Coma (Slowly Editing)

Prologue: The Beginning

The summer I turned thirteen, when I was still short, bespectacled and had an unfortunate tendency to wear food stains on my shirt, a beautiful boy walked into the same elevator I was in. I'd never seen him before, but in the short time between the ground floor and ninth, I fell in love with the way he breathed and soft hair at the nape of his neck and the way he said 'Fuck' when he realised that he'd forgotten his house keys.

On the ninth floor, I got off reluctantly and our hands brushed. It felt like true love. (Forgive my melodramatic tendencies, I was thirteen.) I dramatically swore to myself that I'd rather die than wash that hand ever again. (That plan didn't went well.) After the elevator doors closed, I hung around and watched the numbers on the floor indicator go up, up, up, until it stopped on the twelfth floor. Twelve. My boy was just three flights of stairs away from me.

I began to plot about ways to see him again, not knowing that in a few years, we'd be brought together under extraordinary circumstances.