Home?

Chapter 1: Oh,it's you.

Ivory

I love this place, I think to myself as I walk into Jackson, Tennessee's Library. The place smells of books, not beer. This feels like home, not the place where I can hear my mom and dad yelling over something. I have always wanted to live here. One time when I was 11 years old, I asked the front desk if I could move in the back where all the old books were. They called my dad and I had to go back 'there', I had to go back home, I hate it there. It has always been alien to me, as if I was living on Mars. I got in so much trouble. Back then he would scare me, now I couldn't care less and he knows it. I stop calling it my 'home' a long time ago, maybe when I was about 10. That's when he went off the wall, my father, I mean. I don't like calling him that. I would love to call him others things like all the things he calls my mom but that would be "not ladylike" as my mother would say. Stop thinking about that, the voice in my head says to me, You came here to forget, to get away from him.

I work my way up the beautiful rows and rows of books. I mean, wow! I don't know why I've always loved to read but to me they were an easy way to get away from my life. A way to be someone else for just an hour or... 5. There are drugs but if I did that stuff that would make me just as bad as him. I get asked all the time why I love to read and I can't tell the real reason, I'm pretty sure if I did they would be running home screaming and I don't need that. So I would tell them that the feeling of holding the book would be like... going home after a bad day at school and knowing that your mom was home in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies because you told her you had a bad day. Then they would still look at me weird then never talk to me unless they had to.

Ever since I had been able to hold a book I would love to look at the maze of all the words on the pages. I would put my finger on the book and act like I was reading. I didn't know how to read like at all and my partners were always 'to busy' to help. They would say that I would have to wait for school but back then I was impatient. So I would make up words and makes up stories. That's why I love the rows of bookcases that almost hit the ceiling. The bookcase had stairs to get to the top of the shaft, it was that tall and there was like 15 on each side. The left and the right. It was a big library maybe the biggest in Tennessee.

But my favorite thing about the whole place is the teen part of the library which was on the top floor of the 3 story blinding. It was like a teenager threw up in there. Stacks carts in every corner of the place. There isn't place part where no one could sit down. In here it is a little bit smaller than the rest of the whole place.

There is a shelf called the Letter Library. It is a whole shelf of books you can write in. Leave letters, comments, things you love or hate about the book. There has to be more than 500 books on the shelf. It was my idea, well it was in a book I had read. One of my favorite books Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley.

I love books about love or someone who loves other person who they think they can't have or really can't have, like their brother or sister, it's a big no-no. But I think that just makes them want them even more, knowing you can't have them you just want them even more. And loving someone is like food, everyone has their own taste in people. Not like taste in people as in eating people, I mean. Okay, some guys like girls who have curly hair like me but other guys like girls with straight hair. See! Anyway, I have always loved the idea of love and how 'home' was not always place but a person, that you could be that type of home for someone. Not only have to think of yourself but the person who says they love.

But for people who had a happy home or at least see a little thing of love when they were a kid but for me, I have not. I don't see myself falling in love. I know, I am only 17 years old and I can't say that. Not every 'normal' 17 year old girls would see or have to do the stuff I have to. They would probably just break down and cry. The last time I cried is when I was 10 and from that day on I would not let someone get to me to make me cry. I have only trusted myself and my best friend, Taylor Williams.

I was lost in thought and wasn't paying attention to where I was going, I bumped into someone. I hear something drop, I look down and see a sea of books. There has to be 6 big 600 pages books and 3 novels, 9 books all together. That has to be heavy, I thought. Then I realize I just knocked this person's books.

"Oh my! I'm so sorry. I wasn't even looking where I was going. Oh, let me help you," I said as I bend down to help them with their books. I look up giving a warm smile, to try to make them a little less mad and then I see who it is. I can feel the big smile on my face drop. Oh, it's you. I think to myself or I thought I said to myself.

Declan Alexander. I love the name, hate the person. Declan was the type of guy who was gorgeous but didn't know it. It was annoying. With his perfect stupid jawline that all the girls love, the perfect black hair that he doesn't need to do anything to, the body of a quarterback, the little tanned skin, but I will say this boy has some pretty eyes. They were like a pretty greenish blue, like earth color with long black lashes that girls would kill for. If he would just keep his mouth shut for a second he would be just fine. If he wasn't so dang perfect and had like one or two things wrong with him, I won't hate him... as much.

Declan, last year was a complete a-whole. He thought he was better than everyone else. He would pick on Taylor and me all the time but mostly to me because making fun of the weird girl who reads, is fun to him. Say I needed a bigger bra or that I needed to find what face wash was. I will say it hurt but like I said I don't cry. It wasn't just him, it was also his lovely (NOT) girlfriend, or that's what she thought they were. Grace Garrett. Declan wasn't the type of guy that took girls home to meet his 'mommy'. He was the 'hit and quit' type of guy or didn't mess with girls at all. He wasn't stupid, he is kind of smart. Okay, he was smart. All AP classes, like me. Which I also hate. I can never seem to get away from him like maybe P.E. (girls only) but that's it! And he is older than me, hate that to! I could go on and on about why I hate him.

I have been busy looking at him and thinking how much I hate him. Has his eyes always been so sad? Well I don't care or I don't want to care. But what could this guys have wrong in his life. I bet he has the perfect family with a married couple and with a super cute little brother or sister that he is a butt to. He has no right to have that look on his, like, like he is sad! He has never had to see the things I have. He has nothing to have that look for, maybe he does but I don't care. Well, I don't want to care.