“And you’re all about easy, aren’t you?” Nick shot back, her tone snide. Did Maddie truly not care? Part of her had a hard time believing that this was the behavior of a girl who didn’t care, but maybe it was. “Whatever,” she replied. “You’re not the gossiper, but newsflash, neither am I.”
Nick bit the inside of her lip to keep from spouting off a sarcastic response. Maddie could say whatever she wanted about her acting, she was self-aware enough to know it sucked. This was an argument that would have truly been just for argument’s sake, and didn’t she and Maddie have enough of those?
As much as Nick liked to think she was above things like peer pressure or the desire to fit in, she knew she wasn’t. Which meant Maddie’s opinion of her counted more than she wanted to let on, but it was there. All she truly wanted was for the other girl not to hate her, though that hope was dwindling as time went on. “You can keep thinking that, but I’m not.” Or at least she hoped peer pressure wouldn’t drive her to something like that.
For a moment Nick’s eyes went wide, surprised by what Maddie had just said. But just as quickly as the surprise had come it was gone when the other girl corrected herself. It had really been too much to hope that Maddie really didn’t want to wish her out of existence. “For a moment I almost thought you were nice, almost,” she muttered. “Or that you could be nice to me.” Try as she might, she couldn’t quite keep the hurt tone out of her voice. It was exhausting fighting with Maddie like this all the time, so sometimes her guard slipped.
“Well aren’t you just special,” Nick remarked half-heartedly. Pushing down anything harsher she could have said.
Was that what people thought of her? That she did things to be liked? Nick’s motivation wasn’t to be liked, it was just to be ‘not alone’ mostly, and the whole being liked was just an added perk. But did she really want to admit that to Maddie? “Yeah, well, it’s better to be liked and have company than to be disliked.” She answered easily. “And I don’t do things to make people like me.” Which was a lie. She did things to make Maddie like her, didn’t she?