• Chapter One- The Woods (pages 1-2)
    “He doesn’t like you, just get over it.” My senses warned me time and time again, ‘don’t try, don’t tell’, ‘he doesn’t like you’, ‘he never could’. I just never thought that it would be true, until now.


    It was a day like any other, the weather was fair, the temperature moderate, classes were boring, and my friends were being funny friends. The kind where I would have least expected a drop of rain, once more the words that ruined it all. Nobody could know I liked him, let alone loved him. He was way out of my league at the time. Nobody dared their friends to speak to him, because he was so important, the best friend of thecutest, most popular boy in our school, Brandon. I was probably one of the few in the school who wasn’t loosing herself in Brandon’s eyes, or dreaming about us together. I had a history with Brandon.


    My history with Brandon wasn’t like other girls’ histories. In his past, all memories were almost of girls he’s flirted with, hearts he has broken, and the feelings that broke him, except for mine, and I knew that. I had known Brandon since I was a young child. We both liked to play in the woods when we were younger, and I’d see him there occasionally. I never really thought about liking Brandon, since I was so young when I met him. I mean, when I met him, I absolutely hated him. He would always win me over in any game we tried, from football to sword fighting, to playing with water guns, fake guns, air guns, other games that little kids played when their parents were at work.


    Almost every childhood memory of being home, and playing outside, had Brandon in it. He had the funniest haircut, with his head nearly bald except a fuzz of brown around the ears, and his brown eyes. Oh, his eyes! I looked into them when we were squaring off, getting ready for a game. Whether it was hopscotch, jump rope, or four square, I’d always look directly into his eyes before we played. There was a certain playful appeal behind them. I have to admit, they were stunning. Normal brown eyes had a deepness to them, a pool of wonder, something to look into but not exactly see. His, however, had that same crucial ‘pow’ that blue eyes gave you. They were sharper. But they were brown, yellow birch brown.


    Now, Brandon had the long, Justin Bieber hair that almost every girl would die for. He was on the football team, dating head cheerleaders that met his standards. I hadn’t talked to him in years, ever since I stopped visiting the forest. And as our games faded away and I became more serious about our schoolwork, and then after my crushes came and went, and he became more and more cute, popular, you would have thought that I had fallen in love with him. “His eyes!” My friend would tug my sleeve when we passed him. “Just look at his eyes! They’re like heaven…” But I seemed to be the only one who could truly shave through the birch wood of his eyes and see the kid that continuously beat me in wooden swordfights. The kid in him lives on.


    What nobody noticed, which I was truly thankful for, was the boy who really won me over. His eyes were the deepest and sharpest of blues, his hair the blondest of blondes, his skin excitably acne-free. How he, of all people, managed to escape the terror of teen acne beats me, but I’m thankful for that (although I’m sure if he had any, I would have still loved him just as much as I did then).


    This boy wasn’t as down to earth as my previous boyfriends, and he had the gut and the will to do anything and everything- and although he was a class clown, I loved how he didn’t even have to try hard to be funny. He was just himself. Plus, he never got in trouble for the things he did. Not once in 7th grade did he ever get sent into the hallway. Not a single write up. And honestly, I think that’s because the teachers enjoyed his gags and jokes just as much as we did.


    I felt ‘love at first sight’, or whatever you’d want to call it for an 8th grader. Young love, love at first sight, miracles, anything you want to call it, believe me, I felt it. He was everything I’d ask for in a guy, he could give great advice to almost anybody, and only turned on people when they turned on him. He was never that popular “Brandon” who’d turn their head, point their finger and laugh at misery. Never. Sure, he might giggle, but he’d feel bad. I just knew it.


    I could see it in his eyes.


    Everything of everything, that’s what he meant to me. And we didn’t even talk, ever. No, especially this year, when we didn’t have classes together. Heck, our lockers weren’t even in the same hallway. Total failure on the principal’s plan of “lovely locker locations” on my judgment. Hopes and dreams were made, and it was all so simple, all in just a one syllable name. Just one name could bring in so many feelings, so many emotions, so much drama. Slur the syllable as much as you want, it still sounded the same to me.


    So, leave Brandon behind. We’d be the last people to talk to each other. I fell in love with the football player’s best friend, Nate Holland.