It was a fact of life: nobody, nobody, nobody ever wanted to be best friends with a pastor's kid. Not even fellow pastor's children wanted to be best friends with each other. Olive learned that rule by the time she was eight, and thankfully — by the time she was eleven — she didn't mind it anymore. It left her alone with her books, and they usually said nicer things than what the kids her age said to her face. And to date, a book had never stolen her glasses, or hid them in the coat closet, or threw them into a tree.
Another fact of life: kids with glasses — especially glasses with huge lenses, like the ones Olive wore—get picked on. Olive learned that rule even faster. Thankfully, Olive wasn't as "ugly" as many of the other kids who got teased in school: she had nice freckly skin, long soft brown hair, and dark eyes. She might even be considered very pretty if those stupid lenses didn't constantly cover a third of her face and if she dressed less conservatively. But Olive liked her glasses, and she liked her physical appearance and how she dressed, and she wasn't about to change that.
If she could change one thing though, it would be that she and her father wouldn't have needed to move out of her childhood home. The home with all her mother's memories in it. At least the town had altered her father's contract so they were given a new house: the home located next to their church, with the constantly ringing bell.
Olive was beginning to hate that bell. But she did love their new house: it was three-stories, which they'd never had before. While Olive knew her small family wasn't poor, they were not rich either: they didn't have a maid, as many other families around them had—and they had to save up heavily for gifts and such, but they got along fine. Or, as fine as Olive knew she and her father could, after her mother's death.
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"Honey, come on downstairs!"
Mrs. Jennifer Simon was a very punctual woman, and she did not enjoy it whenever others were late, especially when they were members of her own family. Well, she understood with her husband: he had an extremely important job at an extremely wealthy law firm, and sometimes family came second. (She understood that quite well.) But her daughter was still a high school girl, and girls should always be punctual for everything. Then again, it was quite early, but Becky needed to have her breakfast before 7am in order to make it to school on time.
Not to mention, the maid — Mildred — had made a fine breakfast that morning, and she didn't want her daughter to go to school on an empty stomach. Or worse, with cold food in her belly. That was just unhealthy. And Mrs. Simon knew that her daughter needed to stay healthy - physically and in the mind - in order to have a good, proper life. And all these things of the modern times were plain unhealthy: her daughter needed to stay away from those things. That was just a fact.
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