Don't Get Angry

1- Otis: Pink Rivers

"Your dress...It's pink."

The girl in front of me giggled, looking down at her dress with baffled brows. "Uh...-Yeah. I noticed that before I put it on." She tapped her hand on her thigh nervously, then smiled at me, two dents forming in her cheeks. "Do you like it?"

I lifted my brows and shrugged my shoulders. "No." I shook my head, stopping my motion to see her dimpled smile drain like red paint down a white wall. "It reminds me of a former date I had...when I puked the exact same color."

"Oh..." She looked at me with this...concerned, compassionate look; furrowed brows, pouted lips, wide blue eyes. "W-what made you throw up this color?"

I looked at her dress again with a disgusted scowl. The light pink made my head spin. Such a childish color. "Maybe the color itself." Hearing her soft gasp, I rolled my eyes and turned towards my car.

She silently followed behind, probably feeling embarrassed and confused. That was my goal for the evening. Make her feel horrible about herself and make her realize that dating me isn't worth it. Her name; Penny Mahoy. Just the sound of it irritated me. I wasn't a fan of her at school or next door. And being forced to take her out on a date out of pity wasn't my idea. My mother thought taking the girl whose cat she ran over out for an evening would be, as she put it, "a nice neighborly thing to do." My mother ran over Penny's cat and I had to pay the consequences for her actions. Penny took me asking her to "hang out" as...me asking her "out on a date." Funny...even she didn't believe it when she'd heard me say it. "Hi...," I gagged a bit, "Penny."

Her round face brightened and her friends turned to look at me from around their little lunch table. Apart of her friend group was Dalta Jefferson; a girl who I then didn't know would change my perspective on life forever.

Before I continue this dreaded story about the complete and utter destruction that Dalta brought to my life, there's something I need to explain. I need to prepare you for what's to come. This isn't your cutesy romance about two kids who fall in love in high school. In fact, I'm not even sure you'll want that to happen by the end of this. It's a complicated story, about an uncomplicated guy who was yanked into girl's complicated life. A girl who's life didn't have to be as complicated as she made it be. Sounds complicated? Brace yourself.

Anyway, so I'm about to ask Penny out...to hang out. "Would you like to hang out this weekend?" I nearly choked on my words. "See a movie maybe?"

Penny blushed, her cheeks turning red and her eyes growing wide. She turned to her friends for their approval, disrupting Dalta's creative process. When I say creative process, I mean drawing on her wrist with a black marker. When I say very, you say childish. Very?... Dalta shook her head, trying to signal to Penny that hanging out with me would be a bad idea. I cleared my throat to let the little jerk know that I'd seen her. She shot her head towards me with wide eyes. We stared at each other exchanging glares until Penny replied to me with, "Sure, Otis."

"Great." I pursed my lips and shoved my hands in my pockets, then I turned on my heel and walked away. "Easier than I expected." Easy wasn't a real thing when it came to the Mahoy siblings. So, I should've expected things to be jinxed the minute I thought things went "easy."

Next thing I hear is that I'm going on a date with Penny Mahoy. That was never what I asked of her. I asked her if she wanted to HANG OUT. But don't get angry, Otis. It's fine. I convinced myself that maybe, just maybe she wasn't as bad as I thought she was. I had spent four years with her living next door to me and we never paid each other any mind. Even when I went to her house to hang out with her older brother. Penny Mahoy was more like Penny Dreadful. From the moment she walked down her front steps, I knew that that was what our afternoon would be; DREADFUL.