Back to December

Chapter 1 - At the beginning

 

The course of true love never did run smooth

~ William Shakespeare

 

                In the years they were growing up Maggie and Jimmy could hardly have been classed as the ideal couple.

                At their first meeting, at the age of 7, Jimmy threw Maggie’s shoe into the brook by their houses. The reason for this was Maggie had insulted Jimmy’s hair. Now both these offences could have been forgiven if it had been any other two people at any other time. However they weren’t. Maggie was wearing the last pair of shoes her mother had bought her before she became severely ill and passed away and Jimmy hadn’t had his hair cut in a while because his father had injures his leg, meaning he couldn’t work so his mother had been very busy.

                This one day is what started a 10 year long hatred of the new neighbours Margaret Elizabeth Scott and James Phillip Jackson.

                The next time they met, only 2 days after their first encounter, Maggie found Jimmy by the brook. His eyes were swollen and tinges with red, he was sniffling and trying to stop himself from crying even more. Maggie felt instant sympathy and would have forgiven him in an instant if he hadn’t turned, glared and said

“What are you looking at? Huh?”

                Margaret could also have forgiven the angry and aggressive manner in which he had spoken if Jim had not felt the need to accompany his question with a shove into the cold, hard dirt. The dress she was about to wear to her mother’s funeral was ruined and that was when she made up her mind to dislike that boy for as long as she lived. No one was going to make saying goodbye to her mother any harder, or any more painful, than it had to be.

                A seven year old can hold a grudge for a long time and as it came to pass Maggie had plenty of reason to hold onto it; in fact she had enough reason to case that grudge in titanium and bury it away somewhere safe where it could never be touched. Now the reason this continued is rather silly and childish. Jimmy was mortified that Maggie had seen him so weak, so vulnerable, so he decided to make her forget about the sad little boy by becoming her tormenter.

                Throughout their childhood the two would bicker and fight and every blow would deepen the rift between them. Like when Jimmy interrupted Maggie’s first kiss or when Maggie found Jim’s assignment but left it in the rain. These continuous events caused the two to believe that they could never even consider being any more than neighbours who despised each other.

                This became even more prevalent on the 5th anniversary of the death of Maggie’s mother. She was 12, alone and desperate to feel loved. But even this desperation could not bring her to allow her friends to see her so low, to invite them round and help her to cope with the overwhelming sadness that she felt.

                Sometimes she felt that the loneliness would crush her, and it would be so easy for it to happen. She felt hollow, so hollow that the breeze, as light as it was, could knock her over. The loneliness would crush her, she knew, and she would never be able to recover from it. Then...

                Then Jimmy shows up and there is a flare of anger so strong, so sharp, that she knows that she’ll be fine. No one could feel that angry and not be able to feel the opposite. She also knew that she would we be fine because she felt everything so strongly that when she did indeed find a positive emotion to latch onto she would be so immensely happy that all the anger and loneliness would mean nothing. Life wouldn’t be fair otherwise. It had taken her mother and her father. The least it could do would be to give her a sweetheart.