Chapter 14

The sun shined down on Ollie as she sat at an outside table at school. It was her free period and she was taking advantage of it by doing some English homework. She was a good student, but had had to work hard to keep her grades up recently because of all the current distractions in her life and the lack of quiet at home with two more people than usual living there. Not many of her friends had this period free and those who had took off home as soon as the bell went, but Ollie was enjoying the quiet sunshine.

Glancing up around the quad she noticed a few people milling around talking and some others studying like her.

"Hey Ollie. Mind if I sit?"

She turned and saw one of her dad's players smiling and gesturing to the table she was at.

"Hey Duncan" she said gesturing for him to sit.

Since her dad was the coach, Ollie went to a lot of the Ravens games and practices so she knew most of the players pretty well. Some were typical jocks and treated everyone like they were above them, but Duncan was nice and they talked sometimes even though his cheerleader girlfriend hated it.

"Your mates go home too?" he asked her.

She nodded closing her book to talk to him.

"What'd you stick around for?"She asked, usually the basketballers all left and went to the river court to shoot around.

"I've gotta get my grades up if I want to graduate, figured I should do some study." Duncan was in his senior year.

Ollie nodded as he opened his books and started to work. She went back to her own work.

A few minutes later she heard Duncan say, "Ollie?"

She looked up, "Yeah?"

"Can you please help me with this?"

"Uh, yeah sure."

She scooted round the table so that she was close enough to see what he needed help with. Even though she was a sophomore and it was senior work, she knew that she could probably help him with it.

However across the quad, unbeknownst to Ollie and Duncan, stood a very jealous looking cheerleader. Fuming as she saw Olivia Scott slide round the bench to end up leaning right next to her boyfriend. No one was allowed to get that close to that particular basketball player, except for herself.



The ringing of the bell, shook Haley out of her daydream and she glanced around seeing her class who had been working quietly packing up. The students, filed out the door, most still shy around her because of the whole fame thing but some said goodbye as they left the classroom.

When everyone was gone she slumped back into her chair with a thankful sigh. The day was finally over. No more teenagers asking for autographs or people staring. At least until tomorrow anyway, and it was only Tuesday. She wandered round the room putting up any of the chairs the students had left down and picking up rubbish. Checking that the instrument locker had everything accountable for, she locked it. Flopping back down into herseat, she could finally relax and wait until the corridors cleared of all the teenagers at their lockers, so she could go home.

After a while the sounds of people in the corridors died down. Grabbing her bag and stuffing her things inside she left the class leaving the door unlocked behind her for the cleaners. She headed down the corridor seeing the trophy cabinet that still held a photo of Nathan with Lucas and Whitey from just after state championships next to the glimmering trophy. Pausing she looked at the contents of the cabinet just for a second with a small smile on her face before continuing on her way out of the hall.

As she neared the car park she heard the sound of a girl shouting.

"Oi Scott." Lauren Burgess, the cheerleader who happened to be dating Duncan called out to Ollie across the field.

The bell had just gone signalling the end of the day and Lauren had made sure that she would be ready and waiting when Olivia Scott exited the school. She was not going to let Olivia think that she could flirt with Duncan and get away with it. Ollie stopped and turned looking for who had called out to her. Lauren furiously marched toward her.

"Stay away from my boyfriend slut." Lauren accused Ollie angrily shoving her backward roughly.

Lauren towered over her; Ollie was tiny compared to the well built cheerleader, even from all her basketball playing. She also knew that Lauren had a tendency to get violent, and that if this turned into a fight, Ollie wouldn't have a chance.

"What? I haven't been near Duncan."Ollie hoped Lauren would leave it at that.

"Don't lie to me bitch, I saw you on the quad."

"We were just talking", silently she cursed in her head that they had been seen, because even though her and Duncan had just been talking, that wasn't how it would have looked to some one like Lauren who never 'just talked' to guys.

"I saw how close you were to him" Lauren shouted furiously, this being the shout that Haley heard from the car park.

"I was helping him study, you're the one that cheats, not him or me," Ollie's voice now raised too, forgetting about being beaten up because she was so angry of being accused, by Lauren who slept with pretty much anything that moved, of making a move on Duncan.

The bigger girl's fist collided hard with Ollie's face sending her flying to the ground. People who saw the punch all ran over and gathered around them in a ring, typical to high school fights. Ollie tried to defend herself but Lauren was angry and didn't take well to being accused of cheating, even if it was true.

"Oi Break it up." Haley had run over at the sound of the first shout, only to see a mass of people gathered around two people she presumed were fighting. Remarks like 'catfight' and hooting were coming from the spectators. When they saw her though, the teacher, they dispersed not wanting to get in any trouble themselves.

Haley recognized the girl who was clearly winning as Lauren Burgess, a girl from one of her classes. The other was shielding her face from the much taller Lauren while still trying to fight back, and failing.

"Lauren, stop." She pulled her off the other girl and angrily with authority said. "See the principle first thing tomorrow morning. You cannot use violence against other students at this school. Now go home, I'll be ringing your parents about this."

Lauren glared at her before taking off, pissed about getting caught; she thought Ollie had deserved it anyway.

The girl Lauren had been attacking was covered in mud from being pushed over onto the field. She was frantically gathering up her books, wanting to be anywhere but here.

"Are you Ok?" Haley asked her.

She turned noticing for the first time that it was Haley and Haley noticing it was Ollie.

Ollie flinched away from Haley, glaring at her somewhat ashamed and embarrassed for losing the fight, "I'm fine." She spat.

"No you're not, you're bleeding." Haley's voice was laced with worry.

"Like you care" she snapped

Blood was pouring out of Ollie's nose as well as from a deep gash on her lower lip. Ollie frustratedly wiped the blood away, but the flow did not stop.

Haley chose to ignore that comment, "I have a first aid kit in my classroom, come on."

"No I'm fine." Ollie shouted, grabbing her bag and storming off in the opposite direction.

Haley didn't know what to do. She couldn't let her own daughter, let alone any student wander off bleeding from the face. So she called out the first thing that came to her. "I'll call your father then."

Ollie froze. She couldn't let Haley do that. Partly because she knew that her father would be furious at her for fighting and also because she knew he couldn't handle being near Haley. So, she turned and followed Haley into the class glaring stubbornly at the ground the entire way.

Once in the room, Ollie silently went to the sink and washed the dirt and dried blood from her face. The flow from her nose had stopped, but it still hurt. She just hoped it wasn't broken. She could feel Haley's gaze on her back and it made her very uncomfortable. When she turned from the sink, she saw Haley quickly look away into the first aid kit.

She pulled out some gauze cloth and petroleum jelly. Dampening the cloth she handed it to Ollie. The girls hand was shaking, she noticed as it brushed against her own to take the cloth. As soon as their hands made contact, Ollie snatched her hand away with the cloth as if she had been burned.

Still neither said anything.

Holding the cold damp cloth to her lip, she felt the pain ease a little from the coolness of the cloth. She sat down at one of the desks holding the cloth as steadily as she could to her lip. Haley came over and kneeled next to her.

"Let me look at your nose" her voice was gentle; she could tell that in a way Ollie was terrified of her.

"No", Ollie's voice shook.

"It could be broken."

Wordlessly Ollie lowered her shaking hand and allowed Haley to examine her nose. She winced, only partly from pain when Haley squeezed the bridge of her nose to see if there were any breaks.

"I think it's Ok." Haley told her. "Put some of this on your lip". She squeezed some petroleum jelly onto Ollie's finger.

Ollie looked down at it uncertainly; she didn't trust Haley at all, "What is it?"

"Petroleum Jelly, it will stop the bleeding."

Ollie rubbed it on her lip and stood as she saw Haley packing away the first aid. She threw her bag over her shoulder and threw the gauze cloth in the bin.

"Thanks", she muttered, quite spitefully but still semi gratefully as she went to walk out the door.

"Ollie?" Haley called just before she left. "Can I give you a ride home?"

"No"

Haley's eyes grew sad, "Please?"

And at that moment Ollie actually felt enough compassion for Haley to slowly nod her head.