Color my Life with the Chaos of Trouble

Barrington High School was the biggest high school in the whole district with over three thousand pupils from freshmen to seniors. Because of this, we also had the strongest swimming, hockey, soccer, football, basketball and whatever other team there was. I was never one to pay attention to whatever goes on in school sports, but as a member of the school, there are something’s that a part of the school alumni, you just know. That’s not to say that I wasn’t good at sport, no, I was actually pretty good at sport, I could kick a soccer ball, run pretty quick and generally had a knack for sports. It came in handy at a school like mine.

“Olivia, are you feeling better today?” Mom asked as I dug into my morning toast. Today was the first day back at school, I wasn’t sure if I should really be having such a big breakfast seeing as I would be seeing Brad today and I wasn’t too sure how I’d react to that. Since the stunt that I pulled last Sunday, I actually did fall quite ill for the final week of summer and spent it curled up in bed with a bowl of chicken soup.

“Yeah, I’m good” I smiled reassuringly.

“Oh, I almost forgot, William’s going to be going to school with you from now on okay?”

“Why can’t he take his own car?”

“He doesn’t have one.”

I raised my eyebrows at her “Why not? How doesn’t ha-”

“Olivia” she said sternly “just take him okay? Stop complaining and drive him there, you two were talking at dinner.”

I sat in my car outside William’s house, my palm firmly pressed on the horn of my car. It was eight o’clock and yes, the whole street was probably asleep, but that didn’t stop me. I had been waiting for three and a half minutes. I was still having trouble with the fact that my mother thought William and I were friends, did it look like we were friends, right now as I was (hopefully) annoying the crap out of him, did it sound like we were friends.
William stumbled from his home, tripping over his school bag and holding a piece toast in one hand, trying to untangle himself from his bag with his other. A few seconds and a few more stumbled steps later and William had managed to fall his way into my car.

“Graceful, really, really graceful” I said sarcastically as he got into the car “Oh, and if you want me to drive you to school every day, be ready on time, next time I will drive off without you.”

“Well who says I want you…” he trailed off “Okay okay, I get that I probably made a really shit impression on you when we met alright?”

“Ding ding, we have a winner here” I rolled my eyes as I pulled out of the drive way.

“Honestly” William continued, ignoring my previous statement “Obviously, seeing as we’ll be going to school together and all, I just wanted to say sorry about Sunday and ask if we could start new.”

I didn’t reply, I just drove, waiting for him to shut up.

“Umm apology accepted?”

“No” I said blankly

“Why not?” he whined

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because you’re a prick and I don’t really feel like forgiving you right now.”

“What? Just not in the mood?” William raised his eyebrows at me.

“Nope”

***

Schools were scarce in our area of Chicago, perhaps because our neighborhood was strictly for 3 year old and under or 70 year old or over. Either way, it was a long and even more grueling twenty minute drive to school with William by my side.
“Okay, at school, don’t talk to me, if you haven’t noticed, I only slightly don’t want you around so you can go find someone else to piss off here” I told him as I pulled into the school car park.

“Why can’t I just stay with you for today?” William asked sincerely as we got out of my car.

“Is that an honest question?”

“Why, it’s not like your popular or anything.”

Okay, so I’ll admit it, I wasn’t exactly the Queen B of the school. My constant put downs did hold me back from that honoree role ever so slightly. However, that is not something you want rubbed in your face on your first day returning back to school. Now here I shall clearly state, I am not unpopular by any means, I got invited to those parties, my group and I did sit at one of the better tables in the cafeteria, we did receive a rather large amount of respect. If we were to compare our school to the feudal system of medieval England, we were probably the barons, one step under the Kings. That’s where I liked to be. You see, as a king or queen in this case, there were certain expectations that were placed upon their shoulders. They could only go out – romantically and socially with certain people, they all had to dress seemingly similar and abide by a simple yet strict code of conduct. That was where I fell down, I have issues keeping my mouth closed, I just couldn’t help it, if (generally) a teacher objected to what I was saying, I had to put them back in their place.

“You know William, you’re kind of shit at this whole starting again thing” I stated.

“I meant it in a good way” he smirked cockily “and besides, I thought we weren’t starting over remember, you weren’t in the mood to, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“I haven’t” I snapped, throwing my bag over my shoulder and beginning to walk off in the direction of the school.

“Really” William said using his incredibly long legs to quickly block my path “because it sounded to me like you were forgiving me.”

“Well William, you have some seriously fucked up hearing” I said pushing past him and straight up the stairs of the school alone.