Page 6 of The Other Half

“Where are you going?” Oliver sneers as I begin to climb my staircase.

“My room, I have all the supplies up there already.” I try to keep any bitterness out of my tone. Kill him with kindness, Oakley.

He starts to slowly follow me up the steps. “Your parents are cool with someone like me in their daughter’s room?” he asks skeptically while browsing the art and photos lining the wall.

The insinuation of that comment makes me blush, and I’m thankful that I’m walking in front of him where he can’t see my face. I hadn’t considered my parents’ reaction to a boy being in my bedroom until he said that. But they rarely check on me anyway, and it’s for a school project. I’m fully aware that he’d never be anywhere near my room for any other reason.

“Yeah, it’s fine. They aren’t exactly helicopter parents.” They hardly pay any attention to me at all.

When we get to my room and I take a seat at my desk with the art supplies splayed across it, Oliver remains standing, gawking around at my room in what appears to be disbelief, or maybe confusion.

“You have a lot of music.” He walks over to my bookcase full of records and CD’s, and begins flipping through them. I have a decent size collection of records, most of which my grandma gave me, along with an old record player I found at an antique store. Even though I have all of those same songs digitally stored in my phone, I have a soft spot for my record collection. It brings me joy to listen to music the old fashioned way.

“Yeah, you’re welcome to play something if you’d like?”

“Uh. Sure.” He pulls out one of my records and places it on the turntable, dropping the needle on it. I’m impressed that he doesn’t need assistance. The opening notes of Come Together by the Beatles fill the room and he turns to me, a hint of a smile pulling at the ends of his lips. At that moment I realize I’ve never seen him with a smile on his face, he usually wears no expression at all, unless it’s an irritated scowl. His entire face brightens when he smiles, even just a little bit, and he looks even more handsome than he usually does. “I would’ve guessed you’d be more into Ariana Grande or Justin Bieber type shit. Not Dad music.”

“Dad music?”

“Yeah. The Rolling Stones, Steely Dan. No one listens to that except for forty year old men.” He continues taking inventory of my room with a sarcastic smirk on his face.

I bristle slightly, now he’s insulting my music taste? “Well, what do you listen to?”

“Ah, you know. Nirvana, Pearl Jam. Stuff like that.” He shrugs.

“I like them, too. I listen to everything. I think people who limit their music to one genre are boring.”

He stares at me wide-eyed. I expect him to throw back some kind of insult but instead he smiles again, this time it looks more genuine though. “This isn’t what I expected,” he says as he walks over to the chair opposite me and sits down.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when I first saw you I thought you must be at least kind of cool, with that outfit choice on the first day. I thought it was brave,” he chuckles. I inwardly cringe. I had hoped no one noticed that outfit. “But then finding out you live here,” he shakes his head slightly, “I figured you were another spoiled brat.”

My jaw drops slightly. Did he really just call me spoiled? He doesn’t even know me. “I’m not spoiled,” I retort defensively, frowning at him in response to his brazen assumption.

He stares at me like I’ve just spoken a different language. “You live in a mansion.”

I wouldn’t call it a mansion, more of a McMansion, but I get his point. “That doesn’t make me spoiled. You don’t even know me.”

He nods thoughtfully and studies my face. The intensity of his stare makes me anxious and I have to avert my eyes. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.” He pulls some of the materials on the desk towards him.

I ignore his prior comment and try to focus on the task at hand instead. The faster we get this over with, the better. Then he won’t have to step foot in my house that he hates so much ever again.

We have to pick a famous artist and try to replicate one of their works with a different medium, along with analyzing it in an essay. “I was thinking we could do the project on Van Gogh,” I say.

“Too boring,” he says as he flips through the textbook.

Too boring? How is Van Gogh boring? He cut off his ear, that seems pretty interesting to me. “Okay… Then you choose.”

“We’ll do Manet,” he quips without looking up.

“You mean Monet?”

He scrunches his eyebrows together and shakes his head. “No. Manet.” He points to a picture in the textbook and shoves it towards me. It’s a painting of a man and a woman.

“That looks like it’ll be hard to emulate,” I say as I study the elaborate piece of art.

“It’ll be easy. I can do most of it.”

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