A Rhapsody Of Sorts

Little Extras

Oliver decided that she hated school in Year Ten. It wasn't the learning that annoyed her, nor was it the fact that she saw the inside of the head teacher's office nearly as often as she saw her own reflection in the mirror.

It began with Hannah Georges.

Hannah was a pretty girl with amber-brown hair and dark green eyes, and though Oliver spent most of her schooldays ignoring everyone except for Matthew, Fox, and her literature professor — the esteemed Ms. Shelley — she couldn't help but notice the way Hannah Georges batted her eyelashes at Matthew in the hallway. Her lashes were long and blonde, brushing against the apples of her freckled cheeks every time she blinked — so much more delicate than Oliver's short black ones.

To most, the gesture was sweet. Hannah would giggle behind her hand and her cheeks would grow pink whenever she spewed out, "Hi, Matt!" in the hallway. Oliver knew better than to trust her. Hannah wasn't endearing like Cissy Palmer or trustworthy like Daisy Cameron or kindhearted like Francine Vance. Hannah was smart and she knew it — smart enough only to let her sugary smile turn into a malicious sneer whenever she thought no one was looking.

But Oliver was always looking, and Matthew, unfortunately, was always looking at the ground.

Oliver didn't know that a fourteen-year-old girl — a girl with a bright future ahead of her, a girl who would probably always regret the terrible way she treated the shy boy who was never a bother to anyone — could make her hate anything, let alone school. School was a sanctuary. School was where Oliver learned about Blake and Pope and Keats. Where she wrote poetry and read novels. Where she passed notes to Matthew and ate lunch with Ms. Shelley. School was not, she had always believed, where she found her best friend crying in the toilets because Hannah Georges — cruel, manipulative, regretful Hannah Georges — decided to play with his self-worth. Where Hannah Georges decided to make Matthew's heart beat faster than it ever had before in one moment, and rip it out of his chest for everyone to see in the next.

***

Harry had never liked the rain, but snow was different. Snow was slow and calm, much gentler than the chaos that rainstorms always brought. It touched down quietly, sneaking up on him in the night, and when he'd wake in the morning to see the white flakes dusted across his front porch or piled on the hood of his car, he'd always feel warmth flutter within his chest.

The one time he hated the snow was a cold day last February, several days after his eighteenth birthday. Harry still felt poorly, his stomach queasy and his head pounding, and he could barely recall the party his friends had thrown for him. Liam called him early in the morning with a laugh caught in his throat as he begged Harry to bring breakfast to his new flat in Islington. With a groan, Harry had begrudgingly agreed to drag himself out of bed without giving it much thought.

The cold bit at his nose and the tips of his ears, but he liked the way the crisp air tasted on his tongue, and the footprints his boots left in the snow on the pavement made him think of his childhood — when he would chase his sister around the back garden, careful to follow in the tracks her snow-boots left behind. Harry ordered two coffees, one cinnamon tea, and a massive bag of fresh croissants from the first café he came across, and then followed the half-hearted instructions Liam had texted to him. He only took three wrong turns, slowly edging around icy corners and cautiously letting his foot hover over the brake every time he spotted a pedestrian waddling along on the pavement, before he finally found Liam's building on Goswell Road.

He choked on his own spit when he parked in the guest spot across the street and turned his head to see Liam with his face pressed up against the glass of the lobby doors. A girl was standing beside him, her hands tucked into her pockets as she elbowed Liam in the ribs. Her face was slightly hidden behind messy brown hair and every time she exhaled, her breath clouded the glass in front of her, but Harry had no doubts in his mind that this was Oliver Rose — Rosie, as Liam had called her.