Her First Love

Chapter 3- Scarf guy

Year 7 and 8 was a whole lot of fun. We obviously had to keep growing up, so we moved on to year 9. Not much happened in that year, except stress was getting to us because exams were closer.

However with Aliza, there was always new drama just around the corner.

"He's so fit. He works in one of the stalls in the market. Let me show you." Aliza excitedly said as we walked home from school. We always would have to go through the market in order to get home. There were so many stalls in the market: vegetable stalls, clothe stalls, jewellery stalls and many more.

One in particular caught Aliza's attention. She looked at it with a smile on her face and said, "Look! There he is." I turned my head and followed her short arms trying to see which stall she was pointing at. It was a small stall in the middle of the market with vibrant colours that poured out of it. It was a scarf stall. There was middle aged man speaking to his customer.

He was not what I expected; he hardly had any hair, he had a little pot belly and he was just..... Just old! "Eww!! what were you thinking? He's not fit, he's ugly." I said, disgusted at her choice of male to crush on. Obviously she disagreed.

From then on Aliza was madly crushing on that guy, who's name by the way was Justin. It got so bad that everyday after school we would always go around he's stall just so she could steal a glance of him. Even when it was raining or when it was so hot or even if it were snowing she would still drag me with her to see him. I hated doing this because it looked wrong, I mean the guy was like 50 and she was still in her teenage years. Okay, the guy wasn't really 50, but he was definitely double her age. I just like to exaggerate. But I did this for her, she seemed to really like him. He would lead her on by smiling at her, there was non-stop smiling and he would also stare at her, there was a lot of staring, he would never look away. To me he seemed a bit dodgy. I didn't exactly know why, but he just did, which is why I disliked him more and more.

She was scared to talk to him, but one day she got the courage to do it and the only way she thought she could do it was by buying a scarf from his stall. She was looking around and finally picked one, the fabric was viscose and it was a peach colour. "How much does this cost?" She said. Justin smiled at her and answered, "It's £2 but for you, I'll do it for a pound." She thanked him and gave him the money. He handed her the blue plastic bag, containing the scarf she bought and said,"You should come to my stall more often, I'll take care of you." See I told you there was something not right about this guy, I mean who says that to a young girl. And with that we left his stall. She was so happy, repeating the last words he had said to her.

The crush on him went on for 6 or 7 months. Me and some other friends kept telling her that liking him was wrong and she needed to stop. We thought she did, but me and her still continued to go past his stall, which clearly told me that she weren't over him. She came clean and told me that she still liked him. I knew she weren't going to listen to us. So I gave up on being against them. I told her to tell him how she felt about him. However I never actually completely gave up, I was making it look like I'm alright with her liking him, so that she would end up confessing to him, then the grown man would be decent enough and do the right thing and reject
her, telling her it's not right.

Unfortunately what I had hoped for never happened. She never confessed and he continued to smile and stare at her.

Until one day.....

We were coming home from school. We did what we usually do, which was to go around his stall. For some reason that day was different; we went around his stall more than once. We were at another stall, when Justin called Aliza over. She took me with her. When we got to his stall, he was writing something down on a peice of paper.

It was his number.

"There you go," He said as he held the paper towards her. She froze with a shocked expression on her face. Everything at that moment froze. What the hell was happening? What's wrong with this guy? He's double her age, doesn't even know a thing about her and he's giving her his number! What does he think will happen, that she's gonna call him, they're going to go on a couple of dates, then they're going to get married and live happily ever after?? Oh hell no!! I don't think so! Those were the thoughts that were going through my mind. He looked at my horrified face and his expression changed.. He looked kind of.. Scared?

"Only if she wants it," He said as innocently as he could. Which made me want to punch him in the face. I stood there in disbelif as Aliza took the peice of paper without saying a word and walked away. I was then even more stunned. All I could think was how could she?? I didn't want to speak to her after that, heck I couldn't even look at her, taking that peice of paper was just plain wrong, I mean he was a complete stranger.

I still had to know why she took it, so the next day we spoke about it. She told me that in that moment she didn't know what to do, her brain stopped functioning. She said that once she got home, she straight away ripped up the paper and flushed it down the toilet. She didn't want it. Turned out she didn't want it to go further then it already had gone. From then on she started to hate him.

She had finally woken up from this deep sleep of what she thought was love, but in fact weren't. I think she just liked the attention he had given her. She had woken up from that nightmare to this reality, which was no better. More days would go by as she hated him more and more. She had also found out some interesting facts about him. Apparently he was married and had children. He also did drugs. She felt relieved that she snapped out of it before things got out of control. That was the end of Justin.

I was proud of her for not taking it too far, for realising that she could've made the biggest mistake of her life. Yeah, she had to figure it out through the hard way but I think she made it out pretty well. So good on her.