PARADOX

six

Kennedy 

Lunch was the same as it had been for the past few days, I sat by myself in the library catching up on any work that I had missed and getting ahead of everything. Now I understood how losers with no friends were so good at school, they spent all their time studying because they had nothing better to do.

I hadn't stepped into the lunch hall after the last time, I couldn't bear to see everyone chatting away like they had been friends for years. Liv had been friends with them for years before they turned against her so it was only a matter of time before they did the same thing again.

My life had turned into this repetitive cycle of going to school, studying, working, and sleeping. It was slowly boring me to death, I turn eighteen in a week and this is how I was going to end my childhood? Then again, I had no one to celebrate my birthday with. That thought alone made my throat close up.

Typically, on my birthdays, my mum would get really drunk and cry herself to sleep about me getting older. Liv and I used to have a birthday sleepover which transitioned into a birthday party at her house and then a sleepover afterwards. We would spend the whole of my birthday together, her dad would make us pancakes in the morning which we would eat whilst watching every trashy teen rom com that existed.

It was only fitting that the tradition would stop with the end of my childhood as well, I just didn't know what I was going to do instead. Maybe spending it at the diner wouldn't be that bad, Ducky could make me a cupcake and Maddie would be there as well.

Hopefully Damon would have the day off.

I couldn't dwell on it right now, I had to catch up on my homework because I was working nearly every night this week having picked up extras.

"Kennedy?" A familiar voice spoke from behind me, I turned in my seat and saw Liv standing behind me. My throat closed up. I wasn't in the mood for this today. "Can we talk?"

"Not really no Liv," I turned back around, opening my textbook. "I'm busy and we've not got anything to talk about?"

"We've not got anything to talk about?" Liv's voice was strained, "Kennedy at least give me the decency to look at me when I speak."

"You don't get to tell me about decency." My voice wavered as I spoke and I hated it.

I was being bratty and I already told her that I didn't want to talk with her so instead of responding I looked down at my textbook and started to work on some maths problems. Instead of walking away like I thought she would, Liv stomped around the small table I occupied sliding into the seat across from me.

"I shouldn't have accused you of burning down the shifter school." Liv started. "I should've asked you about it first instead of going straight to Jace's parents."

That sent a shiver down my spine, I thought that they went straight to the Alpha not to his parents. No wonder they so happily accused me, the whole family hated my guts. It only added fuel to my fire that this was a massive conspiracy theory to get rid of me as they'd been trying to do for years.

"That doesn't make up for accusing me of arson Liv," I looked up, pushing away my maths textbook. "You could've gotten me expelled because of what, a stupid video?"

"That stupid video as you call it would have ruined my reputation with the shifters," Liv snapped, "I'm the future Beta Female of the pack and you spread that video around just to spite me for being with Jace, my soulmate? There was nothing stopping us from being friends but you were far too prideful to even try being friends with them because they were shifters."

"You're being delusional if you think Jace and I could ever be friends and it wasn't being prideful it was being realistic." I snapped she was unbelieveable. How could she put a boy she barely knew before me? "You accused me of arson Olivia, a video doesn't equal that on levels of extremeness."