Friendly Dating - Kira

Chapter 1 - Messages from a Demon

My desk vibrating under my fingertips tells me I'm receiving a message on my phone, and of course, I ignore it. I'm in class, after all, and I'm a good little girl, always following the rules, doing her homework, and offering the teacher an apple every day...

Well, the last part isn't true... unless they're really hungry... or it's a special occasion, but I do mostly agree with the first and middle parts... usually.

It buzzes again... and again... 

Someone is being very persistent, and Lara, sitting at the desk in front of mine, is starting to move around. She'll turn around soon and give me one of those class monitor looks of hers. I can do without the look... and the lecture that almost always goes along with it. She isn't the class monitor, by the way; Frank is. 

Sighing, I pull the smartphone from my freakishly large - as it's been called - pencil case and give it a quick, sneaky glance since it could be my dad having an emergency.

Five messages from Ethan Fletcher!

Seriously?! The person who just earlier this week accused me of being a good little girl, apple and all! Why does he suddenly think that I would read his messages?

Why is he messaging me at all?

We are not messaging friends. No, wait! We're not friends... period. I am fortunate enough to have my best friend in this entire world living in the house next to ours. I'm also unfortunate enough to have my worst tormentor living in that very same house.

Ethan is my best friend, Delia's unrequested attachment... in fact, he is her annoying twin brother.

The first time I met Ethan, I was five years old and the youngest kid in first grade, and he pushed me into a muddy puddle when he found out that my house was the one right next to theirs. For some reason, he didn't like that.

Whenever the story comes up, he swears he was just welcoming me to the neighbourhood.

He then informed everybody with ears that I'd "shat my pants". The first time I met Delia was two minutes later. She took me to the girls' bathroom and helped me clean the mud off the back of my school dress.

I hated Ethan on sight; I loved Delia immediately. That first meeting on our first day of school, two days after my family moved into town - the twins had been visiting their grandparents until the night before - set the trend for the rest of our lives until now.

I haven't murdered Ethan yet, and I try not to get into fights with him because Delia loves her brother, and I love Delia.

I used to have long, thick brown braids, and Ethan just adored them, but not in a good way. If he wasn't secretly tying them to my chair in class, using my ribbons, he was grabbing them, going: "Giddyap! Ya! Ya!" pretending that they were reins. He once dipped one of them in the paint during our arts and crafts period and tried to paint a picture using it as a paintbrush. I only noticed when it caused me to get paint all over my school uniform. Fortunately, it was water-based paint, but still!

Ugh! If I were to go into every moment of shame, horror, humiliation, shock and pain that boy made me go through in the 12 years I've known him, I would fill at least 12 thick volumes, one for every year.

I cut my hair in the eighth grade, preferring shoulder blade length layers and not just because it spoiled Ethan's fun (an added perk), I really liked it, and it suits my face. The long hair made me look like a little girl, and when I started high school, I didn't want to look like Delia's baby sister anymore. Besides, the hair was extremely heavy, giving me bad headaches, and it also got in my way when I was out searching for obscure habitats and hidden ecosystems.