Chapter One

Ellie starts to see the green eyed boy that she doesn't yet realize will change her world.

    “HEY HEY! HEY, HEY ARE YOU READY? ARE YOU READY? TO PLAY? SAY GO TEAM! GO TEAM! PANTHERS ALL THE WAY!” the cheerleaders shout as the Panthers football team runs through the banner and onto the field. Suddenly, everyone in the crowd grows even louder, jumping up and down in the bleachers and shouting the captain of the football team’s name.

    “PA-TRICK! PA-TRICK! PA-TRICK! PA-TRICK!” the crowd yells as Patrick leads his team to their coach.

    Haylee and Trisha elbow Ellie and giggle into their palms. She shoves them playfully and they burst into hysterical laughter. Sierra and Alyssa give them the evil eye which only makes the three of them laugh even harder. A loud whistle breaks into their laughter, letting them know that the game is about to start. They run back to formation with Ellie leading the squad in another cheer.

 

    The smell of grass and sweat fills Ellie’s nostrils before two dirt covered, masculine hands cover her eyes, blocking out the lights of the football field. She smiles and turns around, the hands staying over her eyes.

    “I wonder who it is,” she says with mock innocence. Her lips are silenced by a warm kiss which causes Ellie to smile again.

    “So, how’d I do?” Patrick asks as he takes his hands off of her eyes.

    “You were amazing,” she says, smiling up at him and wrapping her arms around his waist. She smiles up at him, her eyes beaming with pride.

    He returns the smile, stroking her soft brown hair with the back of his hand. Suddenly, their moment together is interrupted.

    “Gross!!” Trisha yells as she runs up to them. “What are you doing, Ellie? He’s gonna get your uniform all dirty! And your hair too!” She makes a gagging sound but laughs at the same time. “Just let him go shower and then you guys can get all romantic, okay?” she asks, pulling Ellie out of his arms and checking her dress for dirt. Satisfied that there isn’t any she shoos Patrick, telling him to go take his shower.

    “Okay, I’ll go shower,” he says, knowing that Trisha is the one cheerleader that you do not want to upset. “But first…” his voice trails off as he grabs Ellie’s hand and slips something into her palm. He smiles at her and winks before running off towards the home team locker rooms.

    Confused, Ellie looks down at what Patrick had slipped into her hand: his class ring. She smiles and squeals, forgetting that Trisha is standing behind her.

    “What is it, Ellie?” she asks, looking at the class ring in her friend’s hand. “Oh! My! Gosh! No way! He gave you his class ring?? Omigod. You know what this means, don’t you?” Trish asks, her face a mask of seriousness. Ellie looks at her friend like she has escaped from the loony bin down the street and shakes her head. “It means that you two are going to be voted Prom King and Prom Queen at the prom! Do you even realize how fast this is going to spread all over the school?”

     Ellie laughs at her best friend. “Trish, calm down! Gosh, its just a ring. Plenty of other girls have their boyfriends’ class rings. That doesn’t really mean anything with them so why would it mean anything different with Patrick and me??” Ellie asks, feeling the start of some sort of argument even though it would only be a small one. If anything, Ellie loves to be part of any argument more than anything else. Sometimes, it’s what she lives for.

    “Ellie! Gosh darn it, do not be so stubborn! You and Patty are the It couple of Crestview High! You know that and so does he! That’s why he gave you his class ring. Plus everyone’s already talking about prom and they all say that you and Patty are gonna win Queen and King,” Trisha says matter-of-factly.

    “Really?” Ellie asks sarcastically. “Everyone in the entire school says that? That must of taken you a long time to figure out considering lower classmen don’t even pay attention to the upper classmen. So how did you get everyone to say that?” Ellie smiles at her friend, awaiting her response.

    Trisha rolls her eyes. “You know, Ellie? You really should have never joined the stupid debate team. It’s gone to your head and now you make everything a freaking argument. Plus, you know that you’re going to win. You just like to feel “mentally superior” to us other cheerleaders. Really, sometimes I don’t even know why you do cheerleading. I mean, you’re in AP classes, take debate, and you’ve aced like every test since grade school!”

    Ellie just giggles at her friend’s common reaction, not bothering to give a verbal response. She looks up into the stands to see that most of the people had left except for a few people who are talking to others. One particular boy, who isn’t talking to anyone, catches Ellie’s eye. He is sitting in the stands, no one around him, staring at her and Trisha.

    She notices the way his jet black hair is long and straight but it looks natural unlike the other boys who want straight hair and use a flat iron. It falls over his left eye, but that doesn’t stop her from noticing the piercing depth of his emerald green eyes. The corners of his lips pull upward into a small smile on his pale face when he sees her staring back at him. Ellie forgets where she is until Trisha breaks the silence that Ellie hadn’t realized she’d created between the two of them.

    “Ellie? What are you staring at?” Trisha asks, concern clouding her face.

     Ellie breaks away from gazing at the green eyed boy to look at her best friend. Ignoring her friend’s question she asks, “Trish, do you know who that guy is?”

    Trisha looks at Ellie with confusion in her eyes. “What guy, Ellie?”

    “That guy,” Ellie says looking back to the bleachers only to see that he was no longer there. Confused, she looks to the last group of people leaving the stands in search of him. Looking at the faces of everyone in the group, she doesn‘t see the pale but beautiful face of the green eyed boy. She shakes her head, thinking that she must have imagined him.

    Trisha grabs Ellie’s arm and pulls her towards the stairs to the parking lot off of the field. “C’mon Ellie! The boys are probably waiting at Patrick’s car by now. We’re going down to the diner for a late dinner. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want to either,” Trisha says when she sees Ellie hesitate. “We haven’t hung out with them in forever! You keep making excuses. Plus, he gave you his class ring! You have to go out to dinner with him now.”

    Suddenly Trisha’s eyes widen as she thinks of something. “Oh my gosh! Do you think Dean will give me his class ring?” she asks, her eyes sparkling with hope.

    “I don’t know, Trish,” Ellie tells her friend, not wanting to get her hopes up too high or crush her dreams. “How long have the two of you been dating anyways? 2 weeks?”

    Trisha looks sheepishly at her friend. “Okay, I see your point. It could still happen though. In the meantime, lets go meet our men at the car and get down to that diner. I am starved. I had to skip lunch today to help some of the new girls with the cheer since they couldn’t nail it. You know how important it is that we get every single cheer perfect,” she tells Ellie as they walk across the field to the stairs.

    By the time the two of them get to Patrick’s car in the middle of the football parking lot, it is surrounded by high school kids. A few other football players are leaning against the Jeep with Patrick and Dean while a few cheerleaders and some fans are in a semi circle around them.

    The small crowd of people move to allow Ellie and Trisha to get threw them to their boyfriends. Barely thinking about it, they walk up to the boys and wrap their arms around their waists while the boys put their arms around the girls’ shoulders. Some of the other girls look at the two of them with envy in their eyes while the other guys barely even notice it.

    Before Ellie can say even a word to Patrick, one of the other cheerleaders notices the ring on her finger. “Omigod Ellie! His class ring?!” She yells the question from two feet away, at the same time not even noticing that Patrick is right there.

    Shyly she looks up at Patrick’s face as he smiles down at her. “Yeah,” Ellie says to her fellow cheerleader.

    The cheerleader that had asked the question and a few other ones jumped up and down squealing with delight for their captain. Laughing, Ellie rolls her eyes at them, finding the entire scene rather amusing. Patrick kisses the top of her head and the cheerleaders awe together at the lovey-dovey sight. The rumble of Patrick’s chest under Ellie’s head as he chuckles makes her smile.

    She pulls away from him so she can face him. “Why don’t we go down to the diner now?” she asks, hoping that she picks up that she wants to leave, now. Thankfully, he does and he pulls out his keys.

    “C’mon dude, we’re going to the diner now,” Patrick tells his friend, Dean.

    Dean untangles himself from Trisha for a moment so he can slide into the backseat of Patrick’s jeep. Trisha and Ellie slide into the car next to their boyfriends. Ellie slides into the passenger seat while Patrick slides into the driver’s seat and Trisha slides into the backseat, cuddling up to Dean. They don’t bother with seatbelts so they just take off, leaving the parking lot and heading towards the diner.

    As soon as they pull into the diner’s parking lot, Ellie catches a glimpse of the same pure black hair that the green eyed boy from the football stands had. She whips her head towards where she thought she had glimpsed the hair and sure enough, there he was. He was just sitting there against a rusted pick up truck that stood out next to all of the nicer cars in the lot. His head is lowered, but Ellie can still see his deep green eyes poking out from behind his hair, staring straight at her.

    Ellie takes a deep breath and shakes her head, convinced that she must be imagining the green eyed boy. When she looks back again, not only the boy but also the car is gone. Happy that it was only her imagination, she gets out of the car and walks around to meet Patrick at the back of it. The two couples walk hand in hand into the local diner and straight back to their usual booth which no one ever sat in except for them.

    One of the few waitresses rushes over to their table. Ellie recognizes her from school, a lower classman, and realizes that she must be new at her job because she looks so nervous.

    “Uhm…err… w-what can I get for you?” she asks nervously, a bead of sweat showing on her lip.

    Patrick doesn’t even bother to look at her or the menu. “The usual for all of us,” he tells her, not realizing that she doesn’t know what “the usual” is. She looks around the table nervously, not knowing what to put in as the order when no one else will look back at her.

    “Ask Jenny,” Ellie whispers to the new waitress. She smiles at Ellie, the relief clear on face as she runs off back to the kitchen to ask one of the regular waitresses.

    “What’d you say, hun?” Patrick asks Ellie, looking at her unlike he did with the waitress.

    “Oh, nothing sweetie,” she tells him, not knowing why she was lying about helping the new girl. She cuddles up to him in the spacious booth, hoping that he’ll forget about what they were talking about.

    Just as she had thought, he forgot and wrapped her up in his arms, leaning down to kiss her lightly on her glossy lips. They sit there for a moment, distracted by each other, until the clang of glasses pulls them apart. The new girl was trying to carry the four glasses over to their table in her hands since all of the trays were already being used. She looked like she was about to drop them.

    “Oh!” Ellie exclaims as she jumps away from Patrick and out of the booth to help the girl with the glasses and bring them back to their booth.

    Standing, Ellie realizes that the girl must only be about 5’ 1” at most. At 5’ 7” Ellie towered over the poor girl. She set the two glasses that she’d taken from the girl and set them down on the table in front of the two boys. Ellie slid back into the booth next to her boyfriend as the girl placed the other two glasses down in front of the girls.

    Just as Ellie glances back towards the kitchen, again she sees the green eyes boy staring back at her. She looks away quickly, only to see that the new waitress was looking at her with a strange knowing look in her eyes as she backed away from the table. Confused, she tries to turn her attention back to Patrick and her friends.

    As the night passes, Ellie keeps seeing glances of the green eyed boy. Every time she notices him though and tries to look back for him, he’d have disappeared already. She spent the entire night somewhat detached from her group of friends, even when she was leader in the conversation. By the time they leave, Ellie is completely exhausted and feels like she spent the entire day in the booth rather than just over an hour.

    Patrick drops his and Ellie’s friends off before dropping Ellie off at her house. Too tired to even give Patrick a peck on the cheek goodnight, she climbs out of the car, mumbles a “goodnight” to Patrick and heads into her house to change and fall into her bed, ready for a deep sleep.

    As she drifts off to sleep, her mind fills with images of the boy she’d been seeing constantly for the past two hours. Questions filled her head. Who is he? How old is he? Where is from? Why does he keep staring at me? What did that girl look at me like that? Ellie was confused when the last question popped into her head until she realized the connection that her subconscious mind had made between the two. And finally, Why does no one else see him but me?

Reviews

[Hales]

I didn't think I'd enjoy (I often don't enjoy more high school centered stories), but I found that I did.
Excellent job and intriguing storyline.

[Laraine Davis]

I love it! And Ally, I love you! You gave me the greatest idea for a story. Don't worry, I'm not stealing your idea. But the discussing of dark hair gave me an idea of an emo boy. And I'm going to have a story about him. It'll be brilliant. Thanks so much. And I love your writing(:

[Ally Baker]

This is somewhat based off of my poem "Our Little Secret" As i was writing that poem, the idea for this book started to form in my head. Slowly, while working on a few other novels, I was able to get the first chapter of "Hidden in the Shadows," finished :)

[Rose Kavanagh]

Interesting story and interesting writing style. I've loved reading present-tense since I read the Gemma Doyle trilogy (which I hightly recommend, by the way) and I really like how you've managed to keep the story's tone how a high school girl would think, without making the writing sound immature. Something about the way the first paragraph was written made me want to keep on reading to find out what was going to happen. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but it worked!

I have quite a bit in common with Ellie (argumentative, "mentally superior" attitude and test acer, to name a few, lol) so she made it even more interesting for me.

I am very intrigued about where you're going with this, so send me a read request when you've written the next chapter. Good luck! :)