Seeing Grey

2. Grey Winters

You know that age- old saying that if someone is mean to you it somehow means that they like you? Yeah, well whoever made up that quote was seriously insane and I mean bananas. If someone liked you, wouldn't they want to be nice so you could like them back? Wouldn't it hurt you to be mean to the person you liked? Somehow I seriously believed that flawed concept up until the age of fourteen. That is when I realized that if they are mean to you, they simply DO NOT LIKE YOU! It took me a long time to realize this, a long time and a lot of pain.

I met the love of my life, and I say that loosely, in the summer of 2003. He moved into my neighborhood and I was happy to finally have a kid my age to play with. I had my brother but he was getting boring and he had started to like girls. My best friends Astor and Desiree lived too far to walk. Every other kid on the block was either too old or told to stay away from us. So when I heard from Ms. Tilly, our neighbor at the end of the street, that a new kid was moving in, I was overjoyed. I could get to them before my parents- I thought. Little did I know I would be the one doing the scaring away.

"Is it a boy or girl, Ms. Tilly?" I asked about our new neighbor that would be my age. This was about the millionth time I had asked Ms. Tilly a question concerning the new family. I knew she would get annoyed at one point, but until then I would continue asking questions. In response, she shook her head as giggles tumbled out of her. Her old lady coat was black with light blue flowers on them. I remember wanting that coat for when I too got old.

"I do not know Grey. If you bug them like you do me, you are going to scare them right back to their old house." When Ms. Tilly said this fear ran through my body and almost paralyzed me. I was super lonely for a kid. I did not want them to leave so quickly! So when they finally drove into the neighborhood at one o' clock I ran into my house and decided to hide out as long as possible. I could not scare them away and hiding was the only way to prevent that. As Ms. Tilly said, I needed to let them settle in. I tried to busy myself many ways I could but I was running out of things, fast.

After two hours I decided I had waited long enough. In a hasty second I chose to finally pop out of hiding. I marched across the street with a purpose in mind but was stopped at the beginning of our perfectly flowered path by my mother.

"Grey Corinthia Winters where do you think you are going?" She asked in her supposed "motherly" tone. I looked up at her tall, lanky body and her frozen jade eyes. Both of those physical traits also belonged to me. Luckily and horribly, I was my mothers twin.

I didn't have a chance to answer before she took a course of action. She pulled me by the arm with her freckled one. She took us back into the house and put a huge frilly dress on me with matching frilly socks. Then, she set my hair into rollers.

"Mother, why-" She didn't even let me finish my question.

"Shush Grey, what did I tell you? Only talk when you have been personally addressed. Otherwise it is rude." It was like my mother had the mentality of a man in the 1800's. I did all I could so I wouldn't get a rise out of my mother. I nodded, fixed my posture, and folded my hands onto my lap- just as I was shown multiple times. My mother and I made eye contact in the mirror and she grabbed a hold onto my chin. "Oh, you are so beautiful my baby doll! I'm so proud of you." Then, she more than roughly pulled me up by the arm and the moment was gone. There was never love between us, not even now and it's one of the things I hate that I couldn't fix. Sure, I found out her secrets and troubles but it didn't help.

"Now, hurry and greet the guests for your father's campaign dinner." My mom had one of those boring voices you would expect socialite women to have. There was no love or care in her voice. It was just business, it was always business with her.

I ran down the stairs two at a time and greeted the thirty something people as fast as I could and ran out my door to finally meet our new neighbor. I knew I had the possibility of getting in trouble if I didn't calculate my time right. It was only five and dinner didn't start until six. I had plenty of time to play.

I crossed the street, walked up to the house and spotted a boy. He was cute, nothing special but there was just this certain pull I had to him.

I was about to ask him his name when I spotted his sandwich and my stomach had grumbled. In all of hiding out and getting ready I hadn't even had a snack to eat. I snatched up his sandwich and ate it all in under three minutes. Food was no joke to me and obviously it wasn't a joke to him either. To say he didn't appreciate my eating his sandwich would be ignorant. That was when my heart sank because I knew I had done it again- I had repelled him like I do to everyone.

He was upset but I thought I could make it up to him. I had to make it up to him if I wanted a friend. I decided to take him to my house and give him my gourmet dinner to replace his sandwich. I introduced myself and I grabbed onto his arm pulling him to my house across the street. When we got inside he was fighting me saying he had to leave. What a wuss I thought but, I still liked him. I tried to explain to him he couldn't leave because I was going to give him my dinner but he just did not listen. He would not listen. At one point he looked like he was about to cry so I just let him go home.

The rest of the night I couldn't stop thinking about the next day, the next week, and the rest of my life with this boy.