I Should Hate You

Chapter Three

When Newt arrived at school the next day, Minho was waiting at his locker.

"Where's Tommy?" Newt asked him as Minho moved so he could open his locker.

Minho quirked up an eyebrow. "What's it to you?" When Newt stayed silent, he told him, "He stayed late at practice to clean up the sports shed or some bullshit like that. That boy's charity is going to kill him one day."

"Tommy is anything but charitable." Newt took out his French notebook.

Minho frowned. "You're just biased because you hate the guy. Which I will never understand, by the way. Thomas is great. How have you two not hit it off yet?"

Newt rolled his eyes. "Because we've been rivals for four straight years."

Minho mumbled, "I really wouldn't call those years straight," and Newt smacked his head. "Ow! Sheesh, no need to be so violent."

"Keep saying stuff like that, and I'll start pummeling you with a few copies of War and Peace."

"'Pummeling.'" Minho mocked. "You know that no one actually talks like that in real life, right?"

"It's how people distinguish me from the absolute blockheads that can't even spell 'necessary!'"

"Hey, in our defense, necessary is a downright confusing word!" He paused. "And I just called myself a blockhead."

"Just like a blockhead would!" Newt shouted back as he walked away.

"You know what would be nice?" Minho said as he plopped his lunch tray down on the cafeteria table. "If you guys would stop glaring at each other over your food." Then he squinted at the pair, lifting a slice of pizza from his lunch. "Or maybe those are heart eyes. I can never tell with you two."

That snapped them out of it.

"Aw, jeez, Minho!" Newt exclaimed, smacking Minho's shoulder, nearly making the pizza fall to the ground.

Thomas just rolled his eyes and glared. How he managed to do both at the same time Newt would never understand. "Minho, here is something you really should know: Newt is about as attractive a desk gum—"

"Hey!"

"—And the day I fall for that lug will be the day I burn all my possessions and become a monk."

Newt huffed. "Well, same here buddy."

Thomas furrowed his eyebrows in mock concern. "Do you hate yourself so much you'll never find self-love?"

"My God," Newt groaned, tossing a grape at Thomas's head. It bounced off and rolled on the table lazily.

Thomas eyed it for a bit before snatching it up and lobbing it at Newt. It landed right in his yogurt with a devastating plop.

"That was the only even partially good thing on this tray!" Newt complained.

"You can take the grape out of there, you know," Thomas advised as if he were instructing a child.

"I'm not eating something that touched those grubby hands."

Thomas sighed. "I have a really dirty comeback for that. Should I say it?"

Newt glared at the boy and gently pried the grape out of the yogurt cup with a spoon. He flung it at his shirt, the small projectile catapulting into the fabric. "That answer your question?"

Thomas didn't respond, only stormed over to Minho, who was looking back in forth between the two as if he were watching a very intense tennis match. He yanked the cheese from Minho's pizza. Despite Minho's protests, he marched back over to Newt.

Then he did the most unpredictable, worst, most disgusting thing Newt had ever seen in his life.

Thomas lifted the cheese...

...and squished it in Newt's hair.

"What the hell?" he sputtered, raking his fingers across his scalp. The big sticky, bright yellow, hardly-even-dairy blob stuck to the skin of his head and hair.

When he failed to get the cheese off, Newt grabbed Thomas's chocolate milk and dumped it over his head. Thomas's eyes bugged out, and his jaw fell open. Newt may have just earned himself detention, but Thomas's reaction was 100 percent worth it.

Thomas snatched Minho's apple from his hand, causing a string of complaints to be thrown at the pair. "Stop stealing my food!" Minho shouted, hunching protectively over his lunch tray. Thomas ignored him, chucking the red fruit at Newt. He almost fell onto someone's table dodging it.

Suddenly, people seemed to notice what was happening. The first projectile was launched at some boy, missing brutally with an anticlimactic splat! But it was enough. Food sprung around the cafeteria, aiming for heads, shirts, backpacks, or anything and everything you could imagine.

And in the middle of it, all was Newt and Thomas. They were racing around the room, flinging whatever they could get their hands on—sometimes not even being food—over tables and heads. They were battling it out like they were fighting in some old American duel, not a high school food fight. Then again, the two aren't so different, are they?

Chucking a mini donut at Thomas, Newt saw one of the lunch ladies talking to someone on a walkie-talkie out of the corner of his eye.

Oh shit, he thought before the principal came waltzing in through the cafeteria doors. Like it was a game of Night at the Museum, everyone froze.

He looked eerily calm. As if this were just a minor inconvenience that he could fix with a tap of his fancy black dress shoe.

"Who started this?" he asked the room.

Without hesitation, everyone pointed at Newt and Thomas. Newt scoffed when he saw Minho was too, but Minho just shrugged.

"In my office now," he demanded calmly but firmly before turning and striding out the doors.

Thomas inhaled sharply, his eyes widening.

"Fuck."