We Were Liars | ONC 2020 ✔

Play Nice

ONE DAY BEFORE

After buying myself a new bowtie and picking through the food court's pasta the night before, I finally felt ready to face Nat Evans and Avery Lang. My mother's carefully-given advice helped. My father stumbling in drunk at two in the morning, reeking of some other woman's perfume, made up my mind. I would go to class and take whatever undeserved punishment they wanted to give. I would not be a coward like my father, who was with his mistress every night and still refused to come home until my mother was asleep---he was too scared of a confrontation.

So, armed with a cherry-red bowtie and a Band-Aid stuck on my equally red nose, I walked through Rockwell's hallowed hallways with my usual stack of books in my arms and superior expression on my face. I kept my chin up and my chest held high---they would not intimidate me with their foolish threats. I shot my most snobbish glares at the few drugged-up goons that dared to approach.

"You look so stupid right now," Ette remarked, sidling up alongside me in all his maypole glory, the knobbly knuckles of his left hand tightly wrapped around his water bottle. "Like, really. Your face looks like..." He paused for a moment, then pouted his lips in the most horrible imitation of a duck face known to man.

I recoiled in horror. "Surely that's not---"

"Believe it or not, Canterbury, you look exactly like that," Ette said, snapping his fingers with as much sass as he could possibly muster. "Either that, or like you're shit-faced."

Before I could chastise him on his language, I slammed into something lean and warm. My legs had continued walking of their own accord, and there was now a scatter of books splayed across the corridor---both my textbooks and the thick volumes of literature the person I bumped into had been carrying.

I tore my eyes away from the mess on the floor, my gaze travelling up a flat plane of black with some strange logo scrawled across it---some obscure band, no doubt. The head above it was tan-skinned and rosy-cheeked, wisps of strawberry-blonde hair pushed away from summer sky-blue eyes, mouth open in a state of shock. Obviously, the fact that our collision had led to the dropped books hadn't completely sunk into his tiny brain yet.

"Sorry," he apologised, finally absorbing the sight.

"Well, you should be---" I started.

Ette elbowed me in the side, making me grimace. "You're supposed to apologise as well," he whisper-yelled, definitely loud enough for the other imbecile to hear.

"It's fine," the boy in the black t-shirt said, cheeks flushing even more.

I gestured to him. "See? He says it's his fault, therefore I shouldn't have to---"

"This is why people don't like you." Ette rolled his eyes, brushing past me and heading off, leaving me with the moron with the red-blonde dyed hair---since no natural ginger could have such exquisitely tanned skin, obviously. I took a closer look at his t-shirt---a handmade one, judging by the looping MCR spelled out in thin white thread plus what I assumed was supposed to be a fabric print of whichever band that was underneath.

I bent down to pick up my books. The boy kneeled too, quickly grabbing at his own thick tomes before placing his palm on the worn cover of my Physics textbook. "Let me help you," he insisted, his free hand heading for a volume that had somehow made its way under a nearby locker. The passing students barely gave us a second glance, merely kicking the scattered books further with their clumsy feet---they didn't care for manners.

I finally recognised this boy; he was one of the imbeciles in the back of my Literature class who never raised his hand and spent most of his time staring off into space with a glazed daydream in his eyes. Then again, that was most of the school. It was like they came to school to get high and act nasty. They wished to squander their parents' hard-earned money away on drugs and leisure instead of an education. They would soon see the benefits of being something other than illiterate when my genius was finally recognised while they remained mooching off their parental units. The few who managed to break free from this norm to become relatively successful would thank me for busting their drug deals.