Chasing Rainbows

In the Dark

"When are you going to get over yourself?" Olivia demanded. 

I didn't look up at her because I assumed that she was talking to either Kade or Mark (more likely Kade to be honest). Silence settled among the group until I finally looked up to see everyone staring at me with anxiety. 

"What?" I asked. "Me?" 

"Yes, you," she confirmed. 

I looked up from my phone, still waiting for that goddamn AP Chem midterm grade that I had already been waiting over a week and a half for. Scrolling through my grades, I had been refreshing it every minute for all of the lunch period. Instead of being addicted to facebook like a lot of my peers, I was addicted to checking my grades. 

"What are you talking about?" I questioned defensively. 

"You and Liam," Piper blurted.  

Crossing my arms, I dared any one of them to go on about me and Liam. We all gave each other shit, but Piper and Olivia knew we weren't supposed to give each other shit about guys in front of Kade and Mark. Once Mark and Kade started riling each other up and giving us shit it turned into a whole mess so us girls had learned early on not to involve them. 

"He's been avoiding us since you rejected him during Homecoming," Mark pointed out. "While you were my date may I remind you. Such a player." 

I rolled my eyes. "Like you weren't shoving me towards him that night," I threw back. 

He slapped the table twice. "Fine, I tap out." 

"I never told him to not hang out with us," I told everyone. "He's the one that's avoiding me."

"Yeah, while you figure your shit out," Kade chimed in, mumbling. 

Even though I knew that none of them knew about my sister, I was still mad at them for not figuring it out. Or more like I was misplacing my own anger at myself towards them. Why was I angry at myself? Sometimes it was getting harder and harder to answer that question. 

Olivia smacked Kade. 

"What was that for?" Kade whined. 

"Don't be a dick," Olivia snapped. 

"You were a bitch to her just a second ago," he defended. 

It was Jenna's turn to smack him. "Don't call her a bitch." 

"She just called me a dick!" He pointed out. 

I couldn't help but inwardly smile at the fact that Kade had so quickly turned the tables on himself. There was also the momentary relief that I got from the attention being solely on me and my (admittedly probably real) problems. 

"Yeah, you don't have to kick her while she's already down, though," Olivia explained. 

Deciding that Kade'd had enough at what was really my expense, I cleared my throat. "What happens or doesn't happen between Liam and me is between Liam and me," I clarified. 

"Well it is why nothing is happening with Liam that we're really worried about," Piper added. 

I raised my eyebrows. "And what the fuck does that mean?" 

"You're just a little too obsessed with your grades," Olivia offered up when no one else had an answer for me. 

I tilted my head to the side. "So let me be clear...you're worried because I'm paying too much attention to school?" 

Olivia thought about it for a second, letting it roll around in her head to try to reword it so it didn't sound so ridiculous. Well, they were right to an extent. This was getting a bit excessive with the constant refreshing the web page. Now I knew who I was really mad at. Mr. Brauer should have our tests graded already- this was getting absurd. I had all the rest of my grades within a couple days whereas it had been more than a week and a half.