You won't find her in the malls downtown or under the flashy neon lights of the shady part of the city. You'll find her between library shelves and quiet coffee shops, biting the skin around her fingernails and letting her mind run wild.
You won't find her shopping for crop tops or backless dresses. You'll find her clad in army green or black, fingers raking through the same choppy three-year-old haircut, buying cookies and juice packets and other things people have looked at her strangely for because they were supposedly "for kids."
They didn't know Holly. She may have been twenty-one but she had always been young inside.
She told me once, though, that she had a theory: "Maybe I like decorating myself with childish things because I desperately want to feel young again. I sometimes feel as though I grew up too fast."
Before I could answer, she opened her book again and went back to reading.
One night she called me, asking for a drive. We rode along the edge of the hills outside town. Dry black hair whipped around her face as she looked up at the moon.
"It's following us," she said. I stole a glance at her face and knew that she knew better. Something about her faraway expression told me that she was just trying to sound like the child she once was.
"I love you," I told her.
She smiled and sighed. "You and I would never work, Collin," she simply said. "You don't know how to enjoy the high."
I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. In fairness to her, she had always warned me about my obsession with the future. She said it would prevent the best things from happening to me.
