Autumn Leaves // Shawn Mendes

Chapter 1

*Hi there. This is my first fanfic so please be nice haha. Vote, comment, fan, leave some feedback, and most importantly, enjoy!*

Chapter 1

"That'll be £7.56 please." I told the busy customer as I finished scanning all of her items with a fake smile on my face. The lady smiled at me as she handed me a £10 note, noticing how fake my smile was.

"Been a busy shift?" She asked, empathy obvious on her ageing face.

"You wouldn't even believe it." I laughed. In the first 10 minutes of my shift, my boss, Jack, decided that he wanted to take the rest of the day off, leaving me in charge. I never quite understood why he wanted to leave a 17 year old girl in charge of his corner store while he went and sucked face with his girlfriend, but hey whatever works for him. Being the youngest working there, I always got the manual tasks like restocking the shelves and moving all of the boxes around in the back while Geraldine, a lovely elderly woman who couldn't hear or see a thing, would man the till. However, she had no idea how to work the till so I always ended up doing that too.

Humming along to the song playing on the radio, I finished bagging up the lady's shopping and handed her the change and receipt.

"Have a good weekend, thank you for shopping with us today!" I spoke with such a fake cheer in my voice. The lady smiled and thanked me as she picked up her shopping and left. After working here for about 2 years already, I'd managed to master how to appear like I'm genuinely interested in a customer's day when I'm clearly not, but, somehow, still make it seem relatively real. Most people couldn't tell the difference between genuine interest and fake interest anyway.

The rest of my shift went slowly. After pretty much doing everything in the store and dealing with rowdy customers, I decided I would take a leisurely walk home to clear my head instead of catching the bus.

Once I finished locking up the front store and securing the till, I walked to the back of the shop and toward the staff room to pick up my belongings. Once I had walked into the dark, damp-ridden room, I walked over to the back right-hand corner where my locker was to grab my red, checkered scarf and matching fingerless gloves. Turning towards the mirror on my left, I decided to check on my appearance.

My wavy, dark brown hair reached just past my shoulders and, somehow, still looked relatively decent. My blue eyes were lined with a simple cat eye and a light coat of mascara and my pale skin was dotted with little freckles. The bags under my eyes due to the little sleep I got last night were very prominent and I felt like they were the centre of attention for anyone looking at me. Being a girl that liked to eat a lot, I wasn't the skinniest person ever which was something that I resented deeply. No matter how much I would exercise, I never seemed to lose any weight and it was one of my main insecurities. I was dressed in my work uniform, a purple shirt and black skinny jeans with black vans.

I sighed and grabbed the rest of my belongings from my locker before closing it back up. After putting on my scarf and gloves and balancing my grey bag on my shoulder, I walked out of the back door and began the 15 minute walk home. Before leaving for work after school, I had decided to grab some headphones; a decision that I was very glad I made. Plugging my headphones into my phone, I decided to play some chart music. I don't know who the artist was, but there was this one guy who had only really recently come into the music industry and had an amazing voice and put such emotion in his songs. Any time I tried to figure out who he was, I always came up blank as I couldn't even remember how any of his songs went.

The sky was covered with dull, grey clouds and the wind was giving a nice chill to the air. Autumn was always my favourite time of the year, and not just because it was my name as well. I loved how the leaves would turn orange and red and give the illusion that it was warm when it certainly wasn't. I just loved how everything seemed like it became a bit more personal and how everyone just got more friendly. It was always much nicer to go from the cold outside to a warm home as well. Everyone had cinnamon and pumpkin spice scented candles around their house and somehow, everything just seemed like it got better for a couple months.