Don't Get Angry

4- Dalta: Hate Feelings

I laid in my bed thinking. It was a Monday morning and I was going to see Otis again. I had spent the night still arguing with him in my head. Why was he so snobbish? He was completely ridiculous. I turned on my side and stared at my wall biting my nails. What was I going to do when we bumped into each other at school? We'd never really talked before outside of group projects and...yeah, nothing else. Like, the only reason I had ever paid any attention to him was because of Penny's massive obsession with him. He was the most arrogant person I'd ever met. And arrogance in our town was an airborne disease. He was, like, so arrogant, that during our one and only group project we'd ever done together, he'd micro-managed the entire thing so much and shamed everyone for being wrong, that everyone sat back and let him do the entire project on his own. He wasn't even aware that he had until it was time to present. And with a proud, smug grin he told the professor, in front of the classroom, when we all were standing behind him, that he'd done it all on his own. We all got F’s and he was stuck friendless for the entire class, and the idiot was fine with it. I sighed and slipped out of bed. "I hope he doesn't say a word to me today."

* * *

I walked down the sidewalk to Penny's house. Otis sat on his porch with his little sister. She was talking to him and he kept smiling and nodding. He rubbed her head and she giggled and pushed his hand away. I sighed and tilted my head. Maybe I was as cliché as he'd thought I was. Developing a crush on the guy who I couldn't stand was pretty cliché. His coffee-brown curls and awkward smile; he was a weirdo, no doubt, and he wasn't that good looking. Like...really. He was average... Like, a lot of the girls at school would disagree. One half would say that he was above average and the other have would say that he was way below. But it was because of his personality. It made him extremely unattractive to the smart girls. I wanted to be a smart girl...but there was something about him that made him interesting. He looked at me and his smile faded. He suddenly stood. "Oh no! Don't come here! Don't come here! Don't come here! He's coming here."

He stood in front of me with hands in his jeans pockets. "Morning."

"Hey." I looked away and nodded at the ground trying to give him hints that we weren't friends.

"I wanted to apologize."

I looked at him in shock. “Apologizing? Really? He doesn't do that unless his mommy tells him to.”

"I was really rude to you yesterday...to you and Penny. I still stand by what I said. But...you're not stupid."

I felt myself smile a little. I was about to accept his apology when...

"Not stupid, just purposefully ignorant."

I groaned and started walking towards Penny's house.

"Hey!" He followed me. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to come across as sexist. I'm not...just...if you think that men and women are equal then why did you care when I pushed Penny into the river?"

I turned to him. "Because that's different from equality. That's called chivalry and respect and in case you haven't noticed, I'm very traditional when it comes to that. Opening a door for a girl isn't offensive or weak. A guy knows a girl can open a door herself. It's not just a norm." I turned to walk away again.

"W...why do you even care about that stuff?"

I looked back at him. "Because it shows people that you care. The little things you do for a person shows them that you care. And what you did to Penny told me that you don't care about anyone but Otis." I walked away feeling like I'd been run over by a garbage truck. Saying it reinforced it. Otis may have folded clothes with his grandmother and played with his sister, but his personality was terrible.