I'm a little late on uploading... sorry! But here's the next chapter, and I hope you like it!
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The next few days were... tense, to say the least. No one seemed to be speaking to each other, despite the constant chatter in the hallways and classrooms, and the atmosphere could’ve been cut with a knife.
Courtney and Carter were now an official couple, and, with the pressure of keeping a secret from Alyssa lifted, Courtney had no shame with regards to their public displays of affection. She was all over him any chance she could get, especially when Alyssa was around.
It seemed like she no longer cared that she wasn’t in Alyssa’s clique, and she would go out of her way to irritate her former friend. After all, it was unlikely that Alyssa would start on her in school, with so many people around. She was much too scared of getting her ass kicked in front of everyone.
Olivia, however, was no longer so happy. She hadn’t talked to Ethan since her confrontation with Sammi and, to tell the truth, she was scared to. Sammi was not the kind of girl she would like to get on the wrong side of, and she had decided that it was probably better to stay away from Ethan. It wasn’t like she needed any more enemies, anyway. She had enough without adding Sammi to the numbers.
And plus, it was unlikely that someone like Ethan would be interested in Olivia, especially now Sammi had arrived. She was so dainty, so pretty, everything that Olivia was not. And Sammi had said they had history... it was obvious that there was no competition between them. No one in their right mind would choose Olivia when Sammi was on offer. That was why, she had decided, to keep away.
Friday morning was fairly warm, and the sun was shining from beneath a layer of thin, wispy cloud. The weekend ahead promised to be a good one, but as usual, Olivia had no particular plans, aside from to start studying hard for her fast approaching exams. After all the trouble she had gotten in recently, the best thing she could do was study hard and give Mr Delmar a reason to keep her in the school.
"Hey!" Olivia heard a high pitched voice greet her cheerfully as she closed her locker.
Turning round to investigate the owner of the voice, her face fell, although she tried to hide it as best she could. To be honest, it wasn’t a face she wanted to see, especially after their last encounter. "Oh, um, hi."
Sammi smiled at her warmly, friendlier than before, although the glitter in her eyes was still not completely gone. There was still no way she was trustworthy. "How are you?"
"Uh... good, I guess, thanks..." Olivia said awkwardly, shutting her locker after her books had been placed inside. Was this some kind of practical joke? Last time something like this had happened, it was with Alyssa, and look where that had got her. It was understandable that she was reluctant to get involved with Sammi.
"Listen," Sammi said, tilting her head to one side as she spoke. "I’m sorry we got off to a bad start the other day. I didn’t mean to be so bitchy to you."
Olivia bit her lip, unsure of what to say. She always experienced this when in conversation with Sammi, as she was never sure of how to respond in a way that would not cause Sammi to ridicule her – whether directly or not.
"I guess I was just kind of... protective over Ethan, you know?" Sammi sighed, looking down at the floor as if genuinely sorry – it was extremely difficult to tell whether it was real or fake. After all, Sammi was a good actress and one could never be sure of her true emotions behind her dazzling smile. "I guess I’ve been away longer than I thought, right?"
"Um..."
"Anyway, I felt really bad and everything afterwards," she continued, her smile still permanently fixed to her face. "So I’m going to make it up to you."
"Oh, you don’t have to–"
"Of course I do," Sammi interrupted, holding her hand out as Olivia stopped talking. "Listen. I’m having a little party at my house tomorrow night, a little ‘welcome back’ thing to celebrate me getting the hell out of that other place. You should totally come. Everyone’s going to be there."
Olivia paused. "I don’t think I should, I mean, I’ve got a lot of studying to do and–"
"Oh, come on," Sammi pouted, pressing her perfectly glossed lips together and widening her eyes in perfect puppy-dog fashion. "You have to come. Otherwise I’ll feel bad about it all. Please. It’ll be fun, I promise." She smiled sweetly.
Olivia opened her mouth to respond negatively, but she was interrupted by Sammi yet again.
"It won’t be anywhere near as fun without you, babe."
Babe?
Why was she calling her ‘babe’? Was this her way of sucking up to her, or did she refer to everyone like she’d known them her whole life? She’d barely known the girl five minutes, and the whole thing seemed way too personal. And the party thing? The whole thing was bound to end badly, especially as Sammi didn’t seem the type of girl to have a quiet get-together. Olivia couldn’t picture her with Ethan at all.
"Um, I guess I could come for a little while," Olivia said, shrugging. She still wasn’t convinced, but Sammi looked persistent. This was the only way to shut her up. Anyway, she could always just show her face and leave after a couple of hours, or less if it was really that bad.
"That’s great!" Sammi beamed, flashing her pearly white teeth in a smile that was as sweet as sugar. "Here’s the address." She whipped out a pen from her bag, grabbed Olivia’s wrist and yanked up her blazer sleeve. The pen scratched her skin unpleasantly as she scrawled the house number and street all up Olivia’s arm.
"The party starts around eight-ish. I’ll see you there!" With another flash of her teeth and a small, girly wave, she was gone, strutting down the hallway in her heels as confidently as ever.
Olivia let out a small sigh. "What the hell just happened?" she muttered to herself under her breath as she picked up her satchel from the floor and slung it over her shoulder. It was heavy, especially with all those thick textbooks inside, and weighed down her body’s small frame.
She had just started to walk off down the hallway, mentally preparing herself for lugging her heavy bag up a flight of steep stairs to get to homeroom, when she felt another hand on her shoulder.
Great. If that was Sammi again, she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know how much longer she could take that fake, sugary smile of hers. She had never had much of a sweet tooth, anyway, and Sammi was the equivalent of a whole jar of artificial sweetener.
"Hey, it’s me."
"Oh, hey," Olivia said quietly, as she turned round to see Ethan’s piercing green eyes looking down at her. His brown hair flopped sexily in front of his face and he smiled warmly at her.
"Haven’t seen you in a while," he said, as they shifted over to the edge of the hallway, where the stream of passers-by wasn’t as heavily concentrated and they could actually hear each other talking without being drowned out by the mindless chatter of every other student.
"No," Olivia breathed, unsure of what to do. She couldn’t help the blush spreading across her cheeks and she hoped sincerely that Sammi wasn’t still hanging around, as she wasn’t sure how long her sweet new ‘friendship’ would last if she was seen with Ethan.
She didn’t seem like a particularly violent person, but after what happened in Chemistry class, she wouldn’t like to take any chances. If that was how she treated a person she had just met, then she definitely wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her, especially if she was getting too close to her precious Ethan that she had claimed.
"Have you been avoiding me?" Ethan joked, with a smile on his face. "Do I smell or something? Because I promise you, I have taken a shower recently."
Olivia smiled weakly, shrugging, as she struggled to come up with a legitimate excuse that at the same time wouldn’t sound completely pathetic – which turned out to be harder than you’d think. "I guess I must’ve just missed you."
"Right," Ethan said, his smile slowly fading as the conversation ground to an awkward halt. It was strange, the way it was suddenly so awkward between them when they had started to really get to know each other just a few days before. He cleared his throat. "How have you been?"
"Good, I guess," Olivia responded politely, her eyes focused on the floor. "How about you?"
"I’m okay. Tired out, though, from all the extra practice Coach is making us do."
"Oh, right." She inhaled deeply, silently praying that no one would see them and pass the hint to Sammi. Even this awkward conversation would probably count as ‘cheating’, despite the fact that Sammi and Ethan weren’t technically dating.
"So I guess I’ll see you around," he added, also noticing that the conversation was going nowhere interesting.
"Yeah, see you." Olivia nodded as Ethan smiled slightly and turned to walk off. She wanted to say something, anything to him to break the awkwardness... but she couldn’t. Ethan belonged with Sammi, everyone thought so, and there was just no way it was going to work out.
And no matter how close she got to Ethan, how genuine she found that he was, it would always be the same. Despite him admitting his secret to her, they were still from two different worlds. He was popular, good-looking, friends with everyone. And what was she? Quiet and shy, a nerd, and yet still followed by endless rumours that slandered her. When two worlds collided, nothing good could come of it.
Sammi was right for him. She was exactly like him on the outside, although Olivia still couldn’t imagine any kind of connection between them. They were different, but something between them had obviously worked. And who was she to come in between them? She had no right to barge in on whatever they had, taking it away from the both of them, even if it appeared to be what Ethan wanted.
Sure, he was gorgeous, kind, honest, genuine... the list could go on for hours, but the bottom line would never change. He was not like her, even if she knew the truth. There was no possible way that she could compete against Sammi, let alone win. There was just no chance.
No chance for someone like Olivia.
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