The raven haired girl

Friends?

Olivia stood at her locker sorting through her textbooks. It was TAB, ‘Take-A-Break’, a fifteen-minute break between first and second period. Students milled around the halls, not having to be anywhere. Charlotte had appeared and disappeared at the beginning of TAB. She’d made Olivia swear to alibi her if anyone asked. Olivia prayed that her best friend wasn’t spiking Zoe’s shampoo with hair remover. “Hey there, deserter.” Startled, she fumbled her book, and it clattered to the bottom of her locker. She turned to face Ben. He flashed a smile at her and leaned on the locker next to hers. Her mind whirled as she took in the fact that he was there, talking to her, and seemed happy to see her. Her brain was having difficulty believing all of this, but she was kind of happy to see him, too. Then she analyzed what he’d said. It didn’t make much sense. “What?” He crossed his arms and stared back at her. “You know yesterday, after English, when Zoe came up and tried to talk to me. Emphasis on the try. You left me trapped with her. Whatever happened to leave no man behind?” Olivia ducked her head. “I thought you might want to talk to her.” She ran her hand over the stack of books in her locker as she tried to remember what class she had next. She’d known a moment ago. Ben raised his eyebrows. “Really? I think if given the choice I’d rather have a root canal without the anesthesia.” She smirked at the quip. Ben had figured out how to quickly get into her good graces: trash talk Zoe. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw he was grinning at her again. He had a nice smile. She liked that he smiled at her, but she was worried about how much she liked it. She shouldn’t get her hopes up. Nothing ever went well for her. She fixed her eyes back on her locker. From the bottom, she pulled out her Latin book. She scrunched her brow. She had Latin next, right? She was taking Latin this year, wasn’t she? If she wasn’t, what was she doing with this textbook? Was this what happened to her classmates? “So how’d you get away?” she asked. “I told her I had to fill out some paperwork because I’m a new student, and it would take like an hour before I was done, and not even she is that tenacious, so she left. I tried to find you, but you’d vanished.” “But why?” “Why what?” “Why’d you want to catch up with me?” “I thought since you were like the first person I’d met, and we have a class together, and you seemed fun that—” This had gone on long enough. Olivia shoved the Latin book into her bag, not caring if it wasn’t her next class. She turned to look him in the eye. “You are so mistaken.” “About what?” “About me being fun.” “We made each other laugh yesterday.” “I wasn’t myself,” she muttered. He laughed at that. She stared at him in disbelief. “You really think I’m fun?” He grinned. “Yeah, I do. May I hang out with you? Is there a formal application process? I have excellent references.” She averted her eyes. “Thanks, but trust me, you don’t want to be associated with me.” She turned to go to class. He caught her arm. “Hey, I don’t care what Zoe and her friends say. Don’t worry about them. Do you want to come over to my house this Saturday? We could hang out and watch movies.” “And miss the welcome back dance?” She waved a hand at the hot pink fliers lining the walls. “You’re going?” he asked in surprise. “Well, I was in the mood for a lynching, but I guess watching movies could be cool.” “Great! I’ll see you Saturday.” He gave her another grin and turned down the hall. Olivia turned the opposite way and stopped. Where was her Latin class?