cornflower blue eyes in disdain. Fucking, fucking Jenna. What Melody wouldn't do to be absolutely anywhere but here this morning.
But she was stuck with her for at least another fifteen minutes until the bus arrived, and it wasn't like they could pass the whole time in icy silence as much as Melody wished otherwise, so she feigned interest as Jenna unwrapped the layers of tissue paper to reveal a tiny doll made out of scraps of fabric and bits of fluff and what looked disturbingly like actual human hair. A doll that Melody was disturbed to realize looked just like her. "An effigy," she repeated, barely managing to disguise her horror as confusion. "As in, 'burn you in'....?"
But Jenna looked genuinely mortified by the insinuation. "Oh, no, no, nothing like that!" she exclaimed, carefully plucking the doll from the tissue paper with her stubby pink fingers and holding it up so its wispy blonde hair caught the early morning breeze. "It's really more for practicing sympathetic magic, you know? Like, the effigy is made as a representation of the person, and it's, um, believed... you know, by some people... that manipulating the image of the individual can manipulate the person as well. I, uh, I know you're not really, um, into that kind of stuff," Jenna mumbled, her gaze darting away anxiously down to the sidewalk. "But I thought you might think it was, y'know. Cool."
It took Melody a little more effort to keep her face frozen in that expression of polite, studious interest this time. But she managed. The last time she made the mistake of letting Jenna know exactly how she felt about the weird, mumbo-jumbo bullshit nonsense Jenna called 'magic', the thin-skinned little bitch was so rattled she missed three days of class and a project planning session. Melody wasn't about to let that happen again, not when her straight A average depended on managing Jenna's emotions. Fucking, fucking Jenna.