I had always thought of myself as a someone who was wise, and who could tell what she wanted. However, when I met him…I didn’t think of myself as highly as I once did.


It was the end of summer vacation and my senior year was around the corner. I anticipated the night before school started, I was ready to get my schedule and meet new people and see old friends. I was prepared, yet I was anxious. I had dwelled in the small town of Crane, Texas for 18 years of my life. It was a nice town, but through most of my life I felt that I had been missing something.


I lived with my mom and step-dad, my real dad died when I was 4, and George rushed in and saved the day. However, George was a good guy. He treated my mom well and took care of me. My mom was a nurse at the local hospital and my step-dad was a mechanic. We lived in a nice two story house painted bright yellow with white trim on Muse Ave. My older brother had left when he was my age and every now and then, I would get a postcard from him. Each postcard had a picture of the place where he was and each postcard was different. He and my parents had a falling out when he left, but they never denied me the postcards when they came in the mail. He always signed the postcards:

“And Emily they come and go, the shadows and the distant sounds, but Emily don't be afraid when the weight of angels weighs you down…Marco”


It was a lyric from Elton John’s ‘Emily’ that our dad use to sing to me when I was a baby. My brother was like that, he always had a way to make things explain themselves, and use other people’s words to make a point. Which sometimes was quite annoying, but it was always meaningful. I hadn’t seen my brother face to face in almost 4 years, and I often wondered about him. Where he slept? How he got money? If he ate that night? Was he lonely like me?


‘BEEP, BEEP, BEEP’ Roared my alarm clock at 6:00 a.m. My anxiousness had lasted all through the night and it’s grip on my mind did not let me sleep a wink. I jumped in the shower to wake myself up and quickly threw on my new outfit I bought the week before. I fixed my short dark brown hair to straight as needles, placed on my makeup. Ate some breakfast, brushed my teeth, said goodbye to the parents and drove to school.


Northern Hills High School was not one of the greatest schools, but it had some pretty cool teachers and some cool kids. Although I had been gone away from school for almost 3 months, I felt I hadn’t left at all. Things felt exactly the same, I parked in the same spot as last year, I still had the same circle of friends, we still socialized in the same corner of the court yard. It just felt all routine to me.


“Hey Emmy! Emmy Over here!” A shrilled little voice called me over to the corner of the school’s large court yard. My best friend Lauren had a thin face with a wide sparkling smile. Her rich eyes were swirls of blue and green, which if you stared at for too long, you‘d become lost within them. Her long curly hair bounced behind her in the morning sunlight almost blinding me with it’s ruby red tint.


“Hey Lauren.” I called back revealing my smile. It was 7:30 a.m. in the morning and I was not too chipper as she was. We traveled to our very large circle of friends and soon I was greeted by very familiar faces that I hadn’t seen since the last day of school. Some people I saw had changed, and some I saw stayed the same.


“Emmy, what’s up? I haven’t seen you in a hot minute.” Josh was a handsome boy. He had shaggy brown hair that ended at his jaw. He had very chic essence about him that seem to drive most girls wild. Nonetheless, the boy was ‘sex-on-a-stick‘. However, seeing him go through most of the girls I knew, I stood distant from him.



“Hey Josh, how was your summer?” I asked again forcing to give a smile at 7:33 a.m. in the morning.



“You know same old thing. Chillin, skating, doing some acid! Being a ‘bum’.” His small chuckle emphasized the sarcastic joke in his sentence. I had to hand it to Josh, he knew how to make someone laugh.


“OMG! it’s Emmy” Ashlynn was another good friend of mine. She approached me with a wide smile and raised eyebrows. With a killer personality and looks, she was one hell of girl. Her hair was long and light brown. She had light brown eyes and beautiful smile.



“Look at this bum.” I said jokingly, somewhat waking up. She giggled back and she, Lauren, and I started up our conversations of summer break. Its then when my eyes first caught sight of him. A young man, he was one I had never seen before. It was if everything around me had slowed down, as if he had stopped time itself. He was tall, and leaned forward slightly as he walked. His skin was light brown, and his hair was thick, black, and wavy. His eyes were dark brown and were wide. His lips were full and almost calling out to me. I had no idea why, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. I had even given up on the conversation with Ashlynn and Lauren.


“Emily?” Lauren’s voice broke my concentration and snapped me back from my hazy vision.

“What?” I said shaking off his presence for a split second.

“The bell rang, lets go.” Lauren said.

“Oh right.” I replied. I took the pleasure of looking back at him just once as I walked with the girls. He stood talking to Josh and Jim, another one of my friends. They seem to be deep in conversation, so how come I did not know this new fascinating boy? I stopped at the steps to the entrance of the school and stared at him for a moment. I had an urge to talk to him, and it was something that was eating away at me. Just then, his eyes met mine. The deep rich brown eyes stared back at my own, as if he were absorbing my soul. It took me a moment to realize he was actually staring at me, staring at him. I jumped out of my hazy stare once more, and with my face red from embarrassment walked up the stairs into the school. I had to know him…I had to know why he held this influence over me?

To be continued…