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My mum calls out while passing my bedroom door, “Elizabeth! I am not going to call you again. It’s time to get up, or you’ll make everybody late.”
Stretching, I throw the warm blankets off me reluctantly. I wrap my arms around my upper body, as I rush over to the window to see what the weather brought with it today.
It is a truly dreary day—grey, grey and grey everywhere. No wonder I overslept; it is still dark outside.
I realize I only have half an hour before we must leave for school, so in a whirlwind I rush through my room. I am as ready as I will ever be by the time my mum’s exasperated voice reaches up to me from the hall, “Come Elizabeth, you are late.”
My mum complains all the way to school about my tardiness, and I am relieved when we eventually stop in front of the school gate.
Jane is waiting for me, as always. “Hey Elizabeth, you are late today,” she says when I reach her.
“Hey.” I shrug and turn back to wave to my mum.
“Looks like summer said goodbye yesterday,” Jane says looking up at the sky and I agree.
We walk down the pathway to the main school building and start talking together, but polite as only Jane can be, she allows me to speak first.
“Do you like, and I mean, really like Aaron?” I ask her inquisitively.
Her head snaps around to look at me, and then she looks around to see who might be in the near hearing vicinity. I give her a questioning look, pulling my eyebrows up curiously.
“Yes, I do—alright?” She whispers.
“So, what is your problem then, telling me he really likes me?”
She sighs. “What is there for me to do? We have been together in the same school, in the same group of friends since first year and he just does not notice me.”
“Make him notice you!”
“How must I do that?”
“Tell him.”
Easier said than done.
Horrified she stares at me. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“Maybe.” I smile mysteriously.
“Please. Promise me you would never tell him,” she begs horrified.
“No,” I say laughing.
“Please.” She grabs onto my shoulders and she whirls me around so that I am facing her. “Please!”
“Honestly,” I say, still laughing. “If I am going to be your friend, you are really going to have to start trusting me.”
She smiles and sighs with relief.
We carry on walking and she retaliates, “It’s not like you would tell Jared how you feel about him, now would you?”
Vivid memories flash through my mind from the day before. His dark cropped hair, full eyebrows, long eyelashes and his perfectly straight nose. Never mind his luscious lips and those green, green eyes. Strong arms twirling me around, the jacket I forgot at home that smells so very much like him, his whisper against my ear.
I smile, sighing blissfully. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah, and I noticed him too taking a particular interest in you last night.”
Dismissively I reply, “I am sure he has a new girlfriend every week.”
“You’ll be so surprised.”
“Why would I be surprised?”
She changes the subject and says seriously, “You shouldn’t let Sarah bother you. There is a long story behind her and Jared.”
“What story?” I ask urgently, feeling a twinge of jealousy spindle its way around my heart, but just then, we walk into the main building.
At the end of the long corridor, Jared is standing at his locker, the door open and he is rummaging in it. He is separate from the group of people I now consider my friends.
His back is turned away from the entrance and me.
I walk down the corridor, with Jared as my focus. As with my decade long crush on Jason, I would never ever have considered saying anything first, if not for the sense of fate rushing through me.
Walking past Jared toward my locker, I greet him friendly, “Good morning, Jared.”
He glances across his shoulder at me with a frown, and then after he pushes his locker door shut, he pushes past me with a “Yeah.”
What? Should have waited for him to say hello first.
I turn toward Jane with an astonished look on my face. She smiles sympathetically, saying, “Will tell you the whole story at break. You need to know.”
“Tell me now,” I insist.
The bell rings and she replies apologetically, “It is a long story, as I said earlier. I will tell you at break.”
I do not want to seem desperate, so I nod my head in agreement and then we walk to our class together, while I pretend everything is as it should be. I smile and chatter; yet my heart feels shattered. Not to mention, my feeling of utter humiliation.
In class, I cannot concentrate on any of my subjects. I go over every little detail of the previous evening on the beach and on the drive to my house, looking for something, anything I could have done wrong, that would have offended him so strongly.
Maybe, I am so attracted to him I misread him completely, and I imagined he is just as attracted to me, when obviously he is not.
After each class, walking down the corridor to my next class, my eyes search for him.
I see him, and I notice that he sees me too. He even returns my gaze, which I quickly avert.
I did not want him to think I am pathetic – liking him too much, too soon, when clearly, he used me to make Sarah jealous.
Why I am starting to get an awful, gut wrenching feeling in my stomach, which gets worse as the day drags on, I do not know. Maybe it is the way I fell immediately in love with Jared the moment I saw him. It is crazy, the way I feel as if we belong together.
