Guide to Girls

Chapter 1

I ran my fingers through my dark brown hair and stared at the full shelf on my wall.

Alright. There has to be some way of fitting this book that was sitting on my bed on there. I moved my collection of books slightly to the left of the shelf trying to make room for it, but no such luck.

I sighed and walked back to my desk, putting my hand on my IKEA chair.

I loved collecting books; it's one of the only things I'm good at. Aside from watching re-runs of old TV shows and listening to music, reading and collecting books was the only thing I did. Doing this only of course when I'm not writing essays to get extra credit- not like I needed it.

I was the school's nerd. I lived in the school library- occasionally volunteering to help when needed- and had pretty good relationships with all my teachers- sometimes staying behind after classes to talk with them.

For all this, I was also considered the school's loner, not like I didn't bring it upon myself.

I pulled out my chair and slumped lazily down on it, opening my laptop. Okay. I thought to myself. Time to write an essay for English to get some extra credit.

No less than 5 seconds after I had written the first sentence, I heard a knock on my door.

"Shailene, honey, we're out of milk. Would you be able to go to the shop and buy some please? Oh and get something nice for dinner too," my dad spoke quietly, poking his head around the door.

"Um, sure. What's your excuse for not going today then?" I replied, chuckling lightly. I glanced at the time; 7:58, It's going to get dark soon.

"I have a headache?" He questioned, stepping into the room.

"Okay, Dad, you're going to have to come up with a better excuse than that next time," I chuckled again, closing my laptop and standing up from my seat.

"I know, Shai. Thank you, honey," he spoke again before opening my door further and letting me walk out. I walked down the small hallway before reaching the stairs at the middle, descending them one by one. I would say for a single dad working as a Doctor and 17 year old girl with an underpaid job at a local clothes store, I think we were quite well off living in a 3 storey house.

I walked to the front door located right in front of the stairs and grabbed my phone and my leather jacket. My car was in the garage after some idiot decided to crash into it at the car park so I had to walk.

After saying a quick goodbye to my Dad, I opened the door and was met by the freezing winter weather. Walking out of the door, making sure to lock it behind me, I crossed my arms over my chest as to provide some sort of heat.

I ran out of the front garden and down my road when I almost immediately started losing my breath. I must start doing more exercise I thought to myself. Now walking with the same determination as before, I walked past house after house until I reached the end of my road where I turned left and continued walking to my local store. After walking for about 10 more minutes, I arrived. The store shone bright in the now darkening night.

I scurried through the car park and up to the entrance where the automatic doors opened for me.

Immediately I walked to the back of the store where they kept the milk and picked up our normal milk, 2 pints of 1% fat milk. I wouldn't drink any other kind of milk because they either tasted too fatty or too much of chalk- not that I know what chalk tastes like...

I walked over to the pasta aisle where I picked up some spaghetti and some pre-made Bolognese sauce and headed to the till.

There only seemed to be one till open at the moment so I joined the queue of about 3 people in front of me.