Thursday, June 19, 2008
Friends with benefits (Chapter 1) - Once upon a time
[Background music : About a girl by The Academy is..]
Once upon a time, there was a girl in a school. (Okay, so maybe that's not the best 'once upon a time' you've ever seen. It's how this story starts though, so you can just deal with it!)
She was almost a typical girl. She wore jeans and a t-shirt most days. She was bored most of the time and thought school was a waste of time. She liked a lot of types of music, and she argued willingly about which was best. She was also normal in the sense that she had secrets and dreams, she argued with her family sometimes, and occasionally, she felt like she just wanted to leave. But there were also some very unusual things about this girl.
For example, she was incredibly smart. Or maybe it wasn't that she was smart, just that she was smarter than the school-system. She always made an A in all her classes, seemingly without effort. She even had this strange habit of counting through her tests and figuring out how much each question was worth.
Other people didn't know, but she did this to see how many she could miss while still making a decent grade. One time, she even skipped an entire page and a half of a test-simply not doing it-and still managed to make a B.
Also, she held no interest in the boys at school. Yes, she was a typical seventeen year old. Yes, she had hormones and sometimes she got confused about how she felt about a guy. And yes, sometimes she did really want a guy to notice her like he noticed all the girls around her. But she also knew that most of the guys in the school were a waste of time.
It's kind of funny and ironic, but in her case, the saying 'All the good men are either taken or gay.' was extremely literal. One of her best friends (and one of the only guys she would consider dating) was gay, and the other ones were all happily taken.
Overall though, she was happy. She was content to just finish up these last four years at home and head off to college and a new life on her own. She was content to be impatient and want out every second of her life. She was content to be the really smart girl who preferred reading to talking when there was free time in class.
She liked being the girl people didn't know, especially because that made her a rarity in her extremely small town.
Then one day, all of that changed.
No, Prince Charming didn't come riding in from a far-off town. No, she didn't wage modern-day war with the school bully. No, she didn't even comprehend the change until a long time afterwards.
The only thing that happened to change her life was a girl in her Health class running in, screaming, "We kissed! We kissed!"
At the time, our girl thought barely anything of it. Great for the other girl. She found another guy to play with, another guy who won't really love her. (This other girl's history was kind of depressing.)
Our girl let it go with hardly a second thought. She just made a mental note to take a look at this new toy, to see if he was anything like the others.
At first glance, Mr. Toy was pretty typical. At least, for the other girl's type. Slightly curly hair. Shallowed presence. Looked like he would be more happy sleeping, drinking, or at a concert. Pretty much predictable.
At least, that was the grim thought that crossed her mind as she watched him kiss the other girl in the hallway. Then, he broke away and looked up. Straight at our girl. No, straight through our girl. She barely recognized the warning shiver that went up her spine.
She didn't get lost in his eyes. They didn't share a cosmic moment. He just looked at her, through her, and then looked back at the other girl. He looked back up when she wasn't looking, and by chance she caught the half-smile on his face as she turned her head to look back at her friend.
She meant to say something sarcastic about the other girl's new boy, but she lost it in that smile and didn't even realize what was going on. She just improvised with a question about homework instead.
And so our story begins.
Oh yeah, our girl DOES have a name. Hana Nareesha.
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