Hate vs. Love ✓ [Original Version]

Why me?

Trust me, if you read the whole book, you won't regret it.

Love ya peeps

Chapter 1: Why me?

C-r-o-w-e-l-l

Those letters were arched over the tall, black gate. From where I stood, I could see the front view of the Crowell mansion. It was built with stone and the designed the way ancient castles were. There was even a cone shaped room on the third floor. A huge water fountain stood in between the gate and the mansion. A dolphin sat in the middle of the water fountain; it was supposed to be sprouting water out of its mouth, but it didn't because of the cold weather.

As I stood there, I muttered some curses at those people. Crowells were rival industrialists. Their business was slightly larger than ours, and they had been trying to expand more.

They tried to put my parents out of business fifteen times, but failed miserably. My family was still the second richest in town right after the Crowells.

I wished these people would simply disappear.

Something skittered across the sidewalk in front of me and I jumped back in surprise. The small black devil meowed at me before shimmying it's way to another black cat. Should I worry about bad luck? Wait, it also crossed the path of the Crowell mansion. Maybe it gave them the ugly luck . . . I shouldn't hope too high.

But such a tiny creature almost stopped my heartbeat.

"Good morning."

The whisper next to my ear nearly made me jump out of my skin. I turned around way too fast for my sake and the person's. Not even within five seconds, I was covered with cold liquid on my torso.

"What the hell?!" I cried disgusted as I stopped and tried to get the drink off me. "Wasn't the cat enough?!" I muttered under my breath.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

I looked up to find a tall stranger with a foreign--maybe British--accent. He didn't look familiar. In our small town where everybody knew everybody, it wasn't hard to distinguish a newbie. The stranger had messy black hair, and a sparkle in the sky blue eyes of his.

The idiot had spilled his iced tea all over me. I was beginning to feel sticky and really grossed out. Iced tea and sweat from the jogging didn't make a good combination.

"Disgusting!" I groaned. As I shook my arms to get some of the spilled drink off, I heard the stranger laugh. I snapped my light brown eyes to his light blue. "What? Why are you finding this amusing?" I asked with a frown as I surveyed my stained tank top. One huge discolored patch had formed on the front. It was my favorite one!

"Oh no. You have it wrong. Normally, the other person would apologize as well," he explained as he picked up his large--once full--cup from the ground.

"Well, do I look normal to you?" I retorted in annoyance.

He smiled, staring at me like he had never seen a person before. "I suppose not," he admitted.

Huffing, I started walking away. It was wrong not admitting your mistakes, but I was too pissed off to care. Under normal circumstances, I might have apologized, but hey, it wasn't normal to chit-chat with a stranger who had spilled his drink on you.

Wait, when was the last time I apologized to anybody?

Grandma? Last Christmas? Because I called her sugar cookies worse than horse crap. It wasn't on purpose, I swear. My older brother, Jimmy, decided to play a prank on me by switching the sugar cookies with raisin cookies. Trust me, everyone was pissed off at my comment and I had to spend twenty minutes snitching on my brother and then apologizing.