Neighbor

Books and Bandmates

(1) Message from: Unknown

I want my cat back.

-

It's been fifteen years and that girl is still pestering Basil about that damn toy.

Basil wondered how Simi even got his number in the first place but he didn't give it a second thought before he shoved his phone back into his pocket and stormed out of the house and over to school.

"Ow!" The sound of Simi's voice rang in Basil's ear like an annoying little mouse. Of course he had to bump into her on the way out.

"Watch it, loser," he barked and shoved past the girl.

Simi snarled at him and her beautiful green eyes were now burning with rage. She gave the dark haired boy a few more moments to walk ahead of her before she ran over and tackled him to the ground.

"First you ignore my text this morning, now you're shoving me into my front door?" She shouted, kneeling on his back.

"Fuck you," Basil responded, still beneath the raging girl, his words came out in muffles as his face was practically in the dirt.

Eventually he managed to release himself from the girl's grip and got up. He dusted the dirt off his uniform and continued his walk to school.

"And I don't have your fucking cat," Basil angrily mumbled as he walked off.

And it was the truth, he would've returned the cat by now if he genuinely had it but four year old Basil had lost it.

The girl stormed past him, still in her raging fit. She made the effort to flip her dark hair into his face as she walked past.

At this moment, Basil was doing his best to keep his cool this morning but he could feel his eye twitching, he absolutely hated her guts but he also wanted to keep his peace this morning. As it was the anniversary of the day that Simi's father was ruled out to be dead.

"Don't go around picking on Simi today, Basil," his mom demanded as she handed him his lunch. "It's her father's death anniversary."

If it were any other day, Basil would've yanked at her hair as he walked past or thrown even worse insult than just calling her a "loser" but he wasn't in the mood to deal with the yelling of his mother who was constantly just as angry as him.

-

Simi hated school. She constantly got into fights with the kids around her, they were usually verbal but sometimes it would get physical.

Her mom constantly wondered what she did wrong for her daughter to have such a short temper all the time. Was it because she lost her father at a young age? Did she just have a her guard up all the time because she felt she wouldn't fit in with the kids around her? Maybe she just wasn't a good enough parent. Angelina constantly questioned and blamed herself for Simi's shortcomings.

Simi constantly kept her distance from the rest of her class, she was never able to make friends but she never bothered to even try when she first joined this high school. She just did her work, wrote her tests and went home. The only positive interactions she had was with a girl in her class -Hailey- who's been trying to be her friend for months after she beat up a group of girls who were harassing her for money. She was a little ball of energy and possibly a bit too much for Simi to handle.

The only time Simi was ever calm was when she was at home in her room, reading her novels. It was those moments Simi craved, the moments where she wasn't tense, no one was telling her what to do, no one was picking fights with her and she didn't have to see Basil's annoying face.

-

Basil attended the the same high school as Simi but thankfully he was in the year above. He was attending his final year. Everyone at school knew about their ongoing feud because they never tried to hide it. They were always caught yelling at each other in the halls, or tripping one another in the cafeteria.

Basil was constantly having meetings with the principal or spending his afternoons in detention because he did not like being told what to do. It angered him so much if someone made him do something he didn't want to do, you can imagine how that would be like at school. Other than his constant struggle to contain himself in class, he did his best to keep his cool outside of class, he had quite a few friends and a lot of people seemed to fancy him.

Maybe it was because he was the bassist in the school band that made him popular, or maybe it was just his good looks in general. His black hair was long enough to touch his shoulders, he had sharp gray eyes and most importantly he was tall. Everyone was all over him but he never looked in their direction because, well...

He was already taken.

Big surprise, the hottest guy in school was taken. Jade was her name, she was the vocalist in the band, she wasn't the most popular at school but her singing abilities had Basil drawn to her from the moment they met. She wore her hair even shorter than Basil's and dyed it a dark purple, you would think she was a natural purple-head with the number of years she kept the color. Compared to Basil, she was more soft spoken and wasn't very social.

The Band consisted of:
Basil: The Bassist, Leader (and sometimes a sub vocalist)
Jade: The Main Vocalist
Rohan: The Drummer
Hari: The Guitarist, Sub Vocalist

If there was one thing Basil didn't hate, it was his band. It was one of the very few things he cared for.