The Boy Next Door

Keith And His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Neighbor

At the mere age of five, Keith knew that he was different from the other kids.

For one, he preferred to sit inside during lunch and play alone. He didn't like big crowds, and would often cry if he was forced to participate. Not that he'd admit to it later on.

That led him to having issues with properly communicating with people, often being too blunt. He always denied it, though. The only person he ever really communicated with was Shiro and his parents. He didn't see the need for 'friends', as Shiro would put it.

So that's how he ended up in the situation of accidentally insulting his new neighbor a few seconds after have meeting her.

"You're so short!"

She had glared and kicked his leg hard before stomping back towards her house, the three boys watching her go.

Right there and then, he decided he would never be friends with her.

Well the joke was on him because as soon as the school year started in September, he was introduced to the class and was disappointed with the fact that he had to share a class with her for a year. The other wasn't pleased either, begging her parents to change her class.

"But Katie, he's your neighbor. You have to be nice! Wouldn't it be nice to have a friend?"

"No!"

The fight would continue with Keith asking Shiro over and over again to help him fake sick and stay home to not see Katie, to which the 11 year old would only respond with, 'Running away from your problems isn't going to help you solve the problems.' As a result, Keith would ignore him for an hour before breaking and demanding help again.

The two older brothers were exasperated, why couldn't the two be friends like they were?

Shiro and Matt were also placed in the same class for sixth grade, the two pleased with the result. The two younger siblings continued to bother each other, though.

It would start from a look of disgust that either Keith or Katie would shoot the other before it escalated into insults.

"Stop looking at me you creep."

"Stop talking to me you jerk."

"You started it by looking at me!"

"No, you started it by starting a conversation about me doing nothing!"

The teacher was at her wits end with these two, seriously she couldn't try and teach a lesson before Keith would pull Katie's hair or she'd attempt to cut his bowl cut shorter with scissors -'no Katie it's not acceptable to cut your classmates hair'- that she had found thrown on the floor.

"Stop pulling my hair!"

"It's not my fault it looks so dumb! You look like a lettuce head!"

It escalated from petty words to pencil breaking and crayon throwing, the victim getting revenge in the best way they could. It was amusing for their classmates, but for the teachers it was hell.

And so the fights went on, and if the teacher would look back on that in the future she would most definitely say that that first grade class she taught was the most tiring one in her entire career.

It wasn't until May when the two got into some serious hot water for actually starting a fight in the school yard, two teachers having to separate Pidge and Keith from basically each other's throats.

Colleen Holt ran into the office, her husband and Keith's parents right behind her. As soon as she entered the office, she spotted Keith and Katie sitting on the opposite sides of the bench, clearly looking anywhere but each other.