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His friends are teasing him. ‘You lost to a girl!’ they yell.
‘She’s not a normal girl, look at her arms,’ he says with a smile…
But he won’t look at me…
My stomach sinks…
Why am I not a normal girl?
We’re freshmen in high school. He’s dating that bitch Daniella. She made fun of me for being ‘short and stocky.’ I’d like to punch her in the nose. She’s the total opposite of me— tall with long, black hair.
It crushes my heart when I see him carrying her backpack. It hurts even more when I see her wearing his sweatshirt with ‘CALLAHAN’ stitched to the back overtop of a large #14. It’s his favorite hoodie… And he gave it to her…
For some reason, I felt like it should be mine…
But why does he still pull my ponytail whenever he sees me in the hall if he likes Daniella so much? I heard she told him to stop doing that. Why does he still look at me first every time someone says or does something funny in class? It’s almost like he wants to check if I heard and found it funny too…
We’re sophomores in high school. We don’t have any classes together this year because I took honors courses and he took regular ones. It sucks. I think I’ll stick with the regular track next year.
I see him here and there in the hallway, and he always gives me a head nod with a lopsided grin on his face. I give him a head nod right back, and that’s sadly the extent of our relationship now.
When walking out of biology one day, I feel a wake of whispers behind me as I continue to my locker. I look around wondering what the heck everyone’s talking about.
And then I see him.
Daniella’s looking at me and whispering in his ear. Is she laughing? At me? What the hell didIdo? Duke looks pissed. He kinda snarls at her and pulls his arm away, then breaks into a jog to catch up to me.
He clears his throat behind me and rips off his hoodie. I get a peek of his impressive abs when his shirt gets pulled up a bit, but I force myself to turn and keep walking.
But he’s following me pretty closely now, and I’m kinda weirded out by it. I immediately pick up my pace, but he lunges forward and grips my waist to pull me back toward him so that we’re almost touching.
“Uh?” I look up at him with wide eyes wondering what the hell he’s doing. Daniella or one of her groupies will see us and torment the hell out of me.
He clenches his jaw, and nods to someone across the hall as he ties his hoodie around my waist. “You have some uh… stuff on your pants, Kessel,” he whispers.
My face burns. My eyes burn. My throat burns.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, but I can’t even form words. I want to disappear.
He slides in front of me and pulls me by the hand toward the art wing, not caring that the minute bell for class just rang and everyone else is scurrying to class.
He dips behind the art wing’s doors where there’s a little privacy, and he immediately pulls me into a hug. It’s so warm and comforting that I feel like breaking down.
After a minute, he pulls back and his eyebrows scrunch down like he’s concerned. He bends his head to look into my eyes. “It’s okay, Kessel.”
But my eyes are still burning.
I don’t cry, but when he pulls me into a warm hug, it’s so comforting that it makes me want to cry even more, but not because of embarrassment anymore…
Because I want him, but he’s not mine.
“C’mon, you’re my tough girl. Be tough,” he says.
It’s the summer before senior year. He broke up with Daniella before summer break. His hair doesn’t get as light in the summer anymore; it mostly stays a brown-ish color now, which matches his eyes, but the front strands still have natural highlights.
We’re at a Fourth of July party at Max and Paige’s new house. While yes, it’s the Fourth of July, it’s also my seventeenth birthday.
I braid my hair and catch him looking at me. If I’m not a normal girl, why does he always watch me?
