Hidden Within

2 | the beginning

When I was a little girl, I hated dresses.

I refused to dress in frilly, girly clothes or wear cute shoes or bows in my hair or anything pink. I wanted to wear overalls and play in mud and chase the boys around at the park. It drove my mother crazy. You're a girl, Hadley, I can still hear my mother saying to this day, you need to learn how to be ladylike.

Under my mother's keen eye, I grew out of my tomboy phase and agreed to let her shove me into uncomfortable dresses and tight shoes and do my hair however she pleased. It seemed easier than arguing with her. Besides, I learned the hard way that kids can be vicious to those who stick out—to those who are different from their given stereotype—and I stuck out like a sore thumb in my overalls.

However, even as I continued to grow older, I always viewed girls differently than I did boys. Boys were meant for chasing and running around with, for laughing and making crude jokes and not caring what I wore around them or what my hair looked like. But girls were different to me in a way I was never quite able to describe. They were pretty and smelled good, and around them my heart sped up and butterflies danced around in the pit of my stomach. I never understood why being around girls made me feel different than being around boys did.

By the time I reached middle school, I slowly began to understand what the difference between boys and girls was to me. I liked girls in the way I was supposed to like boys. There was no boy I had come across that had ever made my heart race or my stomach flutter or my cheeks flush in the way the girls I'd had crushes on growing up did. I never saw this attraction to girls I had as anything wrong, though I also never outwardly expressed it. It was my own little secret, one I kept hidden within.

I never acted on the feelings I had for girls until I was thirteen years old. The first time I kissed a girl was at summer camp, what feels like forever ago now, though was really only four years prior.

The kiss took place after sunset. The girl I favored at the time and I were sitting on wooden logs staring out at the lake, watching as the sky darkened and moonlight rippled across the clear blue water. She was a girl I had grown close to that summer. Her name was Julia. She had long, light brown hair and big, dark blue eyes. Her skin was the color of copper. She always smelt like vanilla. When she smiled at me, I swear my heart would stop. She had been talking as we sat together. I was watching the way her lips moved to form the words. One second, I was sitting next to her and listening as she spoke. The next, my lips were on hers.

I still remember how warm and soft her pink lips felt against my own; how perfect that moment had been before it ended. The kiss I shared with Julia felt very different from kissing Randy Sanderson in the seventh grade at Amanda Stevens' birthday party during a game of spin the bottle. I could have sworn I saw fireworks playing behind my closed eyelids as my lips met hers, and I was a mess of jumbled nerves and longing. I could tell I surprised her, because Julia's lips lingered on mine for only a moment, stiff with shock. Then she pulled away and silence spread between us like a fire neither of us quite knew how to put out. I apologized profusely, and she said it was okay. We never talked about the kiss afterwards, yet things felt awkward between us for the rest of summer. Then camp ended and I went home and never saw Julia again, yet I still think of that kiss to this day.

When summer ended and my birthday passed as I began attending high school, I tried to push the realization that I was into girls to the side. I knew it was something I'd never be able to act on, with my conservative Christian parents and the understanding that I'd be deemed a freak show by my peers at school. I went all of freshman year without pursuing any girls, and even tried my hand at dating a boy. Needless to say, the relationship felt forced and was short-lived, and deep down I knew I would never be happy with a man. Yet I was scared of what it might mean to admit to myself that I wanted to be with a girl, so I instead chose to ignore my feelings and try my best to be happy with the life I had.

Until I met her.

It was the summer of sophomore year. School had just let out and I was bored, as my friends would be away for the first month of vacation. Grace had gone to visit her grandma in New York, Bianca was off to Spain, and Delaney and her parents went on their annual summer cruise. I was sitting outside on my front porch thinking about how lame my summer was about to be, when I noticed a moving van parked in the driveway of a house at the end of the street. Curious, I'd taken a walk down the street to see what was going on.

That was the first time I saw her. Long, chestnut colored hair and hazel eyes, tan skin dotted with light brown freckles. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and when her eyes met mine from where she stood by the moving van I could have sworn I felt time stop. Well, at least my breathing did.

She flashed me a wide smile that showed off two rows of perfect white teeth before approaching where I had been lingering at her mailbox. She wore a loose t-shirt and denim shorts, her feet bare. She looked happy and free, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Maybe that's what I found so attractive about her. She looked like she was everything I wanted to be myself.

She stopped walking upon reaching me. Then she simply said, "Hi."

"Uh, hi," I'd said in response, hardly able to believe she was really talking to me, much less standing in front of me.

"I'm Sloane," she'd told me, biting down on her bottom lip slightly as she smiled.

"Hadley," I managed to choke out, nerves rising in my chest as I realized I was actually having a conversation with the prettiest girl I had ever seen, and that she'd initiated it.

"My parents and I just moved here," she informed me, "I'm sure you were wondering about the van. We're staying here for the summer."

"Just the summer?" I'd questioned, intrigued.

It hadn't occurred to me at the time that she would become such a big part of my life, or that it would be the worst parts of my life as well.

"Just the summer," she confirmed. Then she'd turned to glance over her shoulder at the U-Haul parked a few feet away, filled with furniture and belongings. A few boxes were scattered around the driveway as well. She returned her attention to me with a smile. "Wanna grab a box? We could use a hand. If you're willing, that is."

Something about her smile had me smiling, too. I'd nodded and joined her side, reaching for a box as she did the same. Then I'd followed her into the house, unaware that was the beginning of a whole lot of trouble headed my way.

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a/n: i'm so excited to finally be posting this story after working on it for the past few months. on top of uploading again, i've started working on a new project that i'm also super excited about. it's something very different than anything i've written in the past, so it's been fun to switch things up. and even BETTER news (to me at least, lol) me and my girlfriend have started house-shopping and we're hoping to move in together in january! so much has happened agh! anyway, there's a quick lil update on my life. thanks for reading. :)