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The first time your eyes meet you are so put off by the sheer earnest expression glistening in the azure of her eyes that you have to look away. That’s when you should have known.
When she speaks to you, you answer coldly. When she smiles at you, you give her an awkward, annoyed grimace. You’ve felt this before- this strange chill that takes over your body at the most inopportune times. Like in elementary school, when Felicia Leonards, the girl who sat in front of her in Home Ec, would contort her gymnast body in her seat to twist towards you and grin at you conspiringly. Or whenever Alicia’s eyes would glaze over as she tittered around you, obsessing mercilessly. Rolling your eyes, you huff out an evidently insincere compliment about her Keds and, as she swallows, you erase the way her immediate glance made you feel in your mind, writing it off as irrelevant. A voice in your head snickers otherwise, but you choose to ignore it.
She’s laughable, honestly. Especially here, in your pristine white bedroom. Juxtaposed against the glamour, her ratty friendship bracelets and bitten down fingernails look even harsher and uglier in the light. You tell her she probably won’t fit in well with your friends very well. Her eyes dim even further and though your throat is dry you know it’s easier this way.
She is aggravating in almost every way. She is an embarrassment, especially in front of your friends, dear god. She is easily excited and equally as easily broken down, an activity you accomplish many times with ease. She is sneaky, too. Smart and sometimes, just sometimes, almost as manipulative as you. When the both of you start to assume something akin to friendship (three whole months after you meet), you feel like she can read you like a book at times. Sometimes it makes you feel an inexplicable sense of joy, that someone knows you so well, wants to know you so well. Most times, it scares the living daylights out of you. When she looks at you, some days, you feel like she knows the truth.
When you think you’re going to loose her forever, you’ve just turned thirteen and your body tremors at the thought of letting her go. You’ve just gotten her, or rather just gotten over your ego long enough to let her get to you. You’ve been friends for hardly any time at all but you’re closer than sisters, naturally. It isn’t like this with anyone. Not Dylan, not Alicia, not Kristen. Not even Bean.
The second the words leave her mouth, the announcement that she won’t be leaving after all, you throw your arms at her and squeeze hard. She laughs, surprised but, to your relief, hugs back. You tighten the hug, unable to control your motions. Your mind is so numb with happiness and with HER that it refuses to allow you to shrink back into your shell. To bury your emotions with another well-heaped shovel of dirt.
With each passing year, she gets through your defences a little more. It truly is aggravating, the way she can shut you up with a smile or turn your body inside out with a little laugh. The way she can change your mind with the blink of an eyes. To think you were ever immovable. To think you ever tried to denied what you felt for her. At age fifteen, you finally acknowledge what’s been bubbling away inside of you since hazel eyes met blue, 4 years ago. You love her.
Seeing her with Cam hurts, but throwing yourself at every boy who walks your way in hopes of ridding her from your every thought hurt more. You shouldn’t have to live like this. You deserve more than double dates and sleepovers and friendship bracelets and pressing your eyes together as tight as you can get them whilst blowing out your shared birthday candles, wishing, hoping, praying for more than friends.
You know what would happen if she ever found out. You think your walls would slam straight back up and you’d be lost behind their looming statures. You’d never see her again.
When you take off to London, she is the first thing on your mind. Flying over the city you were born and raised in and where she has only lived for five years, all you can think about is her. She has invaded your every memory, even the ones too far back for her to reach where she is ever-present in your awkward blushes at other girls and your strange pre-pubescent dreams too complex for you to explain at the time.
You glance down at Westchester, the city of Claire Lyons and attempt to let go. You never succeed.