Putnam Valley High School

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Olive's POV

A few days into our eleventh grade year and I still know nothing about homecoming.

I'll admit that it's definitely one of my favourite annual events—actually, pretty much the only one I've attended every year of high school so far. I just love the whole hype and energy.

Not to mention that last year I was asked by my longtime friend (okay, three years) William Morris Barfée to be his date. Sigh. That's one of my concerns for this year—he hasn't talked to me about it yet.

Olive, why not just get off your ass and bring it up yourself?! Be the feminist you want to be! I push this thought away every single time it comes. I'm afraid asking Barfée or even mentioning homecoming will put a strain on our relationship. I mean, he's barely been talking to me at all lately. The last thing I want to do is screw it up forever.

But come on. I've definitely had a crush on him for too long. What kind of feminist am I if I don't think I have permission to make a move until he does first?!

Which is why I've asked him to walk together to my place after school. Just to do some homework together—neither of us particularly needs help keeping up, but we learn a lot from each other. I've started to be less passive with my feedback, and he's becoming less... condescending.

But time goes by, and I'm still waiting outside the school.

Did he forget? I wonder. Or did I do something wrong? What the hell did I...

"Olive?"

I whip my head around. There stands Barfée, looking quite neutral, and I realize how ridiculous it was to start panicking. He clearly has no idea what's wrong.

"Oh!" I exclaim. "You ready to walk?"

"Yeah! ...Are you crying?" He examines my face.

Shit. Am I?? I put a hand to my cheek. Dry, but hot. My eyes? Wet. Well, I'm starting to. That's so fucking ridiculous.

I laugh. "I—no. I mean, yes, but not because of you." What am I saying? I'm just confusing him further. "Because I was thinking of something... sad."

"What was it?"

Why, Barfée?

As we turn the corner, I scratch my neck in thought. "It was a book. One I read in class."

"Oh." I think he's letting it go. Thank God—I didn't have a "book" in mind.

We reach my house a little while later. I turn the knob, and a wave of relief envelops me when it doesn't move. It's locked. Which means nobody's home. I get out my key and unlock the door, step inside, and head down the hall to my room, dropping my bag on my bed. And the whole time, Barfée follows in silence.

"What's up?" I ask him when we're in there, door shut.

He shrugs. "Nothing much. I did have this really good wrap for lunch yesterday—I thought it'd be disgusting, but it was surprisingly—"

I cut him off, for a second not caring how rude I'm being. "No! I mean, what's up with you? With us?"

"What?"

"I don't know! I just... we haven't been eating lunch together. I could've known about the wrap sooner." I lie back into my pillow. "But—that isn't the point. I just mean, c'mon, Barfée. We're friends, aren't we? Why're you being so distant?"

He stares back for a second, maybe a bit stunned. "Uh, am I? I'm not trying to... maybe there's just a lot of... y'know. Tension?"

My face flushes. I'm not great at deciphering the things other people say, but does this mean he likes me back? And doesn't know how to tell me? And he's afraid of being too obvious so he's waiting for me to ask him to the homecoming dance as confirmation that I feel the same way, but I'm thinking the same thing and so neither of us will ever make a move and our friendship will deteriorate and eventually crash and burn?!

"Olive?" he asks. Guess I've been quiet too long.

I look at him apologetically. "Were you saying anything?"

"No, I was just... no. I just said there was a lot of tension. But I don't wanna talk about it."

I open my mouth to form a reply, but promptly close it. Then I open it again. And what I say is just groundbreaking.

"...Tension?"

I know, right? Marvelous. It dawns on me that we haven't done any homework yet, we're just sitting on my bed conversing awkwardly, but to say I could care less would be both grammatically and factually incorrect.

Barfée looks annoyed. "That's what I said. Can we please leave it alone?"

"The tension won't disappear if we 'leave it alone!'" I suddenly cry out.

"Olive! I don't want to talk about it." He stands up, then lowers his voice. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even come here."

"No! No—don't say that. We're gonna be fine, all right?"

He can't even open his mouth to speak before I hear the door rattling downstairs. "We need to start doing homework now," I blurt.

"...All right," he nods understandingly. "Are we, uh... okay?"

"We're fine," I say softly as I pull math worksheet after math worksheet from my backpack. It has a funny way of working out where the newest ones slip straight to the bottom. It's not actually funny at all.

Our eyes meet when I return to my spot. I can definitely feel the tension he was on about. I just don't understand... what happened to us? What did I do?

"Hey, Olive?" His voice seems to echo in the silence, but I know we're just in my bedroom with its same old boring, fantastic acoustics. It's not real—I'm just anxious.

"Yeah?" I glance over my worksheet to see where I left off—turns out it was my name (I spend far too long daydreaming in class). So once I've filled in vsky, I turn to look at my friend.

"Thanks for inviting me here." He gives me a half smile.

"Of course. I didn't really want to be alone, y'know."

We're both quiet. Barfée scrawls something on his worksheet. I peek over because honestly, I'm not sure where to start. He immediately brings the paper to his chest.

I draw back. "Sorry..."

He lowers it. "...No—it's fine. I'm just working on this problem. I dunno why I did that."

See what I mean about the distance? It's as if we're not even friends anymore. So much for asking him to homecoming—he might as well walk out right now, transfer schools, delete all his social media, whatever.

I guess what we have isn't really as favourable as I thought it was.