You were a boy made out of light in a room, both etheral and dangerous, brilliant blue eyes staring listlessly up at all the posters of swimsuit models your older, burnout brother made you get. Any other girl enjoyed watching the boys of summer load up their dirty cars with surfboards, beer, and sunscreen, which they slathered all over their gorgeous honey-bronze bodies. I let my sister, Willow, fall in love with the boys of summer while I followed you into your room that was full of sunshine and loud, thudding music I knew you didn't like. The way I saw you, clad in dark jeans and lying spread-eagled on the bed sheets, made my heart slam in my chest so hard it was a wonder it didn't wrench open. You talked about sex and drugs and music and the little broken animals you collected like bottle caps on the street and the glow worms we used to catch in jam jars when we were kids. Everything suddenly seemed so distant, so full of gray emptiness I could have screamed for days. You reminded me of how innocent it used to be, the two of us squealing children in the sandbox, by the river, lost in a daydream under a soft crayon blue sky. Where had it all gone? 1
All I wanted was for you to see me in my new dress, the one I had slipped on when momma wasn't looking because it had thin spaghetti straps and she said it showed off my shoulders and boobs too much. Ha, like I even HAD boobs! She just didn't understand that things were getting so much harder for me, for you, how the loneliness followed me around like a stray dog begging to be cradled in my arms day after day. 2
"Stacy, you look pretty." You tilt your face up towards me so I can see your eyes, that piercing blue, the sensual fullness of those lips that are curving into a boyish smile. I have noticed, at seventeen, you have grown even smaller, your prominent cheekbones so sharp they can cut glass. To the girls at school you are weird, to the boys you are a freak, an outcast, just Robbie Reynolds the "Faggot" and "Nobody." To me you are beautiful, and right now, in this sunlit room full of loud music, me in my off-limits dress, and your haunting blue eyes chilling the very core of my soul, there is suddenly nothing else in the world that matters. You and I are in love, and the innocence, I realize, has died along with the rest of our childhood lullabyes.
Author notes
Username: Inkheart
A contest entry
- Got Clap? (Prewrites Only!) by Valkyrie.
650 points, ended September 20, 39 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - The Great Storywrite Champion - Round One - Open to All. by Kevan.
135 points, ended October 7, 20 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest - Short and Sweet by WritersEffigy.
175 points, ended October 24, 25 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Do you think, just because you knew someone of the opposite sex since childhood, that it may feel very strange to fall in love?
Comments
1 - 10 of 10
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Nah, if you ask me, childhood sweethearts are like used in every romance. Apart from the whole bumped-into-each-other-thing. I don't know why she feels awkward. Fine, they lost their innocence, but she was still going all in a flowy manner about him, about how much she loved him. It was like she was coming of age, and falling in love with him at the same time.
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Excellent description and imagery. It was great to be able to picture everything so well. Excellent work and I hope to see more of you in my contest. Good luck.
xoxoxo.
Kevan. -
WOW!!! Very well written and I love the description. I can feel what the character feels and see what she sees.
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The visual aura your story gives of is multi-hued and glorious! I feel like I'm watching it with the colors of a stained-glass window flickering over it, and the colors not only are color, but emotion and thought and desire. Wow.
I think any time you've been friends and then realize you feel more than friendship, it's weird. The more friendship that's between you, the weirder it will be, but only to your brain. Your heart doesn't care about weird. Ever.
Thanks for entering my contest, and good luck@!
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I do think that it is so very strange to watch your feelings change as you grow, mainly because those feelings are beyond your control. This was beautiful, by the way.
. Rewarded 4
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Awesome!
I very much so enjoyed reading your story. You captured the emotions and imagery to its maximum! I wish the story would have continued, but alas it was a good ending as such too. Keep up the good work!
. Rewarded 4
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Love is love...yes it feels strange, no matter... in My opinion.
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oops. i pasted the same comment twice. i apologize!
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this is a gorgeous and incredible write. "to me you are beautiful"- the way you say that, like all the rest of this, is so real, so true. "the innocence, i realize, has died along with the rest of our childhood lullabyes." you write with such concentrated emotion and imagery; and though i have never fallen in love with someone i knew since childhood, i can imagine that that *would* be peculiar. probably because, in childhood, sexuality, and romance, are something you cannot understand, or feel, or desire; and it is strange to think of someone you knew, when they had no desire, with desire- if that makes sense.
the way you *see* this boy as someone, as himself, as no one else sees him, strikes me. this, and the *life* that is in your writing, makes this piece a superb work; and i dearly hope you will put more poetic prose on your profile, and i will read it all.
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