Bella goes to gym.
Alice is chatting amicably with Ms. Finch. If the rumours have reached him, he's showing no sign of it. When he spots Bella, he waves and abandons his conversation to head for her corner.
"What, seriously?" He laughs. "Wow, some people do not know a joke when they hear one."
"Well, perhaps the original people did, but it's gone a few links down the chain since," Bella sighs.
"If I had to guess? Jessica will gather some people who don't care - which won't include Lauren or Mike - and you'll still be invited because she wants to use my car."
"No, never. Didn't even propose marriage," says Bella with a withering but amused look. "But perhaps he imagines he would have worked up to it eventually." She shrugs. "It's a small school, but not so small that I need to latch onto the first people who talked to me. Angela's great, Jessica's fine, I can live without Mike and definitely without Lauren. No idea where Eric stands but I wouldn't miss him much."
With a wry, crooked grin: "So, not gonna ditch the fuckup and get all your nice, normal friends back?"
"I would not advise you to antagonize Angela," Bella says evenly. "But I've been here less than two weeks. I'm still the new kid and I still have time to meet more people."
Which is... not exactly a promise not to antagonize Angela, but might be an acknowledgment of the consequences.
"If we can factor out the consequences of apparently-you're-a-murderer-now, is there anybody in school who'd be particularly likely to tolerate you and might get along with me?" Bella asks.
"Dunno," he says. "I don't pay that much attention. What kinda people do you get along with?"
She gauges how long she has before gym starts before continuing to chat, and decides she's got leeway. "In Phoenix I hung out with the book club and sometimes a cluster of girls from my geography class, but I didn't like anyone enough to have second thoughts about moving when that was expedient."
"Yeah, all I can tell you about that is the reason I've got a crush on you is nnnot the same as the reason anybody else does," he says, grinning. "Maybe there's somebody in Art."
"I couldn't get into art class; this school has different requirements from my old one, Art's pure elective, and I have to spend this semester catching up. May have room for it next year though." She shrugs. "I can get along without a vast collection of friends. It'd just be kind of depressing if I somehow wound up without any."
It's something he's never done before, which is an automatic plus.
She tilts her head. "What has you convinced that the etiology of your crush is different from Mike's or maybe-Eric's?"
"Because I like you for weird reasons," he says serenely. "And 'cause if Mike liked you for the same reasons I like you, he wouldn't act like he wishes he could pee on your leg to scare off all the other dogs."
Bella rolls her eyes. "Anyway. Weird reasons? You're a mind reader now? The inner workings of the median human are transparent unto you, and your own clockwork is wound backwards?"
From across the room, Ms. Finch calls, "While we're still young, Hammond!"
Alice grins. "Hold that thought," he says, and turns to join the rest of the class.
Bella smirks to herself and does her stretches and other relatively safe exercises safe on her mat.