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Chapter 1

Drindringdring, dringdringdring!!! Arghhhhhh, I hate alarm clocks! They wake you up so early in the morning and you don’t even get to sleep! Urgh! Especially if it is in my case, I don’t need one! My sister can be my alarm clock! She wakes up at five a.m., and she starts singing, shouting I’d say. Then there’s my mother, who comes in and wakes me up! It is just too annoying.

“Mom! I want to sleep a little more!” I exclaim.

“No way Elisa! You’ll be late for the school bus!” She says in a thunderous voice.

“But mom…!”

“There is no but! Wake up or you’re going to regret it!”

I hate it when my mother says, “you’re going to regret it”. Last time when she said it, she actually meant it; she took a bucket of freezing water and poured it on me!!! Well, that’s my mom for you.

“Ok, ok mom! No need for extreme remedies,” I mumble while taking my pillow off my head.

I get out of my comfortable bed and go take a shower. It’s the same thing with the shower too. I know, I know, I sound like I must be living this hell of a routine everyday---actually, I do. I stay sooo long in the shower that my mother and sister have to shout for me too get out. You know when you start dozing off in the shower’ Happens to me too! Nevertheless, I am very quick to dress up, and today I am wearing a plain red shirt saying, “live to dance and dance to live” in yellow, black skinny jeans, and my all-time favorite red converse shoes. My sister fell asleep again! She is so lucky; she doesn’t have to go to school yet! I drink a glass of fresh orange juice, grab my school bag and soccer bag, and run off towards the school bus. I walk in and everybody immediately starts staring at me. With finesse, I discreetly find a seat at the back of the bus and motion Anna, my very good friend---I don’t believe in best friends, to sit down next to me.

“So, you have got to hear the big news El!” She exclaimed enthusiastically, too enthusiastically if you ask me

“What big news? Are they interesting” I ask out of feeble curiousity, “I’m sure its about Greg, its always about Greg.”

“Yeeees, and also about somebody else,” She replies with a big grin.

I don’t like that grin. She’s planning something, that’s her evil grin…I think.

“Really?” I ask with a sarcastic tone. I’m sure he asked out some other girl or something like that. However, I still want to know who the lucky girl is, “Who? Tell me Anna. Now. Please. I want to know what’s going on. And I don’t like that evil grin of yours!”

“Wh-what? What evil grin?” She asks while faking to be offended. I notice that her grin goes even wider. This is bad, “Ok, so Greg apparently sent a letter to this girl.”

“Really? Who?” I ask with real curiosity now. This is getting interesting. I see we’re getting closer to school but I’m not going to drop the subject. With Anna you talk about something once and then its case closed, not going to skip out on this information.

“Just guess Elisa.”

“What the…? You thrust upon me this so-called great story that I know nothing about and you ask me to guess what happened? Are you nuts?” I ask with bewilderment.

“Ok, ok don’t get that mad”

“I’m not mad…its just that the suspense I killing me.”

“So, Greg wrote a letter to this girl and asked me to give it to her, he says he’s too shy. Aw, isn’t that cute? Anywho, I have to give the letter to the girl.”

“And the girl is…?”

“Let me finish! I need to give you background information before actually telling the big stuff.”

Anna has this weird obsession of comparing her gossip to an essay.

“Ok, tell me then,” I say eying the school building from far.

“Oh gosh, kids these days. Don’t have any patience left! So yes, Greg sent you a letter, through me,” She says while taking a letter out of her bag.

Greg sent a letter to me? THE Greg Wells sent a letter to me. And he was too shy to give it to me in person. Awwwwwww.

I take the letter from Anna, get off the bus, avoid the girls’ jealous glares, and lock myself in the girls’ bathroom. I open the letter and see this magnificent rose drawn on it. I’m not surprised, touched, but not surprised; Greg is a great artist after all.

“Stick to the letter and calm down” I say to myself. Wouldn’t want to start hyperventilating. Especially not in the girls’ bathroom. I take a deep breath and start reading.

 

Dear Elisa,

I have kept this for too long now. All this time I didn’t know how to tell you this but then a month ago I got this idea of writing to you. I want you to know that I took me a lot of courage to write this, but in the end, it’s all worth it. You’re worth it. I’m tired of seeing you sitting there listening to you iPod and not talking to you. Pretty ironic eh? And I’m supposed to be the guy who is ‘popular’ but I’m too shy to talk to you.  I hope that your reaction to this letter won’t be negative; I hope that it’s going to be positive. So I guess now comes the time when I have to tell you that... Elisa I … I … really like you. Not just a little crush or a sixth grade like. I like you. A lot. And I was wondering if…you’d be my girlfriend. I know I am skipping ahead of the steps where we’d be supposedly going on dates, but I really like you. I hope Anna gives you the letter before the free at 8.45 so that we…can talk. I guess this is the end of my letter.

 

Sincerely,

Gregory Wells

 

P.S. I really hope that you like the rose.

 

Damn! That’s all I can think of right now. I get out of the bathroom, very flustered, and go to my locker. There, Anna is begging me with her puppy eyes to let her see the letter. I am most definitely not in the mood to take my revenge from this morning, so I hand her the letter.

“So, what is it? What does it say?” She asks before reading it.

“Just read it, will’ya?” I say.

She reads the letter. She then looks at me. Looks back at the letter, and back at me.

“Um…What are you going to do now?” She asks quietly.

“Talk to him during free period, duh!”

We are interrupted by the homeroom bell and we both head out to our different homerooms. Not again! People are again looking at me as if I did something wrong. Hey, not my fault if one of the hottest guys of our high school likes me. I didn’t do anything about it. It’s not like I seduced him. Ha, seduced him. I don’t see myself as a girl who could ever seduce a guy. Whatever.

The first class bell rings and I get up to go to the café. When I get there, strangely my eyes start looking for Greg. And just by coincidence, our eyes meet. And we lock eyes for about a minute or so. He starts smiling. I smile too. He stands up, says something to his friends, and comes towards me.

“Hey,” he says pretty quietly.

“Hey,” I reply softly.

If we go on like this we’re going to end up mute, I say to myself.

We start walking and he leads me towards a quieter, calmer, part of the café. We first start by making small talk. The usual stuff, you know.

“So…did you get my letter?” He finally asks.

He starts gazing at me, especially my eyes. Oh Lordy! I think I’m going to faint! His eyes are just too darn beautiful. They have this shade of emerald green and with his black hair, they stand out even more. His cheekbone is terribly great. It so high and definite and his skin gives off a friendly shade of brown terra cotta.

“Yes,” I say trying to look somewhere else. I don’t have much choice though; it’s either his eyes or a painting of an orange cat, “You have a pretty good handwriting, for a guy.”

He chuckles and then looks straight back at me.

“You just hurt me, you know. For your information, when I was younger, my mother made me take these calligraphy courses so that my handwriting wouldn’t be as bad as my dad’s would. I guess it worked,” he says grinning at me.

“Sure did,” I mutter to myself, “and the rose is just so beautiful.”

He just sits there and smiles at me. He is so darn gorgeous! I notice that since when we started talking he has had a strand of hair right over his eye. And now it’s really bothering me. I slowly approach my hand to his face and take the strand out. Finally, I say to myself. Just as I’m about to retrieve my hand, he takes it and holds it like if there was no tomorrow. He’s not letting it go! Little by little, as if to create some suspense, he approaches his face to mine and our lips meet. We kiss. And we kiss. It seems like forever but the kiss only lasts a few seconds. I smile at him. That’s when he understands that my answer is yes.