Chapter 10

OLIVER

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“Where are you going? You didn’t do your laundry.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I grabbed a buttered stuffed blueberry scone before kissing my Mom on her cheek. “I’ll do it when I come home.”

My mom crossed her arms. With her slender limbs, short height, her long night hat and pudgy nose, she looked like a smurf. People tell me I look like her, I have her eyes and whatnot. I didn’t see the resemblance. I definitely didn’t have her nose.(which is still cute don’t get me wrong)

But people tell me I look like Ariana Grande so I can’t trust people.

My mom sighed, “Fine, but you’re doing the dishes too.”

“What? But I’ll have assignments.” I huffed indignantly, “I won’t have time.”

“Well, you had time yesterday,” she countered. “That didn’t stop you from not doing laundry. Now you have to do the dishes too. You know the rules here: one chore not completed-“

“Two to be repeated,” the words tumbled out with a mix of familiarity and annoyance. “Fine, I’ll do it. Now, can I escape this prison we call home?”

Mom chuckled before pinching my cheeks. She’d always do this since I was two years old. I was nineteen now. Normally, it was endearing but as you can imagine, when other people were around, it was not. “Bye pumpkin. Stay safe.”

“Mom I’m nineteen,” I rolled my eyes, “Adults don’t call other adults pumpkin.”

“But you’re my child,” she smiled. “Not my adult.”

I was about to tell her how corny she sounded until my phone vibrated again.
Damn Casey.

“Bye!” I said before sprinting out.

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One word about how the study session was: unproductive.

For one thing, I was the first to arrive at the school library where we were having our study session.

Casey came in five minutes after me, saying how he had forgotten his Chemistry book and had to rush over to his house-which was a considerable distance from school compared to mine) and get it.

Then he spent the next thirty minutes raving about how JJ had bought him a sexy lingerie that he wanted him to wear, describing it with such detail and precision that Sherlock Holmes would have been impressed. Basically it was white and full of pink glitter.

“And it looked A-mazing and when I put it on, he got so hard he pinned me to the wall and-“

“Hey, look,” I said hurriedly, eager to change the subject. I pointed at a random fact on my Chemistry Textbook. “Each year, a single cow can belch 220 pounds of methane into the atmosphere. Pretty cool, right?”

Casey gave me an annoyed look for interrupting him. “What’s so cool about that?”

“It’s super cool. Haven’t you always wondered how cows contribute to the greenhouse effect?”

“But that’s so booooring,” Casey slumped into his chair. “And I was telling you about how JJ-“

“Is JJ gonna come as a question on our test?”

“I mean, I can make a suggestion to Mr. Gerald to add him there.”

I gave him a pointed look.

Casey’s cheeks puffed. “Fine. It’s super cool that cows belch up 22000 pounds of mendane into the air.”

“220 pounds,” I corrected him. “And it’s methane.”

“Whatever.”

We began seriously studying after that.

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It was recess, and after lunch, I didn’t have any classes(much to my delight) unlike Casey who had a double class in Caving & Cavern training.(much to his chagrin). Why he chose that class I have no idea. By now you should guess everything he does and breathes is weird.

I got out of my Creative Writing class, said goodbye to Casey and headed to the washrooms. That tea I drank in the morning was calling.

I hadn’t seen Jude at all since I got to school. Don’t get me wrong I was elated about that. Not seeing him each day brought me joy. But it was still weird.
He was a sophomore so I knew he had more classes than I did, but I’d usually encounter him and his band of goons a lot in the school hallways. And we seemed to share break periods. Today though…

I entered the restrooms and relieved myself. As I was washing my hands, a figure entered but I was too busy cleaning my hands vigorously to notice his features in my peripheral vision before a voice behind me gruffed out, “Damn.”

I flinched and turned around, afraid that it was Jude, but my eyes immediately landing on a familiar face with brown mop of hair and lewd green eyes.

It was Lionel.