Authour's Note: So for the most part, any one-shots told in the first person have been from Clove's perspective. For future reference, they will all be from her point of view unless specified otherwise. Clearly this one is from Cato's POV.
I always hated Clove Kentwell. I hated her stupid smirk whenever she got something right in class after someone else didn't, I hated that she could run faster than me in gym class, I hated that she was always Captain of the Specialty Weapons Training Group at our school and I wasn't, I hated that she could be so awful and still have tons of friends, I hated how she merely referred to them as "accomplices" rather than actual friends. I hated how she was always out with her best friend and never did any homework or studying and still got the best grades in the class, I hated how she always talked about how hard her home life was even though I met her parents at a Meet-The-Teacher day in the third grade and they were the nicest people I'd ever met, I hated how her and Glimmer Belcourt got along even though Glimmer hated most people.
I also know the hate was mutual. She would scowl at me when she saw me outside of school, she would laugh at me when I got a question wrong in class, she would swear at me if I even "breathed in her freaking direction" and "contaminated" her oxygen, and she would yell at me in gym class for being half a second too slow.
It was definitely a two-way street.
I think our feud started in the second grade. We had to work on this Math project together. We had to design a bedroom that had a specific area that was covered and a specific area that wasn't, and we couldn't use a basic quadrilateral, like a square or a rectangle. We figured it out pretty fast, both of us being whizzes at Math, but then we tried to get too complicated. She wanted the walls to be blue, and I wanted them red. She wanted a beanbag and I wanted a stool. We fought over it so much that the teacher eventually split us up and we both had to work alone and start from scratch. She blamed me and I blamed her. When we presented, we each spent most of the two minutes indirectly attacking each other's assignments. It's funny to look back on now, but man did we hold a grudge.
We're over that now, of course, but these things build. We were still mad all through grade three and said and did some nasty things to each other. She moved on from the Math project but was mad about all of the other stuff. By the fifth grade, I had forgiven her. I apologized many times and tried to be her friend, but she refused over and over. In the sixth grade, the tables turned. Now she was all over me, trying to be my friend. But I was so mad at her for refusing that I let the feud carry on. Maybe I wasn't even mad. Maybe I was just a little pissed and wanted to lead her on to see how far she would go. But eventually, she gave up, just like I had done, and became more obnoxious than ever.
Seventh grade was probably the worst. In September, she left Marty Jackson's milk carton on the top shelf of my locker behind my books and it spoiled over the three weeks it was in there. I had to miss a whole week of recesses because of it. In October, she hit me in the head with a basketball and concussed me. I had to miss two weeks of school and got yelled at by the teachers for not knowing what they were talking about when I came back. In November, we had to write an essay about who we would like to switch lives with for a week. She wrote hers about me (using the nickname Stewart Pidity she gave me in third grade) and I remember her reading it out loud to the class. "If I could switch lives with Stew for a whole week, I think the most interesting part would be living as a stupid loser and barely knowing my own last name." She got a D, but she got six new friends and a lot of laughter and applause. In December, she swapped the fuzzy socks and hat I bought as a Secret Santa gift for Lizzy Cartrish with cat litter. Used cat litter. Lizzy Cartrish was this cute girl in our class that I had a huge crush on, and I was pretty sure she liked me back. But once she got cat litter as her Secret Santa gift, with a big tag that said, "From Cato Hadley, P.S. I think you're cute," she never said a single word to me. In January, she showed up at my birthday party (incredibly unwanted and unexpected) with Lizzy, some toilet paper, a few needles and a big jar of spiders. She popped all the You're 13 balloons, TP'd my house and let spiders into the tree fort where I was playing video games with my friends. Take a wild guess at what my worst fear was at the time. In February, I had a Valentine's date with this cute girl named Laramie who lived on my block. Of course, Clove swapped the heart-shaped box of chocolate-dipped caramels with an identical heart-shaped box of chocolate-dipped roaches. Laramie punched my nose (she broke it) and ran away. In March, she stole the History assignment that I spent almost a month on that was due the day before Spring Break, when I was planning to go to an island in the Carribean with my family. Because I only wrote one copy and had nothing to turn in, the teacher told me that I had to hand it in the day after the break or I was getting an F. Of course, my mom wouldn't let me take the F, so while my family spent Spring Break on the beach drinking out of coconuts, I was working like mad at my grandma's house. And because the assignment was rushed, I got a D on it. In April, she tripped me while we were running laps for Cross Country practice. Naturally, with my luck, my foot got stuck in a gopher hole and I broke my ankle. I had to miss the meet and Clove came first in her race (competing against almost 500 other girls), which only made it worse. In May, she put a photocopy of an invite to Katniss Everdeen's birthday party in my locker. See, Katniss is this amazing girl. She has these awesome grey eyes and a dazzling smile and such a wonderful voice that all the birds fall silent when she sings. I never liked her that way, but she was pretty and popular and if you weren't her friend you wanted to be. So when I got an invite to her birthday, I got really excited. On the day of the party, I put on my best shirt and khakis, combed my hair (which you need to understand I never do) and didn't even slouch as I walked to the address. Of course, when I arrived, Katniss smacked me as hard as she could and told me she never wanted to see me on her street again. All I saw for the next two weeks was Clove laughing her ass off. In June, I figured I could get some peace. But instead of leaving me alone for just a month, she stole my binder. With all of my notes. For the whole semester. For my final exam. And I almost failed.
Eighth grade wasn't quite as bad (for me, anyway). The tables turned that year. I became the predator. I must have gotten suspended ten or eleven times, and I had a few in-school suspensions, and there were more days that I had detention than didn't, but I was on top of the food chain.
Grades nine and ten were weird. The feud lived on, but I started to get tired of it. My attacks became weaker and weaker, and I eventually stopped fighting back. She hated that I was letting her win. Her attacks became stronger and stronger, daring me to retaliate, but I dealt with insult after insult, bloody nose after bloody nose, and broken bone after broken bone. I didn't want to fight back. I wasn't even mad anymore. Sure she'd done some horrible things, but so had I. I felt bad (and if she heard me say that, she would laugh so hard she would cut off her oxygen intake). I moved on. All the little things she's done didn't bug me, and neither did the big ones. She blew off my Valentine's Daty date. So what? A seventh-grade crush wasn't going anywhere. She broke my ankle. Who cares? It healed and I can walk just fine.
So this year, eleventh grade, I decided to do something.
Today is February 13th. It's 11:00 pm, and my homework is done. I'm sitting at my desk writing in gold fine-point marker on a red cardstock heart, with my neatest handwriting, To Clove Kentwell, happy Valentine's Day. Sorry about the past nine years. From Cato Hadley. It's missing something. It takes me all of a second to realize what it needs. I take my gold marker and write the last few words carefully. P.S. I think you're cute.
