Some call it love [NaNoWriMo13]

1 - Some call it love

It's funny how living in the same neighbourhood, you know where everyone else lives, without actually knowing who the person really is. For example, I know that the really skinny girl who always goes out in miniskirts and fancy dresses is on one of the houses across of mine. She seems to leave at around five in the evening where she is always picked up in a black Lexus and then returned in the same car in a different T-shirt and shorts in the same car on Saturday afternoon. 

It was no doubt what she had been doing. Attending the weekly parties faithfully every week, or as long as I had been sitting in the attic. 

Attic? Allow me to explain myself. My name is Miranda, and despite my normal name, I'm not really as normal as my name. Why? The answer to that, I myself have no idea. The kids at my school laugh at me because I'm a ginger (no, I'm not a ginger, in the plant ginger, but I'm ginger, in that my hair is ginger, or orange?). My mother tells me every day that it just makes me cute, but I'm not telling that to the kids at school.

So that brings me to my next point. I spend most of my time in the attic at home because of my lack of friends. I haven't had a friend since I turned fifteen, which is really pathetic, but I guess I'm really fine with that. As soon as school ends, I have my older twin brother Terrence who comes to pick me up in his car. He is in one of the jocks in school, but he somehow manages his ego around both me and his friends, maintaining a girlfriend at the same time. 

Yeah, that's why my mother wants me to be more like my older brother. He plays sports, he has a social life, and he has a partner. In other words, he has better things to do with his time unlike me, who hangs out in the attic all day watching people on a daily basis. 

Like a creepy stalker.

Why the attic though? You might be curious. So here's the story to that.

When I was fifteen, I lost my last friend because she had gotten herself a boyfriend, which pretty much meant that I would have no more time in her life, and that I might as well have stopped hanging around her or trying to get her to hang at my place. 

So, I was left with exploring the relatively new house, where everything was still pretty much still packed into boxes because we had only just moved in in June (It was September then). In my room, I noticed a trapdoor at the ceiling, where I could easily access simply by climbing onto the bed. So, I managed to climb through the door.

The first time I went up, it was a dusty mess. There were dust bunnies everywhere, but I had found several things that might have made it remotely comfortable and homely. For example, the ledge by the attic window seemed the perfect size for me to fit between and view the entire neighbourhood. 

Then there were the empty bookshelves which apart from being dusty, seemed to be in perfect condition. So, with lots of free time in my hands, I had managed to clean up the old attic and make it slightly more livable by putting in books into the newly cleaned bookkshelves. Then, I had several old blankets my mother probably wouldn't have minded if they should accidentally disappeared. 

With that, I had created my new haven. I didn't even have to do much about it. It felt like an extension to my room, so since then, I had been dutifully going to the attic daily to sit by the window ledge with either a new book or my sketchbook. 

So anyway, as I was saying, I didn't really know what the names of most of the people in the neighbourhood, although I could very easily tell who lived where, simply by looking at their face or in some cases, I could tell which person was going to visit whom in by looking at the general attire and the kind of cars they drive. 

Yeah, I did notice many things.

However, I never really thought that amongst the people I lived with, I would find a person who would actually end up being my other half, and that he was really the boy across the street. 

Most people in the neighbourhood generally know who everyone is. However, I happen to be the exception because I didn't enjoy being in the company of many people, always afraid of being involved in the neighbourhood gossip that the housewives seemed to indulge themselves in.

I know this because without fail, every Saturday morning, the women from each household (my mother included) would all be out, and talking widely among themselves. At the end, they would continue to break out in their respective 'gossip groups' (yes, I made that up. What else could I call it?), where if I listened hard enough, I could hear them talking about someone else.

For example, sometimes, I could hear the women by my house talking the other day, and one of them said, "Hey! Did you hear about Helena? I heard that her daughter has gotten her newest flavour of the month and they have really gotten down!"

Another gasped as soon as they all started, I lost interest and went back to a novel that I was rereading because I was too lazy to get to the library.

Back to what I was saying, everyone knew who everyone was. However, because of my lack of social skills, not many people knew who I was, and when they did, it would be those teenagers around my age who were always looking around when they were going to do something illegal like smoke pot in their rooms. Most of the time, they would flip me off.

In my opinion, I couldn't really care less. 

These people would look at me, glare at me, and then forget who I was and what I looked like; they only saw me. However, the first time someone had actually noticed me, that was when I knew I had it in for me. 

Word count: 1066

Total count: 1066