The rest of the week went by and the group of girls decided to stick around Mae after failing to dispose of her and also failing to find a real reason to hate her.
This was a little annoying to Mae who still hadn't finished the book, but she was extra careful to smile more or talk to them.
By the time Friday arrived, they knew each other's hobbies, dislikes and interests. The group 'Ash club' had come to realise that Mae wasn't annoying at all, if anything, her lazy personality was kind of cute and funny.
The whole group had started having doubts about carrying out their plan. Did they have to ruin this seemingly innocent girl's life or traumatize her? Wasn't there a better way.
And so, the whole group decided to ask Mae a few important questions. If she answered correctly, they would leave her alone and if she failed, they would continue their plan.
They met up after school and before climbing on the bus, they turned to have the talk that decided everything.
Everyone was just standing around, not wanting to be the one that asked. They nudged each other, but everyone was too shy. Until one girl steeled her self and spoke up.
"Mae, how close are you and your brother?"
This question was asked by the short and brave girl called Haley. She was a quiet girl that also loved reading books and got quite close to Mae during the past week.
Mae paused to think and answered nonechantly.
"We are twins and we care for eachother, but we aren't glued together. I care about him enough to hope he gets a girlfriend and he cares enough about me to encourage me to get some friends."
She stopped to breathe and smiled the most pure smile she could muster.
"I guess that means he'll have to come and thank you sometime."
The group of girls instantly relaxed when hearing her reply, together with her smile they thought knew she was not an obstacle for them.
So they went shopping as a group of normal high school girls. Mae experienced the feeling of having girl friends and messing around with them for the first time.
In her heart, she decided that loosing some lazy time to go shopping with friends wasn't such a bad thing after all.
She often also gave the other girls old photos of Ash and described him when he was younger. They now had a pretty good idea about how he was at home and that he was just another teenager like the rest of them. That lessened their love and obsession of him a lot.
The only strange thing that ended up happening that day was when Asher called her to ask where she was.
When some of the girls heard she was talking to him, they gathered around her and pleaded to put him on speaker.
Mae got an evil glint in her eye that nobody saw, but Asher got sudden shivers down his spine. She casually put him on speaker and held the phone in the middle of the group.
"Hey bro, I'm out shopping with my friends today. Do you need me for something? Oh yeah, and you're on speaker by the way."
A choking noise could be heard from the other side of the phone.
"Don't scare me like that! I thought my sister was possessed for a moment. Jokes like that aren't funny! You first need friends to go shopping with friends."
The group of girls giggled at the side of Asher that they had never seen. Of course their laughter could be heard through the phone.
A muffled "Oh sh**" could be heard from the other side.
"Wait! My precious sister that I thought would forever be a loner actually went out with friends! Now I can die happy, my one life goal."
The group of girls giggled further and dispersed to continue their shopping spree. Mae took this time to go into a corner and switched the phone back to non-speaker.
Her voice got softer and she whispered hurriedly,
"Ok so what's happening? Why did you call? Is everything Okay?"
No one except Asher would recognize the tint of worry that was mixed I to her voice.
"No, don't worry. It's some big shot from another country that transferred into a nearby school and wanted to challenge me today.
I'll just refuse him, the guy's really annoying. This is the fourth time he's tried to challenge me, but each time you have somewhere else to be, so I refused him."
If she was capable of frowning she would, but even without facial expressions one could tell she she was plotting someone's demise if they stepped over the line.