Sour Sweet Love

Chapter One

Originally published in 2011...

I had been told, by philosophers and misfits alike, that high school would either be the best thing that ever happened to me or the worst. It was a dangerous time, they claimed: a time of uncertainty, of confusion, and if you were lucky, of love. As I sat idly on a bench on the outskirts of campus with droplets of rain harshly brushing against the umbrella above me, I knew that my experience would be anything but great.

With the exception of the gloomy weather, the day had been fairly lively. Nevertheless, it had been an urgent feminine squeal that had disrupted the equilibrium that evening. "God!"

One word, a simple breath: it echoed across our campus, breaking the ordeal stillness. Given the girl's panicked, frenzied state, I had thought that something drastic had happened to her, like perhaps her family had been washed away by the typhoon in the Philippines last week. If not affliction due to a natural catastrophe, then at least something drastic of the sort.

After she inadvertently gathered the attention of everyone there, she shouted to her friend: "Valerie, my septum! It's been fucking enlarged by the goddamn surgery!" 

I blinked, biting my tongue to suppress my laughter.

"Calm the fuck down, Allen," was the response she had gotten.

People are stupid, my best friend, Joey, would often say. I would tell her that optimism was all that we had—because it was.  However, then and there, bound to that social atmosphere, my faith in humanity began to deplete. Girls in our boarding school, Victorian High, had the habit of making drizzles sound like downpours. 

I looked above the book I was reading, a classic by Kundera himself, only to be greeted by two pairs of unfamiliar faces. I wondered how the two girls could be preoccupied with something so infinitesimal when the world was plummeting into all of us. When living in a time of polarity and controversy, how was it that they were talking about this? Oblivious to the downpour, they bickered about the size of each other's noses as if their lives depended on it.

I tried to ignore them...I really did. However, trying to avoid conflict in situations like these never worked out, given that the voices of these two royalties were more irritating than Dolores Umbridge and Bellatrix Lestrange combined.

It took less than a second for me to slam my cover of The Unbearable Lightness of Being roughly on the table. A glare eminent on my face, I stormed over to where they were: just a table away. "Can you two not?" I demanded, scowling. It might have been socially suicidal of me to purposely get on their bad sides, but the way they talked made me want to yank out the hair on their heads and feed it to the Evil Witch of the West.

"Excuse me?" the first of the two said, eyeing me in disbelief. She snapped her bubblegum and raised her neatly plucked eyebrows.

"Can you two please lower it?" I asked, making an attempt to seem polite. "I'm kind of trying to read here," I picked up my book and shook it, "and you're disturbing the vibe."

"Yeah, whatever," the other one muttered, dismissing me with a wave. She flipped her hair in dismissal before resuming the conversation she was having with her friend, ignoring my protests altogether. Shaking my head, I picked up my copy of the novel on the table and marched towards the entrance of the campus, finding the scent of books growing heavier with every step. 

Saying that our campus was beautiful would be an understatement. Grand, exquisite, breathtaking were all more appropriate terms.

My tattered pair of Oxfords squeaked as they made themselves across the muddy path to the entrance. As I entered the building, a familiar cacophony reached my ears: footsteps pounding up and down the hallways, rustling paper, slamming lockers and eager chatter.

As I wearily made my way towards my dormitory, a vivid frown still plastered on my face, my body abruptly collided with a figure akin a pole. Immediately, I stumbled backwards, my feet threatening to lose their security.

Inwardly groaning for not having been aware of my surroundings, I fixed my posture. It was only then that I realized that it wasn't a pole that I had bumped into, but an actual, living, breathing human being.  When I finally found the right words to say, I spoke up with more venom than I thought myself capable of: "Watch where you're going next time." I was still aggravated from the encounter with the girls; I was not the brightest person to bump into that afternoon.

I heard a gentle hum leave the stranger's lips.

It was only when I raised my eyes to get a good view of him that I realized how attractive he was. He had short, messy hair that fell short of his eyes, and complementing grey eyes and pale skin.

His face is familiar, I found myself thinking.

Without a word, he left, leaving me alone in the corridor without having muttered even a simple apology. And that was all it took; that was how it began.