The Friend Zone

Welcome to My Life

I'm not that person.

The bad boy, the emo, the jock. I'm just a guy... no special powers, no miracles, this isn't fantasy; this is life.

There is no happily ever after in this story, no prince and princess. There never is. This is a story of life; a tale as old as time, if you will. The story of real people trying to figure out what they're doing in life. Or whatever life middle school is.

I'm Austin Faraden. You probably wouldn't look twice at me if I passed you on the street. San Francisco is chock full of guys like me. I'm not really the classic hipster, but I do like that type of thing. And I'm not really a jock, although I play lacrosse. (Plus, we don't have many jocks here.) I'm not a nerd, but I do well on tests and like the Marvel-D.C crowd.

I'm kind of an in-between type of thing, but it's cool. There's no craziness in my life, I let Zoe handle that. She is the most hyper person I know, living in a perpetual sugar rush. At least around me, around anyone else she is the quiet girl, you never hear her in class. But walking the streets of The City by the Bay with her on our way home is the best part of my day.

We talk about absolutely nothing. It's all pointless, sometimes it's life problems, sometimes her favorite book, one day we had a very in depth talk about the dangers of domesticated squirrels. Who cares? It's just to pass the time until she goes left and I go right.

There's no real bad days. It's all laughter, rain or shine. Sometimes we can't see the next line in the side walk because it's pouring harder than we've ever seen and we can't stop giggling because one of us made a joke about cats.

I can talk about anything with her. I know who she has ever liked, all the gossip, all the trending jokes. Our eyes lock before the teacher says we are working with partners.

I need her more than she knows, more than I know. She's my rock. I'm the person she comes to when she needs to cry, the one who brings an extra chocolate bar for lunch because I know she hates the school-served tacos, and she's the one I go to when we've lost a game or the school jerk is being his usual jerkish self. (That happens a lot)

Sometimes I grab her hand instinctively, when I think she won't notice. Maybe she does, I hope she does. I hope she realizes how much she means to me. How every time I see her, my heart does somersaults in my chest. But that's just wishful thinking. She probably doesn't notice, she probably doesn't think twice about it.

That's what I'm scared of, I'm afraid that in the future she'll run off and get her heart broken. That she'll swear off love forever without realizing that there was someone she could have loved right here.

That she'll leave me.

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Hi!

This chapter was written by Corasaura, a.k.a. TheFantasticNarwhal and this author's note you're reading is by Sunnya the Chipmunk a.k.a. Artsybookworm18.

Both of us have other stories too, so check those out if you are interested.

This particular story is inspired by some real-life events that have happened with some of our friends. So...lest to say, it's gonna be weird.

Enjoy the story!

~TheBelugasofELMS