Silver Spoon took off her saddlebag, stowed her textbooks in her desk, and grimaced at the state of her seat. Some of the foals in class thought it acceptable to spread crumbs wherever as they ate the lowbrow fried foods they brought for breakfast. Most of the rest appeared to be chalk dust, no doubt Miss Cheerilee clapping the erasers together but failing to do so outside.
She pulled a lacy handkerchief from the small side pocket of her saddlebag and dusted off the seat. The sounds of somepony at a nearby desk caught her ear, and she looked up.
“Oh, hello, Twist,” she said, shifting her braid to the other shoulder.
“Hmf.”
Strange, Twist always seemed upbeat. She didn’t look angry, though, more distracted. Yeah, they had a math quiz today. Twist just had her mind somewhere else.
Silver glanced out the window at the new playground equipment Diamond Tiara had wheedled her dad into buying last week. It sure had made recess fun ever since. “Hey, Twist, you wanna, like, hang out at the slide after lunch?” No answer, so she turned back to face Twist again. “Hey, Twist?”
Her eyes… she’d never seen anypony’s eyes look that way. Wide, like Mommy’s when opening a huge ruby pendant on Hearth’s Warming, but also like Daddy’s guard dogs cornering a trespasser.
“I… I don’t think so.” At least that’s what it sounded like Twist said, but it was so quiet.
“Um… do you wanna sit together at lunch then? Diamond’s helping out Pip with student council stuff, so she won’t be around.”
Twist let out a hard sigh. “So you’re only asking me ’cause you’re lonely?”
“No!” Silver said, holding a hoof to her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t want you to think that! No, she said yesterday we should ask you, but she forgot about the meeting. I still wanted to though.”
Twist raised an eyebrow but fought it back down. “You don’t have to.”
Something didn’t feel right. Shouldn’t any of the kids jump at the chance? Most of them did. “You okay?” Silver took off her glasses and folded her handkerchief around to the other side without all the crumb residue on it, then buffed a few spots off her lenses.
“I just don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t want to.”
Twist made awfully pretty candies. Silver sure wanted to have lunch with her. “C’mon, why not?”
“Becauthe you’re the wortht!” Twist erupted, and the few classmates already there all whipped their heads around. Miss Cheerilee even peered in from the storage room.
Silver’s chest tightened, and the panic rose in her throat. Why would she say that? Twist liked her, for real! “But… but I meant it, Twist,” she said quietly.
No answer.
“I meant it. Really. I think you’re pretty cool.”
Still no answer. At least the other kids had gone back to their own business.
“Will you tell me why?”
Twist flinched toward the door, but then she sagged in her seat. “Do you know how many yearth of therapy I’ve gone to becauthe of you?”
“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“And I finally got my lithp under control, and now it only happenth when I get threth—” she clenched her eyes shut “—sssstressed.” She took a deep breath and calmly sat up in her chair, her eyes fluttering back open. “Ssso please leave me alone.”
But Silver didn’t… “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want you to feel that way.”
“Yeth you did.”
“I really didn’t! I—”
“Yeth you did!” Twist said, her voice rising again, and Sweetie Belle paused on her way in the door. “You haven’t changed one bit.”
Silver felt her face go cold. “But I did! Diamond Tiara and I both used to—”
“She changed!” Twist took another deep breath. “She’s nice now, and she helped the school out, and did you listen to her song at all? She feels bad about what she used to be like, and she’s trying to make it better. What have you done?”
How could Twist not know? She was right there for all of it! “But I didn’t vote for her! I quit managing her campaign!”
“Not ’cause you felt bad for anypony else. You were just mad at her for insulting you.”
But that wasn’t true! “I helped Diamond Tiara build the new playground, and I played with those Cutie Mark Crusaders and Diamond, and went with Diamond Tiara to…” Silver’s face fell.
“Do you even hear yourself?”
With Diamond Tiara. All of it. Twist was right. What had Silver done?
Silver put her glasses back on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you sad.” She’d really driven Twist to therapy? She remembered a time she might have found that funny. Now it made the bile rise in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, and she turned toward Diamond Tiara’s desk across the room. Twist didn’t want to talk to her, so no sense in making her.
“I did really like the chocolates you gave the class at Hearth’s Warming,” Silver murmured, if Twist even heard her. “I was wondering how you got the red and green polka dots all over them, in the middle, too, and I thought I’d ask you. Maybe even see if you’d show me how to make some of the simple candies.”
“You… you really thought that?”
Silver stared at the wood grain of her desk. “Yeah. Not like I’d be good at it. That’s, like, your talent. Your cutie mark. But maybe I could learn something easy.”
Behind her, Twist cleared her throat. “I just… mixed in some ice cream sprinkles right at the end, and they melt a bit in the chocolate before it cools,” she said softly.
“That’s a neat idea. They were so pretty, I couldn’t bring myself to eat ’em, and they went bad.” Why’d she admit that? They went to waste.
A short silence, then a huffed sigh. “Do you wanna come over and make some more?”