Fresh Meat

Chapter Ten: The Guy

It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just the same variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close."

- Rachel Cohn 

OLIVIA

Boys are annoying.

Not the "cute kind of annoying that makes you roll your eyes with a smile and a slight blush on your cheeks, and maybe a punch to the shoulder. I mean the kind of annoying that makes you wanna punch their teeth out. And it seems to me that the entire male population seems to act like it. 

Even the boys in our friend group get on my nerves sometimes. With Lewis recently acting like he's Batman, Ethan's ego that's inflated enough to power a hot air balloon festival, Elijah having no filter with everything he says, and Conner being the chaos gremlin that he is, it should be no surprise to anyone that I always look like I'm ready to murder someone all the time. 

Except for Benny. Benny's the exception. He always is.

Whenever I complained to my mom about boys when I was little, she told me that girls matured faster than boys, and it showed. "It'll take a while, but as they get older, they'll start acting their age."

Well, here I am five years later in my first year of high school, and it's safe to say that I should stop listening to my mother. 

I thought boys in middle school were unbearable, but it turns out it's nothing compared to those in high school. Throughout the first month of school, boys would randomly walk up to me and ask me stupid questions that I either didn't understand and probably didn't want to, or I did understand and I ended up threatening to twist their fingers backwards until they left me alone. I don't know what part of their brains make them think this is supposed to be charming in some way, but it's not working. At all.

Sometimes as I was walking down the hallway between classes, I would somehow end up in the crossfire of boys horsing around. Right in the middle of the hallway while people are trying to get to their classes. Just yesterday on my way to science, these three boys were playing around so much that they bumped straight into me, making me fall to the ground and drop the stuff that I was holding onto the floor. I was in a grumpy mod that day, so I was obviously pissed off.

I'd cursed them out for acting like complete idiots, and they got annoyed at me for apparently being in the way, like we were standing in the middle of a fucking football field and not a high school hallway. I responded by flipping them off with both fingers and storming off to my class. The absolute nerve.

I prayed for one mature boy to exist in this school, because right now, it seemed that there was no hope for any of them.

***

I slammed my locker shut, my mind reeling with irritation after yet another annoying encounter with a boy. This time it was if I was interested in going out with one of their friends--turns out I had run into him apparently--to which I said I would rather stick my hand in a garbage disposal. Unlike all the boys who persisted when they asked me this question, he got the hint and left me alone, muttering a small apology as he left. I was relieved, but that didn't make me any less annoyed.

I was seriously resisting the urge to bang my head against the lockers. This was infuriating. As much as I wanted to just give up on this stupid "goal", but then I thought of Daisy, and how excited and hopeful she was about this pact. She would be disappointed if I just gave up suddenly. I would've been more enthusiastic if she had given me a goal instead of Mindy.