50 Things I Hate About You

I Hate That You Don't Listen

"Hate is a strong word, Rory." Mom had said upon expressing my anger over my embarrassing run-in with Onyx that night. Of course she'd side with the overgrown man-child; she didn't see him for what he was. Nobody did. Nobody except me. "There's also this very fine line that separates hate and another extremely strong emotion. Love. I think you, my darling, are walking that line."

         I'd learned from countless rewatches of 10 Things and the hundreds of other rom-coms I sat with my mother through, that was an extremely overused trope, and knew that it couldn't ever possibly exist in the real world. I couldn't ever love Onyx, not when he'd done so many shitty things over the last ten years. Not when his love for himself was so monumental that he continuously hurt both of his parents with venomous words and disappearing acts.

      But leave it to my hopeless romantic mother to twist it so it fit into her cute little paradigm full of rainbows and unicorns prancing around fields with Knights in Shining Armor on their back. She'd been this way since I was seven and she'd found that she could take all wildest and craziest fantasies and slap it on a document full of blank pages. And be good at it. She had hit the New York Times Bestseller list with her debut novel Northern Lights just a few months before I, as well as my namesake, were born.

    As I sat in Chemistry the next morning, yet another class I unfortunately shared with Sir Sleeps A Lot, I wasn't surprised in the least to catch a strong waft of his ocean breeze scented cologne. Lifting my head up a fraction, I was immediately greeted by a white Smashing Pumpkins tee, so thin I could see his toned abdomen every time he shifted on his feet. He tapped his fingertips against the marble, eyes not on me, but my junior partner. She sunk into her chair under his intense gaze for a few seconds before she took the hint and hit the ground running across the room to another vacant seat. I tightened my grip on my phone in my hand as Onyx dropped his backpack on to the tile at our feet, slumping back into the chair with a satisfied look on his face.

      With that smirk, it was safe to say I should shoot a text to Mikey and tell him to prepare a beautiful, sentimental eulogy for my funeral.

    Okay, so maybe my best friend was right about the whole teen movies thing rubbing off on me thing.

         "Amy." Onyx greeted quietly.

         I heaved out an irritated sigh. "It's Aurora. Like Sleeping Beauty. Or Aurora Borealis."

        "Aurora Borawhatis?" Onyx responded with a drawing of his eyebrows.

         Unable to fight the urge any longer, I pressed my fingers into my temple. "It's the Northern Lights. You know, where you go to find the sky painted in beautiful colors."

      "You're named after the sky?"

      "You're named after a rock?" I retorted just as emotionless and confused, averting my eyes from the obnoxious blonde headed fool beside me and to the bald science teacher in his perch behind his cluttered desk, thick glasses askew on his nose as he rummaged through one of the three stacks of assignments on it. "There's literally twenty-two other students in this classroom you can go grace with your presence."

       "Yeah, but those twenty-two other students don't have a list of absolutely ridiculous and contradicting, reasons why they hate me."

        What did it matter how I felt about him? Rejection must not sit well with hm. Honestly it felt good to have him be the on squirming for once.

       "They're all valid." Is all I answered with, flipping my notebook open so I could take down the notes on the whiteboard. "Can you please keep your mouth shut if you insist on sitting here? You're distracting me."