Paper Lifelines

Marianna Breathed

She got up to walk home after the auditions. He wondered where she lived.
He headed out too. He noticed that they took the same road. He didn't walk with her. She never looked back. That made him hate her even more. He hated the way she never looked at him.  She looked at everyone but him. It annoyed him. She walked with her head up, looking at the sky. He couldn't help but notice that about her. He noticed the way she held her hands loose by her sides when she was alone, and when other people were near her she crossed them in front if her stomach.
He noticed how she hung her backpack over one shoulder instead of using both straps.
He also noticed that she lived in the house next to his. He felt as though he should have noticed this before. He hadn't.
It was funny how, when he looked up, she was at her doorstep and he was at his. She didn't even look back at him, so he did the same. He went in to his house, and she did to hers. He couldn't take it. She was two walls away. He couldn't handle that. He couldn't handle the fact that if there weren't those two walls there, he could touch her chocolaty brown hair, or smell the light vanilla scent that lingers around her always- he had noticed this when she made her way off of the stage. They passed each other and, in that brief moment, he noticed. He wanted to look at her soft curls that fell over her shoulders in a jumbled waterfall. He hated her. He laid in his bed staring at the ceiling, thinking. Lance could hear his sister come home. She called his name, and he mumbled a response. He couldn't tell what she said though.
He fell asleep.
----
He woke up when his sister came into his room, banging on the door. She was beautiful- inside and out. Her name was Francie. She had flowing blonde hair that was naturally stick straight but if it got a little damp, she suddenly had curls. She had a soft jawline, the opposite of Lance's. He had a very prominent jawline, and cheekbones. She had golden eyes, the color of honey still in the bee's nest. She wasn't obese. Not in the slightest. Curves in all the right places; that described his sister.
Her personality was golden, just like the rest of her. Their parents had abandoned them when Lance ended 8th grade. Francie was in 11th at the time. She now has a job at a business firm downtown, so she was like the parent for both of them. He loved Francie for that, though he didn't care to admit it.
That was why he couldn't get expelled. He had a job, too. He worked at a bar in the city. Even though he was underage, they were a friend of the owner's so they allowed him to work. They knew his financial situation.
He sat up in his bed. He walked to his closet and put a pair of pants and a shirt on.  He walked out to the kitchen, grabbed a bagel, and opened the front door. Marianna was ten feet ahead of him already walking. He thought about that. How she always seemed ahead, but in her eyes, he could see that she was held back. That annoyed him about her. Lance hated the way she looked. She was a glass, shattered on the floor. She was a mosaic of miscellaneous objects. Plain. Boring. Overlooked. She was an already read book, discarded and forgotten.
Even so, he wanted to run his fingers through her hair even more. He didn't know why. He didn't want to know why. As they walked, someone tagged along with Marianna. A tall lanky boy carrying a sketchbook ran out of a house and walked next to her. He wondered who it was. He didn't want to, but he did.
The boy had brown hair that looked like a tumbleweed. He looked about the same height as Lance, 5"10. He wondered why this boy bothered him so much. "I don't know." Lance thought. He kept walking. He stared at the ground until they arrived at school, the tall lanky boy following close behind Marianna. He could see them talking. She smiled. He wondered why she had never smiled at him. First period passed. He was in a daze, staring at the clock, just waiting. Then second period. Third period. He walked into the classroom and saw it. Saw her. Marianna was in his class, along with the lanky boy.
He found out later that the boy's name was Max, and Marianna and Max had been inseparable friends since the 2nd grade. They sat in the back of the classroom, and Lance sat in the front. "Maybe that was why I hadn't noticed her before." He whispered.
Lance wasn't a bad student. He took noted when he had to, he listened to the teacher. But that English class he didn't. He just looked up at the ceiling, like it was going to collapse on him at any moment.  He would be okay with that. But the roof did not collapse. The bell rang for lunch and he slowly got up and walked into the cafeteria. He sat near Tyson.  Tyson was his best friend- Tyson was also a player. He had hooked up with almost every single girl in the school, and none of them seemed to hate him for it. Lance wondered why. Maybe it was the face that he (a little more than slightly) resembled a brown haired Chris Hemsworth. He was 6 feet tall with a soft muscular build and brown curly hair. In any girl's eyes, he was gold.
Lance and Tyson were the main targets of the girls in that school. They all wanted them. All except one. Marianna didn't take interest. He never saw her looking at him. She never talked about him, from what he heard, and it confused him. He was everything a girl could have wanted. He was nice, and he didn't sleep around. But she didn't want him.