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“What if we made a truce?” I asked.
“What kind of truce?”
Yes! I thought. She looks curious. She’s interested!
“We’ll stop picking on each other,” I explained. “No more throwing your dog’s poop at my window, and I’ll stop poking you and flipping you off during class.”
“I’ll stop whenever you stop,” she said carefully.
“Like I said, it’s embarrassing to not have a valentine,” I repeated. “It’s Valentine’s Day. It’s a big deal. I was thinking we could pretend to be valentines. Not for real, just pretend. So neither of us get made fun of.”
That was my big scheme. We could pretend to be valentines, and while we were pretending, Alyssa would realize she liked me. Then I would be her boyfriend. I knew I would make a good boyfriend if she gave me a chance.
Alyssa was looking at me weirdly. In a way she had never done before. I gave her a hopeful smile.
“I would never be your valentine,” she said with a mocking laugh. “People would know we can’t kiss because of your braces.”
It felt like being punched in the gut. “I can kiss with these!”
“I doubt it! And even if you could, I don’t want people thinking I kiss you, metal-mouth!”
I hated when people made fun of my braces, but hearing it from my crush was even worse. Why did my stomach hurt so much? I could barely breathe. It was like the wind had been knocked out of me.
Embarrassed, and searching for some way to save my dignity, I grabbed the notebook she had been drawing in. “Joe Jonas, Nick Jonas… You like the Jonas Brothers?”
“Give that back!” she demanded.
“Alyssa Jonas?” I read out loud. That’s when I realized: she had a crush on the Jonas Brothers. They were older, and didn’t have braces. The pain in my stomach spread.
Even though I didn’t feel like laughing, I made myself chuckle. “Hey, Shawn! Get a load of this! Alyssa wants to marry the Jonas Brothers! All three of them at the same time!”
Alyssa shouted and chased me across the field. I felt bad about teasing her, but I knew whatever she felt couldn’t compare to the aching pain in my chest.
Present Day
There was a pain in my chest now, a throbbing that matched the ache in my pinned leg. My eyes fluttered open for only a brief moment, reminding me of the scorching heat that was rapidly invading my suit. Dark colors swirled with the smoke above me, like a twisted artwork. Van Gogh’s Starry Night painted in smoke and death and ruin. I didn’t know if it was sweat or tears running down my cheeks; I only knew I felt safe in the memories of Alyssa. I closed my eyes again as the memories beckoned me to return.
2015
I combed my hair in the mirror, then let out an annoyed growl. There was a tuft of hair that had dried weird, and now it was sticking out. It was ruining my entire look.
Tonight was junior prom, and I was nervous. People had sex at prom, and my date had been dropping a lot of hints about how tonight was going to be special. I knew I was lucky that Stacy Hendricks had agreed to be my date at all. She was hot. Back when we were in middle school, she was the first girl we knew to get boobs—and they were still the most full, perky ones in our class.
But aside from her body, she was just okay. I didn’t really click with her. In fact, I had found myself wishing I had asked another girl.
I turned away from the mirror, and stopped. My bedroom was on the second floor, giving me a sideways view across our neighbor’s house and the next several houses. A light shone in the window of one house, and there she was.
Alyssa fucking Ford.
I gave a start when I realized she was almost nude. I started to look away, but my eyes were drawn to her as if pulled by a magnet. She was wearing a bra, the kind without straps. Her skin was smooth, the color of fresh cream. I had spent a lot of nights imagining what that skin would feel like underneath my palm, even though we were…
Well, I didn’t know what we were. We had continued teasing each other through middle school, but as we grew older and went to high school, we had fallen into a sort of stalemate. We stopped pulling pranks. We were polite when we saw each other in class. It was like we were both on edge around each other, waiting for the other person to make some sort of move.
She had always been pretty, but she had grown into a beautiful young woman. I drank in the sight of her: breasts that were full and squeezable, eyes that were still wide and innocent. She turned to the side, giving me a view of a thong that was swallowed by her perfectly-round ass. My cock leapt at the sight of her, practically screaming at me to go next door and tell her how I felt. Deep down, I knew I should be taking her to prom instead of Stacy.
But it was hopeless, because there was no way Alyssa would feel the same way about me. She’d made that clear years ago when she teased my braces. If I asked her, I would only make a fool out of myself. Besides, she was going with Mark Thompson. He was one of the popular guys on the lacrosse team, and his parents had season tickets to the Rays. Compared to him, I was a loser.
“You ready, bud?” Liam asked, poking his head into my room. “The girls are here. Your mum wants to take pictures before we leave.”
