My Unnatural Disaster

The Beginning

I'll never forget the first day I saw Caden, I told him that story many times over the course of our relationship. I walked into the math room on our first day of school and saw a shorter boy, with an athletic build. A mop of brown curls, a mouthful of metal, chocolate brown eyes and a smile that was contagious. He smiled at me and the first thing I did after smiling back was turn to my best friend and say " Damn that guy's HOT!". Typical ninth grade response.

Paying attention in math that day was out of the question and I spent the rest of the day thinking about the cute guy from math. It wasn't until sixth period advanced English rolled around that I learned his name was Carl. Thanks to a class round of get to know your classmates I soon learned that Caden had an interest in Pokemon, and science. That the only books he liked to read were Harry Potter and that he strongly disliked writing. Not the typical type of guy I usually fell for but hey it was high school. Maybe my type was changing.

That first week passed in a blur. We were assigned a year long research project for English. I decided to do my project on the NSA and Edward Snowden as laws surrounding privacy really interested me at the time. I had decided on a whim to do cross country this year, and discovered that well I had absolutely no natural inclination for it I enjoyed the exercise and my teammates immensely. The first time I ran more than two miles I was sweating in every place imaginable and couldn't draw a full breath to save my life but I had a smile as bright as the sun on my face because I had done it and proven to myself that I was capable of doing it.

The day of my first cross country race ever my English teacher announced a new seating chart. She had put me next to Caden. Even though we hadn't said more than a quick hi or cursory introduction to each other yet this year I still caught him watching me in math and his smile still gave me butterflies. That day in September was the first real conversation we had ever had. I left class that day with a huge smile on my face and he played a huge part in my motivation during the race that night. It was a day of firsts, and it had gone very well.

It didn't take long for one of my close friends named Ryan who sat at the table with me and Caden to realize that we were low key flirting everyday. Being the dramatic outspoken person he is he soon had spread rumors to our entire English class shipping us.

When I found out I was furious, I walked in and faked offence to Caden,

"Did you know our entire class ships us?" I demanded.

Eyebrows raised he replied "Yeah....You didn't?"

Shocked I replied, " Well do you ship us?"

Eyes down and red creeping into his cheeks he mumbled "IDK."

Of course at this moment, when all I wanted to do was interrogate him further Ms. peters, our English teacher, clapped her hands and announced that today's class would be silent research time. Emphasis on the silent part. I sat there for a while staring blankly at an article about the patriot act and Edward Snowden's epic escape to China. Then all of a sudden my school email account blinked showing one new message. Wondering who would be using my school email to contact me in the middle of the day, as my friends all had my number and preferred text. And no teachers sent out mid day emails this early in the year, I opened it. It was Caden, the email was one line long and read, " So do you ship it?"

I looked over at him only to see him staring at me with one eyebrow raised. I nodded and he grinned at me. I emailed him back, " wanna trade phone numbers?"

The next couple of weeks passed quickly with nothing out of the ordinary occurring. We texted and got to know each other but it was all short messages.

" Hey Casey, What's up?"
"Not much, hbu?"

"Not much."

We talked about things like sports and classes, classmates. It turned out that my best friend Jordyn was on the swim team with him.

"Careful Case" he cautioned me one day "This guy kinda has a rep on the team as a player, He's always talking about all these girls he's dated. I don't want you to get hurt"

looking back I wish I had listened then.

It didn't matter anyways because a few days later he interrupted our conversation about running to tell me that even though he liked me he didn't want to date anyone in high school. Swallowing my disappointment I replied with a nonchalant "Ok cool, me neither."