Mental [#Wattys 2015]

Excerpt from Habits of My Young Heart

The first time I spoke to her was on the 10th day in January of a so far shit year. It was 6th grade, the start of hand-holding, puberty, and porn. I remember the teacher asking us how our Christmas break was, my classmates shouting about toys and trinkets. Her and I were the only ones not talking. Until then, I had not been interested in girls, the years before puberty morphing everyone into one gender. But she, she was different. She didn't adopt the pigtail and makeup trend all the girls seemed to be doing. She had her hair cut lop sided, still messy from rolling out the bed. She was also the only girl in class that went from an ant bit chest to full blown boobs in the span of a month. I watched her pick scabs off her legs until the bell ran, when I approached her. Side stepping in front of her, I stood there, ready to deliver my speech on how when the light hit her just right, she looked like an angel, but instead I said, "My dad died over the break." She looked up at me, her grey irises meeting my brown blobs. I stared at her plump lips as the mouthed the word, "Cool." I think that was the most comforting thing I've ever heard.

Our paths never crossed again in middle school. Her mysterious, yet captivating atmosphere did not go unnoticed by our peers. Boys fell at her feet, girls wanted to either be her, or kill her. She soon became the most talked about subject; I swear some kids could've majored in the study of Alex Adams. I probably could've too; my fascination with her went beyond a middle school crush.

It wasn't until my junior year of high school that we spoke again for the first time in years. I was your average guy at your average lunch table. She didn't fit in with either the popular group, or the outcasts. In fact, you didn't even find her sitting at a lunch table. Sometimes I'd wander into the library just to get a glimpse of her. You wouldn't find her unless you were looking-she was always in the back corner of the last aisle, knees up to her chest, hair falling in front of her eyes, tickling her nose. She would have a book in one hand, and a fry in the other. And she never looked up from her reading until the second bell rang.

I've seen the same scene again and again, and yet I always come, once a week, and look at her from the other end of the aisle.

Today was no different. Hiking my backpack higher on my shoulder, I made my way to the corner. And there she was, same position as always. I pretended to look through the books when the only thing I really wanted to read was her. I wanted to flip through every page of her mind. I wanted to scan every word that came out of her mouth.

"You always in your head like that?" My head snapped up at her rough, but somehow soothing voice.

"Uh, yeah, most of the time," I mumbled awkwardly.

She shrugged her shoulders, pushing her tray of fries towards me. Kneeling down, I take one, careful to chew quietly. I watched as she lifted a fry in front of her face, "ever smoke a cigarette?" I left out a confused chuckle before saying, "no, never."

"First, you hold it like this," leaning closer on her elbows, she placed the fry between her first two fingers. "Then, you put it against your mouth, parting your lips slightly." I watched in awe as she fit the fry perfectly into the small gap the pucker of her lips made. "Then you take a lighter, and light the end. Once you do that, you just breathe in all those carcinogens, let it absorb into your lungs, and breathe out. Like this." She demonstrated by expertly sucking on her fry, moving it away from her mouth, and letting her breathe out in my face. I sat dumbfounded, staring at her smirk as she popped the fry in her mouth. "See ya round."

A/N
Hey guys! So this is my new novel, called Habits of My Young Heart. I'm really excited about it, so I wanted to share a part of it with y'all! Love y'all!