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.“That’s it,” Cordelia said.She scooted her chair back, stood, and picked up her lunch tray.“I’m going someplace where I can digest my food.” Cordelia walked briskly away from the table.Oz and Buffy stared at Xander as he resumed eating his lunch.Finally, he put his fork down.“Okay, okay, I’ll go talk to her.” He grinned at them both, picked up his tray, and followed Cordelia.As Buffy watched him go, she said, “That’s not a relationship.It’s a two-person soccer-fan riot.”Oz took a bite of food, chewed it slowly, swallowed.“What’s the sitch?”She frowned.“What do you mean?”“You’ve seemed.different lately.Willow, too.Both distant.”“Maybe it’s the exams,” she said with a shrug.“Or this thing that’s eating the meat off bones.I don’t know.I didn’t realize I seemed any different.”Oz took a couple more bites of food and chewed fast this time.“I should go find Willow.”“Yeah, well.she needs a thicker skin, I guess.”Oz frowned as he pointed to Buffy with his fork.“That’s what I mean.”The corners of Buffy’s mouth turned downward very slowly as her eyebrows rose.She looked at the clock on the wall.“I’ve gotta go to the library and meet with Giles.I just came here to pick up a portable lunch.” She stood, but before she could say anything more, there was an explosion of sound on the other side of the cafeteria.Buffy looked in the direction of the sound.Several people suddenly shot to their feet to get out of the way of something.A fight.Oz stood in time to see a folding chair fly through the air and crash onto a table.A tight group of students scattered to avoid the chair as it skipped off the table and clattered onto the floor.“One little mistake and you won’t let me forget it!” a voice shouted.It sounded female, but it was so ragged with anger that it was difficult to tell.Buffy and Oz moved toward the racket.“One mistake?” another voice shouted back.This one sounded female, too.“You do it all the time!”More crashing, a few startled cries from onlookers.When they got a better view of the brawl, Buffy stammered, “Is that.no, that couldn’t be.is it?”Oz’s mouth dropped open for a moment.“Get ready to believe.”Miss Gasteyer and Mrs.Truman, Sunnydale High School’s two art teachers — their faces bloodied and hair splayed in all directions, Miss Gasteyer’s fat bag swinging violently from her shoulder — were fighting with fists, feet, teeth, and nails.And if the animal-like savagery in their faces was any indication, they intended it to be a fight to the death.Willow felt foolish the second she sat down in front of Mila’s desk.Her throat stung from crying on the way to the guidance counselor’s office and her cheeks were sticky with tears.She rubbed a hand downward over her face, then swept a knuckle across each closed eye.“Willow, what’s wrong?” Mila asked.“I don’t know,” Willow replied with a sniffle.“I wish I did.I mean, if I knew, there wouldn’t be anything wrong because maybe then I could fix it.”Mila leaned forward and locked her hands together on the desktop.“You seemed just fine in the cafeteria a few minutes ago.Tell me, Willow, what is the matter?”“My friend,” Willow said, trying not to cry anymore.“My best friend in the whole world, Buffy.” She stopped to wipe more tears from her eyes.“Have you two had a fight?”“Well, that’s just it.We haven’t.But for some reason, it feels like we have.There’s so much tension between us all the time.In fact, all my friends seem.well, preoccupied.But with Buffy, it’s different.Worse.”“Perhaps they are all just concerned about the tests coming up,” Mila said.She smiled encouragingly.“With that many tests all at once, most students tend to become preoccupied.”“That’s what I thought at first,” Willow said, nodding.“And that may be the case with the others.But with Buffy, it’s something different.And what’s worse is.well, I sometimes find myself.y’know, getting, um.getting really angry with her.Like just now in the cafeteria.She said something about the gift you gave me, and I snapped at her, and she seemed to get angrier, and.I don’t know.” She bowed her head and let more tears fall.Mila took a tissue from an ornate wooden box and handed it Willow, who dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose.She tossed the tissue into a small wastebasket at the end of Mila’s desk, then stood.“I’m sorry,” Willow said.“For bothering you with this, I mean.It’s silly, and I should probably —”“No, no, Willow,” Mila said.She stood, too, and came around the desk.Sitting on the front edge of the desk, she took Willow’s hand in hers.“Nothing is silly that makes you hurt this much, so you mustn’t talk that way.I’m glad you felt you could come to me with this.And I’m going to give you a piece of advice, so listen up.” She grinned.“The only thing that will solve this between you and your friend is communication.You must talk to one another with no interruptions, with nothing to get in the way.You can do that whenever you wish, of course.But I think you should do it right now.Go back to the cafeteria, find Buffy, and go someplace quiet where you can talk.You’ve still got most of the lunch hour ahead of you.”Willow thought about it a moment, although she didn’t really need to.She knew immediately that Mila was right.It wouldn’t be easy, but she knew it was the only way to close the gap that had opened between her and Buffy.Willow thanked Mila for talking to her, then headed for the cafeteria.She walked at a brisk pace, wanting to get it over with before she changed her mind or just plain chickened out.Things had become so tense between herself and Buffy that the idea of approaching her and asking to go someplace where they could talk was a bit unnerving.and the fact that they were best friends made that part, the unnerving part, disorienting, head-spinning.It felt so unnatural, so unreal to her, and yet it was very real.As she neared the cafeteria, Willow frowned at the loud noises coming from inside.What sounded like cheering was accompanied by erratic clattering noises.Something heavy slammed against the cafeteria’s double doors; the safety glass in the left door shattered into tiny hail-like pieces and the leg of a chair appeared for just an instant, then fell away.Uh, oh! Willow ran the rest of the way and pushed her way into the cafeteria.A large group of kids were gathered in a semicircle, cheering and pumping their fists in the air.The broken door had brought an explosion of laughter from them, but their attention was not diverted for long.They were cheering on a fight, and when Willow saw it, her eyes became almost as wide as her mouth.Miss Gasteyer and Mrs.Truman were fighting like a couple of punks in the street.and no one was stopping them! Mrs.Truman’s left eye was swollen shut, Miss Gasteyer’s lower lip was twice its normal size, and both of them bore bloody scratches and cuts on their faces.Beyond the group of enthusiastic observers, Willow saw Buffy and Oz coming forward.Miss Gasteyer got Mrs.Truman with a hard uppercut.Mrs.Truman’s sensible shoes left the floor for a moment and she fell back onto a table.Miss Gasteyer grabbed something off the table, something shiny, and lifted it high, then brought it down.“No!” Willow cried at the last instant.Miss Gasteyer buried a fork halfway up the handle in Mrs.Truman’s throat.The second she saw the fork, Buffy yelled, “Stop her! Somebody stop her!”But the students crowded around the two fighting women were too busy cheering and yelling to hear her.Miss Gasteyer brought the fork down once, twice, a third time.As warm blood spattered from Mrs.Truman’s gurgling throat and landed on some of the onlookers, the voices died down.A girl screamed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]