Author's Note: Written for Battery Park Lodging House contest. Disney owns Skittery, I guess. Olivia is Morning Glory's character, but I know she won't mind me using her. :-) Modern!

The Library Book

"Yeah?" Olivia answered her cell phone.

"It's me," Skittery said. "Where's Emily Dickinson?"

"Um, let's see. Either buried in her grave in Amherst, or seeing Pirates of the Carribean 3." She blew on her nails, which she had just painted before this annoying phone call.

"Liv, you freak. I'm talking about the book I checked out for you on my school library card. The one you begged me to check out for you that day because you had forgotten your card. You never turned it in and now I've got a hold on summer school registration and I owe 10 bucks."

Livia snorted. "Oooh. I thought you were asking for Emily Dickinson the person, not Emily Dickinson, the book."

"Where IS it?" Skittery repeated.

"Let's see… don't know, don't care." She smirked as she reclined back onto her bunk. For once she was alone. It seemed like girls were always milling around in the Battery Park Lodging House, which was one of the reasons she hated living there. It was cheap and near the college, though, so she dealt with it.

"OLIVIA!" Skittery interrupted her thoughts.

"WHAT?" She matched the annoyed, angry tone in his voice.

"Where is the book?"

"How the heck should I know?"

"Because you're the one who forced me to check it out," he whined. "So you have to know where it is, or I'm in big trouble…"

"Well, then I guess you're in big trouble." She tapped her foot impatiently against the footboard of her bed.

"Okay, then you need to come with me to the library to pay for it," Skittery said.

"No, I don't."

There was silence. "Uh. YES. You. DO."

"Freaking Skittery. No, I don't." She spoke quickly and dismissively. The truth was, she didn't have the money. Not ten bucks, let alone whatever the heck it would cost to replace the book that she had….well, lost wasn't quite the right word for it.

"I SWEAR, Olivia. IF you don't pay me back for this, I'll…" He trailed off.

"You'll what? You won't be my friend anymore? Let's see… you stopped being my friend about 3 months ago when you decided to be friends with Kristen, Sarah, Lindsey and Glory. Especially Glory."

"What? I never stopped being your friend…"

"You stopped calling me. You'd walk right past me if you saw me in the Campus Inn. You told Professor Snyder that I had cheated on the midterm."

"You DID cheat on the midterm, Liv. I saw you looking at Glory's test."

"Yeah, and friends don't rat out their friends." Suddenly, she was THIS close to hanging up on him. "So you obviously decided that you'd rather protect precious little Glory than be my friend."

"I wasn't protecting Glory. I just hated to see you get ahead after not working as hard as she did in that class."

"Ohhh. Suddenly everything is justified," Livia said with a sarcastic tone. "What do you know about how hard I worked, anyway? And what makes you think saying that to me is going to make me forgive you?"

"Forgive me? If you forgave me, I wouldn't even accept your apology, because I don't deserve forgiveness because I didn't do anything wrong," Skittery said.

"Yes you did. Why don't you believe me? That's your problem: you don't believe people."

"No, that sounds like YOUR problem. You're the one not being believed. What does it matter to me if I don't believe people or not?" he said. "And anyway, I don't believe you because you aren't trustworthy. Not because I have trouble believing people in general."

"Yes, but you're the one who trusted me with the precious library book. Could it be that you thought I'd be different around you? That'd I'd be a better person for you, Skittery? As good a person as Glory is?"

"So THAT'S what this is about?" Skittery's voice raised. "You're trying to get revenge, aren't you!"

"I'm hardly a vengeful person, Skittery," Liv said. "If I was, I'd have stopped having time for all my extracurricular activities long ago. You know how many times I've been screwed over."

"Yeah, I DO know," he said. "And I know that it makes you less worried about screwing other people over. So where's the library book?"

Olivia was quiet for a moment. "I think I left it in Central Park. In the pond." And then she hung up on him.

She knew he was probably really mad at her at this moment. But he deserved it. Friends don't treat friends like that.