The Stairs in the Woods

Chapter 2-Then

I met Alice in French class.

Sophomore year, second semester. She sat two rows up and to the right. Her hair was bright red and wavy, but she'd dye it with streaks of blue or black or blond. Every day when she walked into class I'd look at her, and for maybe the first week or so I tried to convince myself that I just wanted to see if she'd done something new with her hair.

It definitely wasn't that I just really, really liked looking at her.

Absolutely not. No way.

The fact that I kept staring at her lips and losing myself in her hazel eyes and getting butterflies in my stomach whenever she smiled wasn't important at all.

I didn't even have the guts to talk to her for the first couple of weeks. I thought about it, don't get me wrong. I thought about it all the time. But every time I thought about actually doing it, I felt something inside of me tense up and do somersaults and I tried to think about literally anything else.

In the end, she was the one who talked to me.

It was the end of class, and kids were rushing out of the classroom. In my hurry to get all my things together as fast as possible, I'd swept everything into a messy pile and hadn't bothered to shove it into my backpack before heading out of the room.

Which proved to be a mistake.

Someone bumped into me. I was a rather fragile thing in high school, short and breakable. It didn't take much to send my sprawling across the cheap linoleum flooring, notes and papers flying everywhere. Pain lashed across my wrists and knees almost immediately. My face burned, and my heart thudded, and when I looked up—

There she was.

My eyes widened. It felt like a dream. She held her hand out to me. I grabbed it. She pulled me up. I think she asked if I was okay, I think I replied "yes" and did my best to dust myself off and then I remembered everything I'd dropped and bent back down to pick it up.

She crouched down next to me, something soft and teasing in her expression, and helped me gather everything. This wasn't real. This couldn't be happening. I'd spent days staring at her from across the classroom—here she was now, right next to me, and close enough that I could see all the shades of brown and green in her hazel eyes. I managed to pick up maybe three papers. I kept getting distracted.

"Here you go." She handed me the last of my notes, all stacked neatly into a little pile, and I'd never been more acutely aware of my own heartbeat. She smiled. I could've lived off that smile forever.

I felt my face flush and immediately hated myself for it. "I—um—thank you." The words came out in a rush. I snatched my notes out of her hand, tucked them under my arm haphazardly, and started to make my way out of the classroom.

"Wait!" I heard her laugh—gently, lightly teasing, but not mean. I turned back around slowly, eyes wide, and shoved my round glasses up my nose. She held up my copy of Le Bescherelle. "You forgot this.

"Right. Um." I blinked, more flustered than I'd ever been, and added the book to my stack of texts. Our fingers brushed together. I could've died happy. "Thank you. Again."

"No problem," she said. "I'm... I'm Alice, by the way."

Was it just me, or was she... blushing, the slightest bit?

"...Julia." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, so I held out my hand to shake. The papers under my arm spilled across the floor again.

Yeah, fifteen-year-old me was real smooth.

We both dropped to our knees and gathered the papers together again, laughing like idiots as we shifted them together into a messy heap. She looked up at me, and I looked up at her, and it was a moment, like the kind you see in those cheesy movies where things seem impossibly perfect.

Until the school bell rang, announcing that the next class was starting.

I wanted to rip that bell off the wall and smash it to pieces.

"Sorry, I gotta—" Alice stood up quickly and shoved the rest of my things into my arms. She slung her bag across her shoulder and starting walking out of the classroom. "See you around, Julia!" She called.

I was too stunned by the events of the past five minutes to speak.

Students were starting to trickle into the classroom. I stood up and readjusted the class materials in my arms, unable to suppress the wide, goofy smile making its way across my face.

She... talked to me.

I talked to her.

I couldn't keep that stupid smile off my face for the rest of the day.