Trouble For Smiling

First chapter ever finished! Keep in mind this is my first book and be nice, but I'd love to have feedback. Thanks!

Prologue:

Friday August third was the first day I ever got into trouble for smiling. Not for smiling too much, not even for smiling too little (which is my default setting), nope it was simply because I cracked a smile at a little girl trying to steal a coat hanger.

To explain the situation further I need you, dear reader, to understand one simple concept. I am not, never have been, nor ever will be a psychopath. It is important that you remember this, because everyone else seems to be forgetting.

Chapter one

Vera's POV

On any given day in my small town, which I not so lovingly refer to as Shit-For-Brains, Nebraska, nothing of note happens. It's a mystery why we even have our own police force. I use the word "we" tentatively because even though mom and I had finished the unpacking of even the most inconsequential items (laundry steamer, Persian golf balls etc.) I had yet to make a friend.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing on small town life too hard. I get that it's not for everyone. The portion of the general population that it is NOT for just includes my name at the top of the list. Every teenager has the right to be over dramatic and self obsessed about some situations. My life completely turned into "some situations" when I moved here.

Believe it or not, I'm not even dissing on the town police completely either. It's not like they do absolutely nothing, just last week the younger of the two, who had a pronounced stutter that he never quite grew out of, had saved a clichéd cat from a tree. The older one had opened my elderly neighbor's bathroom door after she had locked herself inside, panicked, and gathered an artillery of lock picking nail clippers, tweezers, and band aids. She then proceeded to accidentally insure the ancient lock would never turn again.

The pyro in me would like to imagine that at least a small amount of explosives were involved. The pyro in me was, per usual, disappointed.

The stuttering cop called himself

A-A-Adam. He even signed his name that way, probably to make sure someone else didn't. The older cop's name was Gus.

Gus tried to help everyone. Except me. Gus would open a bathroom door for anyone. Except me. If I were trapped behind a door, or anything for that matter, Gus would leave me to rot.

Contrary to the beliefs of the general population living in Shit-For-Brains, NE, before Friday August third I had done nothing to deserve a vendetta against me. Hell, even on that Friday I'd done nothing. Afterwards, well that's where the lines get blurry. The time for that story will come soon,but not quite yet.

Gus is an old fashioned person. The kind who can't seem to adapt to changing times.

I, on the other hand,would be considered in all way, shape, and form a child of the new millennium. Everything from my dark purple and royal blue streaked hair and eyeliner down to my chunky combat boots defied what the old people in this town thought a 16 year old girl should be.

The truly sad aspect of it was that a significant amount of the Shit-For-Brains town teenagers agreed. In the past month they have waged an ill-advised attempt to stop me from being me. They just don't get it. I'd rather be real enemies than fake friends and what they were proposing was anything but real. I want more than a seat at the end of a sickly greenish yellow lunch table with no one to talk to.

It had been a month into summer when my mom and I unpacked our moving truck with not one offer of help from the neighbors. There's still a full month and a half left and I'm not letting it go to waste. By the end of this summer I, Vera Hart, do solemnly swear to make a true friend who doesn't reside solely in the pages in a book. But god dammit I have it's gonna be harder than even I could guess.