The Hopeful, The Hardheaded and the Homework

Chapter Two: Benches and Books: Olive

Olive Elephanta tied her fiery red hair back into a ponytail and sighed at her reflection in the long mirror over the sinks in the girl's bathroom. Her fringe had fallen loose of the pins that pinned it back to the side and she chose instead to simply remove them and let it fall as it may. She tugged on the hem of her blue jumper which covered the first inch of her grey pleated skirt and fixed the collar of her shirt. Just as she was about to step through the door, it swung open as a gaggle of three giggling girls, all so heavily caked in makeup it was difficult to tell what their faces really looked like. Olive obligingly stepped to the side to let them pass and squeezed out as quickly as she could.

The bell had just rung to signal lunch period and Olive slipped quickly into the torrent of students milling around lockers and flowing towards the cafeteria. The room was large and long, with circular and rectangular blue and white tables filling the seating area and crowded with sixth formers. At one end the lunch line snaked between a few metal bars that served to separate the lines towards the lunch ladies. Olive joined the line and took a plastic tray from the trolley at the end. As she waited she cast an eye through the room and caught Emma's eye across the room. She was waving from a rectangular, picnic style table with a few other students and Olive waved her hand back to show she had seen.

No sooner had she turned back than she was greeted with the back of a boy who had certainly not been standing in front of her before.
"Excuse me. Do you mind?"

The boy turned around and raised a blonde eyebrow. He had a thin face and hooked nose and wore an uppity sneer as he rolled his eyes at her. "Not at all, love. You'll get over it."

"Well I don't think that's very nice at all!" Olive huffed, pursing her pink lips together where they stood out brightly against her pale skin.
The boy, who Olive now recognised from her Biology and English classes, just scoffed and turned his back, making it perfectly clear he wasn't going to move.

Sometimes Olive wished she had more guts in her than she did. Emma wouldn't have stood for that, and she never did stand for it. She would have said exactly what she thought of him but Olive wasn't like that. She told herself it wasn't worth it, and frankly, losing one spot in a lunch line really wasn't worth it, and bit her tongue against arguing more often than not.

Six minutes later she made her way over to the table and sunk into a spot on the bench between Emma and the auburn haired Fiona Frauenfeld, an Irish girl who barely spoke a word during classes but was a thoroughly friendly person to be around.

"This is getting rather sad, really." Emma tossed her hair over one shoulder and prodded her baked potato with a plastic fork. "And the texture of the beans is getting more rubbery by the day, I'm sure of it."

"I'll say. You could almost use these potatoes in shop class."

The girls looked up at the new voice and the sound of a tray being placed across from them.

"Mind if I join you?" Hugh, his cap ever present and sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, asked. Seemingly addressing them all though his brown eyes were ever fixed on Fiona who simply nodded and smiled down at the plate.

"Of course, please-" Olive trailed off as another tray was placed on the table at the other end of the bench Hugh was settling himself on.
She glanced to the side and exchanged a raised eyebrow with Emma who laughed to herself.

"Wow, you're not sitting by yourself, Enoch? How awfully social of you."

For all intents and purposes, Enoch O'Connor was quite the opposite of Hugh. Where Hugh was an outgoing, very active and thoroughly likeable fellow to be in the company of, Enoch was none of those things. He was sarcastic, brooding, a characteristic only added to by the dark rings around his eyes that contrasted the paleness of his skin, and seemed to bring a cloud of cynicism with him wherever he went. It was a small wonder he usually kept to himself.
Yet, despite all the things about Enoch that deterred the general public, and Olive highly suspected that's exactly how he liked it, he intrigued her far more than deterred her. Unlike some obnoxiously loud and disruptive twelfth grade boys who made a habit of shoving smaller kids into lockers and toilet cubicles for pure enjoyment, Enoch, though he certainly gave his share of shoves and kicks when he was visibly annoyed, was more tolerable to be around to her.