[A/N]: Sorry I haven't been doing anything. School's started again, and I'm still trying to figure everything out. But, I wanted to post something. I wrote this a while ago, posted it on Fictionpress, and it's been lying there ever since.
[dedicated to]: northbynorth because when I read The Happy Birthday Song, I just...couldn't function anymore.I sat there, huddled in a lump on the ground for hours, bawling my eyes out for Dylan and Junie.
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At the age of six, I was in love. I was playing in the sandbox during recess, and he had just moved. He was next to his mother, talking to his new teacher, and he was meant to be in the same class as me. I could swear that girls were swooning over his chocolate brown eyes and his killer smile even then. I had dropped my shovel in surprise. I was enraptured.
At seven, he moved again. Right next door. I would shyly peek out from the eyelet curtains of my room to see him playing soccer in his backyard. I would never go out and join him; that was for my daydreams. It was only when he decided to climb the tree to my window and personally ask me to be on his team, did I play. I blushed like crazy that day.
At eight, I was married. It was declared by our mothers, who were sitting under the shade of the tree in my backyard. We had just come back from playing soccer-I was getting quite good-and our mothers chuckled. Whispering to each other, they giggled. “What a cute couple they’d make,” I heard them say. He heard too. He gave me a teddy bear the next day.
At nine, we were inseparable. I carried my bear everywhere, if only because it was given to me by my best friend. I was a full two inches taller than him then, but he would never let me forget that I was five months younger. The tree by my window was our meeting spot, and we spent many days up there, having picnics and looking for shapes in the clouds.
At ten, we got divorced. Unlike many couples, we weren’t separated by unpaid bills or unfaithful relationships. A tragedy called cooties tore us apart. He refused to talk to me, and thought I was gross. That year, I put his teddy bear away in my closet and I closed the door.
At eleven, I ignored him. We were entering middle school, where it was bigger, and there were so many more people. And even though we had classes together, I decided not to talk to him. My adolescent heart (as well as my pride) was damaged; I was mad. I was not gross. I took a bath everyday. Boys were so stupid.
At twelve, I got braces. And glasses. I was the shy, quiet, nerdy girl. The metal in my mouth and impaired vision only further distanced me from the perfect girls at school, who mocked me for all I was worth. But for some reason, he always came to my defense and they stopped with one glare from him. He, on the other hand had no trouble fitting in. No one could resist him.
At thirteen, he became mean. In place of the popular girls, he was now the one calling me names and teasing me. And everyday, he would go around slamming my locker. After a while, I learned to live with the fact that I would have to open my locker twice. So when another boy named Michael started to prematurely shut it for me, I wasn’t bothered. But he was. He shoved Michael up against a wall and punched him right in the gut. Although he shrugged off the two weeks of detention, I could’ve sworn he was looking at me when he was led to the principal’s office.
At fourteen, cooties no longer bothered him. During that oh-so-famous summer between middle school and high school, he shot up ten inches, no longer a scrawny boy. Lean muscles from all that soccer showed, and I was sure he could lift my meager frame of 5’2” easily. But his sparkling eyes and his signature smile stayed the same, thank goodness. Even with his name calling and locker-slamming, I could never resist his eyes. Apparently, no one else could, either. Immediately rising in the social hierarchy, he won over all of the girls, as well as the teachers and some guys, too. The perfect girls who teased me in middle school trailed around behind him, and he had a new girlfriend every week.
