Moirai

Chapter 1

If Olivia's mother asked her what she thought of Ben Kim, she would tell her he was a nice guy and that they got along well, but if anyone else asked her, she had no problem telling them he was a narcissist and she hated him.

The only reason Olivia never said anything of the sort to her mother is because she happened to be best friends with his mother. They'd been best friends since they were 9 years old, Olivia wouldn't mess with that for anything. So she sat through barbecues, game nights, trick or treating, and all other manner of torture inducing activities with that overgrown child and his otherwise relatively normal family.

What had Ben done to make Olivia hate him? Aside from existing, of course? If his general attitude wasn't obnoxious enough, then his years of hair pulling, teasing, and just generic name calling seemed more than enough to convince her that they could never actually be friends.

On the one occasion Olivia had told her mother about how he would poke and prod her in class, she'd smiled so sweetly, informing Olivia that little Ben must have a crush on her; boys only pull hair when they like a girl. That dung beetle didn't like her, he just liked watching her get mad. He'd said so on more than one occasion.

"It's just so funny when you turn red." He'd nudged, "I think I can see steam coming out of your ears." Olivia wouldn't have been able to explain a purple bruise around his eye in the shape of her fist so she'd spun around and stomped away in all of her righteous 10 year old indignation, hell bent on never talking to him again...until the next game night, of course.

So now, here Olivia sat, watching his stupidly handsome face as he laughed with friends at the center lunch table with the head cheerleader sitting in his lap soaking up his popularity and high school cliché relationship. She extra hated him for the fact that he'd grown into his gangly limbs, buck teeth and huge doe eyes. Now he was good looking and well liked and, frankly, he didn't deserve it. Not that Olivia wanted to be popular, oh no, that was a life style she did whatever she could to repel, but still, he definitely didn't deserve to be so well liked.

"Wow, what did that carrot ever do to you?"

Olivia turned in surprise, looking at her friend with a carrot dangling from her lip in a daze. "What?" She squeaked.

Lillian laughed, shaking her head. "I'm just saying, the way you're biting into that carrot makes me wonder what it ever did to make you so mad."

Pulling what remained of the decimated vegetable from her lips, Olivia stared at it in confusion before sighing and dropping it back into her lunch box. "Sorry, I got distracted."

"By the striker?" her friend, Noelle, teased.

Olivia scoffed, "he's just so obnoxious."

"You know, sometimes I wonder if you really do find him obnoxious or if this is all just a ploy to convince us you don't actually want to rip his clothes off and ravish his beautiful body. I know I would."

Olivia gagged, deep in the back of her throat. "Have some respect for yourself, Noelle. I literally hate him so the last thing I want to do is touch his vomit inducing body."

"I'm just saying," she shrugged, "you sure do talk about him a lot for someone who claims to hate him."

Lillian nodded, "you really do talk about him a lot. Are you sure you don't like him? There's no shame in it if you do, he really is handsome."

"I hate him!" Olivia exclaimed.

Lillian held up her hands in surrender. "OK, that's fine. New topic, then. Did you study for the lit exam today?"

"Of course I did," Olivia moaned, "I studied for two weeks straight but I honestly have no hope. You know how much I suck at English."

Noelle hummed, "Maybe you could ask Ms. Collins to assign you a tutor?"