Being Better Ch1 - How we met, as far as I remember

(Rough draft/Thank you airyfairy for the format tip, it worked.)

I first met Olivia in our first year of high-school. It’s far away from my home, far enough that I didn’t know anyone for months, and those months felt like years. Primary school ended, and we all promised to keep in touch as best we could, but it’s hard when you don’t have a phone. Not that it matters all too much, I have a feeling none of them liked me anyway. That’s just how things are though I guess, everyone changes and moves on to new things, and I am left behind to figure out why I don’t feel the same. Anyway, four years ago I was running late to my next lesson because our school was, and still is, too big. It’s made up of four separate buildings with a fairly large outdoor area that snakes around them, and we have about 5 minutes to get from one room to the next. Back then I still cared about being on time, or showing up at all, so I was hurrying on my way when this girl turns the corner, also running, and we smack into each other. She had this dark red, shoulder length-ish hair, and she was really pale with crazy looking blue eyes. She gave me a disgusted look and called me a twat before carrying on her way. I didn’t think much about it, and I went back to running, being more careful of corners now.

Later that week I saw her again, waiting in line for history I think, and she gave me another disgusted look, as if I had ruined her life by existing. Things carried on this way for a good few weeks, and being a stupid child, I was beginning to feel a little antagonised by her. I did my best to avoid her, but we had a couple of the same subjects together, and on a rather unfortunate day for me, a teacher asked the two of us to go to a different building and pick up something they’d left behind. I don’t really remember what it was exactly, but I remember thinking that she may actually kill me. At first, we walked through the corridor in silence, making my best effort not to look directly at her. Then she looked at me and, with a mostly bored sounding voice, spoke to me.

“Why are you being so weird?”

I looked at her, feeling a little off guard not really knowing how to respond.

“I’m not doing anything?” I said back questioningly.

“You’re being weird.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, you just are.”

And then it was silence again.

A little later she tried to elaborate on her comments.

“I’m just saying, You’re kind of awkward.”

“What?” I asked, again caught a little off guard.

“You didn’t talk at all, and you looked uncomfortable.”

The tone of her voice made it sound like she wanted to punch me, but I still wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.

“You called me a twat.”

“What?”

“In the hallway, you called me a twat, and you always look at me like you want to kill me.”

She looked puzzled for a second, as if she had no idea what I was talking about, and then she remembered.

“You ran into me, you WERE being a twat.”

“I was late.”

“No excuses.” And then she laughed, and that only made me more nervous.

“Also, that’s just my face. I don’t think I’ve ever ‘Looked’ at you.”

This whole thing made me feel a little stupid, even a little embarrassed, and my face must have shown it because she started laughing at me again.

After that, whenever we saw each other, we would talk about the goings-on in our lives. She would tell me about her home life, about where she grew up and where she went to before high school, and I would tell her the same about me. Council houses for both of us, unsurprisingly, and a pretty average home life, could be worse. She had a couple of friends from her old school that joined this one, and they all ate together in the hall, trying to talk over the noise of about two thousand-ish other people. Beyond that though, she couldn’t stand just about anyone else at this school, including the teachers, and I can’t say I could blame her.

I enjoyed having someone to talk to, it made coming to school feel less pointless to me, even if we only saw each other a few times a week. It went from that, to seeing each other before and after each lesson, and finally, to walking to and from school together. It all happened in a couple of months, but I felt as though we’d become best friends, she was someone I could trust with anything, someone who made me feel happy. It feels stupid looking back on it sometimes, but I don’t care. Four years later she still hasn’t abandoned me, so I’m pretty sure she doesn’t hate me too much.

She did eventually introduce me to the rest of her friends, and I began seeing them with her in the canteen sometimes, or wander around with them to avoid whatever lesson they were feeling tired of for that particular day. I think it was Kate, tall and angry at the world, who offered me my first cigarette, not exactly pressuring me, but not really taking no for an answer either. She ended up getting pregnant a year later with some friend of her dad, drug dealer or taker, I don’t remember. She stopped coming to school after that, and we never saw her again. Ellie, her other friend, gave me my first drink, vodka out of a plastic water bottle. She didn’t tell me it wasn’t water until I was coughing at the taste, and wouldn’t stop laughing at me. We all got tipsy in the girls bathroom, and spent the rest of the day on the field next to the school, laying in the grass and drinking till we passed out. I still don’t fully remember that day. Her family ended up moving to London a few months after Kate got pregnant, and we didn’t see her again after that either. That left just the two of us again, carrying on the tradition of smoking in the bathroom, and getting way too drunk every now and then.