God! I Hate You

      I couldn’t believe he was doing this to me again. It wasn’t my fault he was such a jerk; I should be getting an award for putting him in his place, not a goddamned call to the principal’s office to discuss my “troubling behavior.” What about his troubling behavior of being the school’s official asshole? I mean, he’s been trouble a lot longer than me, that’s for sure.

           He smirked at me from his chair. He knows I’m in deep shit right now and is trying to get a reaction out of me, but there was no way in hell I would react at all. I gave him a mocking glare, and to my unfortunate luck, the principal decided to come out of his office at the exact same time. I tried to cover the glare, but I was pretty sure the damage was done.

“Miss St. Clair and Mr. Wyatt, what an unpleasant surprise,” Mr. Johnson exclaimed, shooting me with a disapproving. I did feel a little shame, and it wasn’t that I was a bad student or anything; in fact, I’ve always tried to do my best, but some people in life just make the worst in me come out. And Daniel Wyatt was an expert in that department. Ever since we were little, he’s had this weird habit of poking me until I exploded, and in all those instances, I was the one who got in trouble. Because apparently, Mr. Perfect over there can do no wrong or something. Well, newsflash to the world that boy was the biggest nuisance at this school, and no one was changing my mind about that.

           We entered Mr. Johnson’s office, and Daniel quickly made his way to the couch. It was his place in this office. The whole couch to lay there and look at me smugly while I was getting punished. I really hated this boy so much.

“So, what brings you two here today?” The principal asked, clearly tired of this already. I was also tired of the same pattern, but what nobody ever understood was that it was all his fault! They just saw me angry, but they never saw him push and push and push.

“He started it, Mr. Johnson,” I started, and Daniel scoffed. I shot him a nasty look, and he smiled mockingly at me.

“Yet, he’s the one with the black eye,” Mr. Johnson pointed out. He was giving me a meaningful look.

“I didn’t do that,” I countered.

“Like hell you didn’t,” Daniel exclaimed, sitting up to glare at me.

“He did that to himself,” I continued speaking as if I hadn’t heard him.

“I find it insulting that you think I would believe that when there are multiple people who saw you giving Mr. Wyatt that particular wound,” Mr. Johnson said in a slow, angry voice. He didn’t raise his voice, but my hand started sweating anyway. I knew I had messed up big time by punching him, but I was just so tired of his teasing and stupid comments. There was so much I could take before I exploded.

“I can admit that I punched him when I shouldn’t have, but I will not take all the blame for this incident. He started it, and I just reacted,” I said, knowing I was not getting away with this. I felt sorry for Mr. Johnson; he was a great principal, and I knew he had better things to do than deal with two unruly teenagers.

“Alright, so she admitted to hurting me. Can you punish her and move on?” Daniel said, once again lying on the couch. He was staring at the ceiling as if he had anywhere better to be.

“But that’s not the whole story! Mr. Wyatt over there had been harassing me. Do you know how annoying he can be?” I said, digging my hole a little more. I didn’t have a good excuse for punching him; I mean, he was annoying me, but what else was new? I have no idea what possessed me and hit him, but I was not admitting that anytime soon.

“Frankly, I don’t care how annoying he was to you; violence is never the solution Miss St. Clair,” Mr. Johnson said tiredly. “I think you two have been fighting for way too long. How about this? You will both be getting detention and meet with the counselor once a week to figure out your problem with each other,” Mr. Johnson said calmly as if he wasn’t delivering my death sentence.

“For how long?” I asked, alarmed.

“For as long as I see fit,” he replied. “And just so there are no misunderstandings, you will be meeting with the counselor together, no exceptions.” I was going to die. I wanted to cry, scream, and disappear. Was it me, or was the room getting smaller? I had to get out of here; this wasn’t happening.

“Now, now, none of those hysterics, if you’re brave enough to punch Mr. Wyatt, I’m sure you’re brave enough to face him in those meetings,” Mr. Johnson said. “Now go back to class, and tomorrow after class will be your first meeting.”

I heard Daniel get up and leave without a word, but I felt like I couldn’t move. My legs felt like jelly. Mr. Johnson looked at me expectantly, and I gave him a nervous smile and stood up on shaky legs. I bowed my head a little and hurried out the door, hoping to wake up from this nightmare.  

“You know, if you could actually chill a little, this wouldn’t have happened,” Daniel said as soon as the door closed behind me. I groaned, so the nightmare continued.

“Maybe if you would just leave me alone, this wouldn’t have happened,” I replied. I tried putting my distance from him, but he didn’t get the hint and started following me.

“We could pretend to get along in front of the counselor,” Daniel suggested.

“Yeah, and when we have our next big fight?”

“We don’t need to fight all the time; I mean, do you even know what we’re fighting about?” He said. I mean, he had a point, but old habits die hard, and I couldn’t not find him annoying from one moment to the other.

“The only way I won’t fight with you is if you leave me alone,” I countered, and he laughed. The nerve he had!

“Please, you go out of your way to make sure I talk to you,” he said, amused. I stopped abruptly, and he bumped into me.

“When have I ever?” I said slowly.

“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is I don’t want to spend all my senior year going to the counselor once a week when I have better things to do.”

“Like what? Terrorizing the world as we know it?” I replied. And he laughed again.

“Please, when are you going to stop pretending you’re not in love with me,” he said mockingly.

“Oh, I see your problem,” I said, starting to walk again. “You’re delusional.” He continued following me while I pretended he wasn’t there. Unfortunately, we had the same class this period, so I couldn’t just tell him to piss off.

“Anyway, I think we should plan on how we will get off this punishment. If we don’t work together, we’ll never be able to escape,” Daniel said, ignoring my insult.

“You could always move,” I replied. Before he could answer, I opened the door to our class and went in. At least here, he had to shut up for at least an hour, and I could have a little bit of peace.

           Thankfully the rest of my day went on quickly without Daniel’s presence. Unfortunately, I had to call home and tell them I had detention… again. Mom was definitely not happy about this, and I was sure to get scolded as soon as I got home. I made my way to the detention classroom, where my worst enemy waited for me.

“Did you miss me?” Daniel said as soon as I entered. I rolled my eyes and didn’t answer. I decided that my best course of action was to ignore him. Just six more months of him, and then I would be free and never see his stupid face again.

“Ah, we’re back to ignoring me, remind me, how well did that work out for you last time?” He said annoyingly. He was right; this wasn’t the first time I had tried ignoring him, but it would work this time. I was determined.

           My determination lasted for about five minutes of him throwing pieces of paper at me. I could feel my annoyance rising by the second; if I didn’t stop this, I would give him another black eye.

“If I work with you on your stupid plan, will you leave me alone?” I said, glaring at him.

“If that’s what you wish, then yes,” he smirked at me, and I had the urge to slap the smile off his face.

“Okay, then, what do you have in mind?” I said, trying to distract my murdering tendencies.

“We should use this time together to get to know each other, and when it’s time for the meetings, we’ll just act super friendly, and they won’t have any reason to make us go to the counselor,” he explained.

“So, your plan is to have the therapy sessions here, so we don’t have to have them with Mrs. Jones,” I said slowly.

“Huh, I didn’t think of it like that, but yeah, I guess that’s correct,” he answered, leaning back in his chair.

“Brilliant,” I said sarcastically.

“I don’t see you coming up with a better plan,” he countered, which was fair enough.

“How about this, we don’t have to get to know each other because that will take more time than I want to spend with you, but we can reminisce as to why all this fighting started in the first place and agree it was a stupid reason and move on,” I said quite proud of my plan.

“It’s basically the same plan,” he said.

“Sure, but coming from me, it sounds better,” I replied cheekily. He scoffed but didn’t deny it, so I took that as acceptance.

“Alright, do you remember when this all started?” He asked, getting a piece of paper as if he was going to take notes. I made a face at him but started thinking back at our childhood, trying to point out the first instance of hate. I mean, I could think of many fights and pranks and petty discussions, but I couldn’t really pinpoint the one that started it all; it had been a long time ago, after all.

“Um, I’m not really sure, I’m sure it was your fault, but I can’t think of the exact situation,” I replied after a few minutes of silence.

“My fault? It was probably something you said that started all of this,” he said, writing ‘she started it’ on the paper.

“Me? I was probably minding my own business when you came and decided to ruin my whole life,” I answered, getting heated again.

“Dramatic much,” he laughed. Maybe it was a dramatic way of describing it, but that didn’t make it untrue.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” I said, preparing to change seats to a farther one, so I didn’t have to have this conversation.

“No, I think this is good. Neither of us remembers why we started this war in the first place, so it was probably something stupid, to begin with. I propose we start fresh, we put a stop to the petty arguments, and bam! Instant friendship,” he said calmly. Ugh, he was so annoyingly calm while I was ready to start World War three. I breathed in and exhaled loudly.

“I guess I could work with that,” I said, and he smiled. This time it was a genuine smile, not a smirk or those mocking smiles he usually gives me when he gets away with something. No, this was a smile I had never seen from him. I felt myself smiling back at him without really thinking about it.

“Perfect!” He exclaimed. “We’ll be super friends in no time.”

“I don’t know about super friends,” I laughed. “But I can work on friendly acquaintances if you work on being less annoying, of course.” I was mostly joking, so I smiled at him, and he laughed.

“Deal,” he said, offering his hand. We shook on it, and the rest of the detention passed in comfortable silence. It felt good not to have to hate him all the time.

           We left detention together, still in silence. It was a new weird dynamic between us, but I was sure it could work. More if he was going to be this quiet from now on, I laughed to myself and looked at him.

“What?” He said, noticing my stare.

“Nothing, just thinking I could get used to you being quiet,” I joked; thankfully, he didn’t look offended.

“I wouldn’t get used to it,” he laughed. “I don’t know what quiet is.” I laughed with him, and again, it felt nice. Easy. We made our way to our respective cars and went our separate ways with a small wave.

           When I got home, my mom was ready to give me her speech about violence and how it was wrong to punch people and whatnot. She was right, of course, but the speech felt unnecessary. I didn’t have the urge to bash Daniel’s face in anymore, so what even was she fighting about? I listened to her, let her get it all out, and when she sent me to my room, I went without protest. I felt ready to turn a new leaf for the first time in a long while. I guess it’s true what they say, senior year is truly the best year. Tomorrow, when I got to school, all would be better.