i love her

A Story by Viccy Rogers

I think I’m in love.

I think love how her hair isn’t straight or curly but it’s somewhere in between. And how she changes it every other weekend because she’s restless and likes people to keep noticing her. I think I love how her cheeks lift up when she smiles properly, because sometimes I can make her laugh, and it’s nice knowing that she’s really happy and not just putting it on.

I think I love how she asked me to wait for her after school to get the bus with her one time because she’s still scared of getting it on her own. I feel bad because I had to ditch my normal bus friends to meet her, but I didn’t think twice. She’s so tiny I reached for her hand to drag her onto it because it’s the busiest bus around and it’s easy to get left behind, even though I didn’t know if that would be okay, because her hand is so special I thought it may be weird if I held it. She accepted anyway. I think I love how when she has her headphones in I can’t begin to guess whether she’s listening to The Smiths or Beyonce. How she’s so confident that even when she tells stories that aren’t funny I laugh just because of how she tells them. It fascinates me how her world is so completely different to mine, so I love hearing about it. All the exciting parties she goes to and what she wears to them and who she kisses there and what funny things she does when she’s drunk. I think I love how she can never sit properly so she ends up hugging her knees in class. Or how during during the short break between double maths we always go and sit on the big windowsill, and she always needs to stretch. I think I love how when she does, she leans right back and her top rides up and I can see what colour belly bar she has in that day �" always different.

I think I love how she finds it so easy to talk to anyone �" even me �" without becoming attached. She’s always surrounded by people, but I know that she could leave tomorrow and not say goodbye to any of them. I don’t know if that’s sad or admirable. She’s never by herself �" not even for a second. I take every opportunity to be with her and to be that person she’s with �" even if it is only for a second. Sometimes I think that she knows I’m madly in love with her, and I get angry at her for speaking to me anyway, knowing that she’ll never be with me. I feel like she’s teasing me, but it’s not her fault I find everything she does insanely attractive. Like when she bites her lip when she’s concentrating. She’s not trying to turn me on, but it feels like she’s doing it on purpose. And sometimes I can catch her eye in class and we’ll compare answers and it will feel like fairy dust has been sprinkled all over me. I think I love her because I know that I can’t have her, because she’s so beautiful she’d never consider someone like me in that way. It annoys me because she always chooses the wrong guys �" the ones who don’t treat her how she deserves and she complains about it to me, and I sit there and comfort her and think about how I would never treat her like that. She’s so wonderfully oblivious. Lovely, but very oblivious.

I think I love how I know that she’s been through a lot in the past even though I’m not supposed to know, but now that I do I can sometimes see a pain in her eyes that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. It makes her seem even smaller, and vulnerable, and it makes me want to look after her, but I know that that will push her away. Because people have told me about how she used to do drugs and sleep with strangers twice her age and starve herself nearly to death and cry herself to sleep every night. But she never shows it or acts it or dramatizes it; she just gets on and tells her funny stories and changes her belly bar every day �" little quirky things which I don’t think anyone is supposed to notice but I do anyway because I think I love her.

Correction �" I know that I love her.