Chapter 1:
I have dimples. I'm short. I lack upper body strength. I have a crooked smile. I wear tacky, unstylish clothes that were last decade's "in-style". I laugh like a strangled chicken. I'm not popular, and I'm considered a nerd at my school. My hair is spiky, straight, and a crappy auburn color, and I like making mixed tapes for a living.
There's no way I will find love. There's no way I would let someone love me.
"So, what are you doing after the football game, Autumn?" a girl named Eden asked me this as she clung to her boyfriend and made her hair loopy with her index finger.
"Nothing, really. Um...maybe I'll go shopping for some groceries," I stuttered. It was weird when my (very few) friends talked to me like they were in college fraternities. We're only juniors. Honestly.
"Are you for real? That's absurd! I'm shocked that you would spend your night after an amazing football game to just go get groceries! Like, go to parties! Be a teenager," she said, frowning at my shocking sentence.
"U-um, I mean, I don't find football really that exciting. And my dad would never let me go to parties with people I don't even know," I said, frowning, but slightly smiling with that dorky grin of mine.
"You would be with us. C'mon, it won't hurt. Maybe you might actually find a cute guy." Eden nudged my shoulder.
"Are you seriously going there?" I growled under my breath, and quickly changed the subject .
"So...where's April?" I said, jumping to my feet and hoping to see her not too far away from me. April was one of my closest friends, even though she was a year older than me. She didn't mind me, and had helped me out a lot, especially last year. When I failed a class, and had practically cried all night, feeling that I wasn't good enough to be friends with her, she understood. She didn't help me out of pity. She felt my pain. And to me, that was deep.
It was so deep, I still cry about it. I never wanted to lose her.
"I think she's in our AP English classroom. Go see, if ya want," Eden's boyfriend, Logan, said with a smirk. He was cute, but not my type, and especially not boyfriend material.
I grinned back, and ran to the 200 wing. When I finally got there, I saw April sitting in the corner of the dusty room, clacking away noisily on an old typewriter. Her glasses were getting filled with dust specks that she would soon have to wash, and her head bobbed in sync to a mixed tape I'd given her back when we I was a freshman. It was full of 80's-90's songs that we both adored. I saw that she was still typing, but when the door closed, she looked up with a high-pitched gasp.
"Oh! Did I scare you? Sorry! I know I'm being such a nuisance." I looked away, ashamed that I opened without even knocking.
"Oh! It's all right, really. I was just doodling." She grinned at me, then at the typewriter.
I nodded my consent, and then warily cantered over to see what she was doing on the typewriter."How...on Earth can you doodle from a typewriter?!" I exclaimed, seeing her drawing a dog sitting near a beach - and it was made completely out of periods and symbols and such.
She shrugged, and I was in awe at how she had done this.
"Clever...and creative, as always." I smiled, and she looked up at me, grinning and giving off a cool and relaxed upperclassman vibe.
"So, you're seriously listening to that old mixed tape from freshman year?" I said, plopping down on the seat next to her.
"Of course! It radiates amazingness. Just listen," she said, admiring it gently.
