A High School Love Story

Have you ever been intrigued by someone without knowing why? As the name suggests: A sweet, simple love story between two ordinary high school students. Follow first love from unknown and awkward beg

~A Scene~

 

The first time she remembered seeing him, he was talking to a young girl.

He was crouching near the front gate of the school while she walked towards the school’s front entrance in the main building. At first she wasn’t sure why the scene had caught her eye, but then she noticed the young girl.

She could tell even from about 25 metres away that she was a very pretty girl with long bronzed-brown hair.

The boy was down at her level talking to her and she was moving her head and arms about in a random manner as if she were a puppet controlled by strings. She didn’t look like she was paying much attention to what the older boy was saying.

He continued attempting to communicate with the girl for a couple more seconds then hugged her and mussed her hair a little and gave her a great big smile, a flash of distant white to Shiloh from where she was.  The girl was then bundled into a car and it drove off.

The bell rang.

Shiloh turned away and quickened her pace to make class on time. There was an important test for Maths.

Within seconds she was swallowed up with the rest of the students hurrying to class through the hallways of St Mary’s High School.

As her mind started to drift towards how well prepared she hoped she was, it touched fleetingly on the girl and boy before disappearing into thoughts of common factors, multiples and prime numbers.

The boy wore the red blazer of St Mary’s which meant he also attended the school, although she hadn’t noticed him around in the two months since the year had started. He had brown wavy hair similar to the young girl’s, and looked like any other tall, lanky boy at St Mary’s. She didn’t know his name or how old he was, and even though he wasn’t in any of her classes this year or last, there was still the possibility he was the same year as her. The school was pretty big with just under 2000 Year 9 to 13 students.

While she didn’t give the boy another thought after that, she couldn’t help but be curious about the little girl. Why had she moved her arms like that? What was her story?  

As Shiloh continued to drift along the corridor almost carried by the throngs of students, the memory of what she had seen subconsciously tucked itself into the back of her mind waiting to surface at a later date.

 

 

~A Girl~

 

Shiloh by name, shy by nature. It was as if in some bizarre paradoxical way her name had influenced her nature, and she had been named for the way she was. It was mainly social situations when ‘it’ struck. Like a shadow creeping across the pavement on a sunny day, the shyness seemed to spread through her and she was powerless to stop it.

Often at lunchtimes groups of girls would gather in gaggles together to talk about the latest ‘it’ guy or uniform fashion �" collars worn up one month, down the next, then just to mix it up, one up and one down on each side the following. If someone was polite enough to see Shiloh standing nearby and turn to include her in the conversation she’d clam up.

Once, she’d been asked what she thought of Milly Patrick’s new hairstyle �" a super short crop. Feeling put on the spot, as well as a blankness of mind, she quickly looked around for inspiration and saw the grass which had been freshly mowed that morning.

“It’s, it’s like the ummm grass” she stammered.

Seeing looks being exchanged she spluttered on “I, I mean, it’s really short like the grass”

‘Idiot!! What kind of stupid response was that!?’ she thought, mentally kicking in her brain.

The group laughed and turned away from her.

This was the usual, ritualistic dance that Shiloh knew only too well. Her fear of saying something boring or random was just the opening act. Their comeback move was the collective rolling of eyes. She followed with embarrassed blushing. Finally they would gracefully exchange sidelong glances and eventually carry out the ‘sideway shuffle’ as they edged away from her.

She would slink off at this point feeling mortified.  

For this reason Shiloh had never had a lot of friends. One of her best friends, Alyssa, she’d known since they were four years old and used to play at kindy together.

Amazing how petty the social etiquettes of others seemed when you’d grown up putting sand down each other’s pants.

 

When Shiloh was in the classroom, it was a different story.

The shadow of her shyness disappeared as though the classroom was a place of such bright light, shadows could not exist.

She was in her element. There was no need to show clever wit, just facts.

In this unscary world she could stand up in front of a class, voice opinions and answer questions. Even when unsure, she felt a kind of power at being able to have a go.

Of course she tended to avoid eye contact with anyone except the teacher.

Her passion for learning and need to be challenged did mean every night was taken up with study and homework, but Shiloh liked it just fine this way.

 

In terms of looks Shiloh kept it pretty simple really.

She didn’t wear makeup. Her dark hair, almost as black as obsidian, in natural light glimmered with rich dark brown strands.  It was shoulder length and hung around her head like a curtain of water so almost fluid that as soon as she brushed it out of her eyes it was running back into them.  She tended to wear it behind her ears most of the time for this reason, and was constantly tucking it back unless she was having a shy moment, when she would let it fall forward and cover part of her face.

Her eyes were grey which she was told were unusually pretty. To her they just looked rather dull.

 

It was Shiloh’s second year at St Mary’s and she was excited about turning 14 in five days.

On the Monday morning of that week, she pulled on the freshly ironed school dress from where it was laid out on her bed.  She pulled it over her head and down until it fell into place above her knees, settling like a hankerchief abandoned to the wind, softly floating to the ground. She smoothed the pleats over her hips (or lack of them), and unconsciously stuck her tongue out a bit while she tried to get the knot right in her tie and tucked her collar down (the current uniform fashion).  She pulled on a pair of black ballet flats.

Aside from the crazy fashion fads, she always made sure she looked the part for school.

After a quick glance in the mirror, a wrinkle of the nose and some minor adjusting, Shiloh went down to breakfast.

 

Shiloh’s family consisted of three.

Mum was softly humming to herself as she came down the stairs and through into the kitchen. Her head moving side to side to an imaginary beat, hair bouncing on her shoulders as she did so. Her mum had Shiloh’s hair which she wore short and often permed to create more movement and volume. 

Her dad was sitting at the table reading the paper and offered a bright smile as she came into the kitchen. His grey hair almost matched his crinkling eyes, copies of her own.

She sat and had her usual bowl of cereal and chatted lightly about upcoming assignments and her birthday.

On her way out the door, she gave each of her parents a goodbye kiss on the cheek, slung her shoulder bag over her right shoulder and headed for her bike. It took her 15 minutes to cycle to school and she loved it.  The feel of the wind in her face and on her legs gave her a kind of freedom.

For a moment, nothing else mattered but the quiet whooshing calmness and anticipation at the day ahead as she sped along Founders Lane. Her hair streamed out behind her like a river of dark flowing water before coming to a bubbling, rippling stop.

Hopping off her bike she restraightened her dress, kinked from the wind and walked towards a place which was so alive to her, it seemed to be breathing and calling her name.

 

 

~A gift~

 

She could smell it before she could see it. A smell like being in the middle of a spring meadow eating jelly babies and candyfloss.  She opened her locker and stared at the pink and white flower.

It was very beautiful.

If the smell were any sweeter or stronger, she could bathe in it.  As it was Friday, she assumed it was for her birthday even though there was no note or card.

“Alyssa” She thought, noting to ask her about it later.

She carefully picked up the lily, as bright as it was sweet. It had been wrapped painstakingly in pink cellophane and tied with a curled pink ribbon.  Placing it gingerly through the loop of her bag strap, as if it were a fragile butterfly, she headed to morning classes.

 

Several weeks had passed since the maths test and Shiloh had not let herself down with an “A” grade. She had forgotten all about the two people she had seen that day as she sat outside the cafeteria at lunchtime eating a ham sandwich.

People were just faces in a crowd to her usually. Faces in a school-ground smearing into one great artwork of tan streaks and flashes of red uniform.

She’d eaten a couple of bites of her sandwich and was staring far beyond the realities of her own world, when her eyes began to focus on a fuzzy brown smudge. As the smudge became clearer, she realised it was a head. There was something about this particular head that made her hesitate just slightly before moving her gaze. A detail pushed it’s way from the depths of her mind to the surface.

It was his head, or rather the back of it.

Other recollections of that day came back to her:

“Who was the young girl he was with?”  Remembering the similarity in looks between them, she thought the girl could be a sister;

“What was the significance about the way she was behaving?” 

He was sitting two tables ahead of her with a couple of his friends shaking his head possibly with laughter at what they were saying. As Shiloh was sitting quite close she noticed she’d been a bit off on something.

He really didn’t look as much like every other boy at school as she had at first thought.

His head showed off a mass of tight coils and loose waves and everything in between bouncing in sync with each amusing comment. It was so wonderfully entangled, a thicket of vines deep within a jungle couldn’t compare. The sun glinted off highlighted spirals of auburn and gold amongst earthy browns.

Alyssa plonked herself down then beside her, although Shiloh was only half aware of this.

“You must be pretty hungry the way you’re looking at that sandwich!”  

Shiloh blinked her way back to her friend. “Thanks for the flower” she said fingering the delicate edges of the petals about her bag.

Alyssa sat up a bit. “Flower?” She said eyeing it suspiciously, “I didn’t get you a flower. Where did it come from?” 

Shiloh explained the surprise in her locker this morning.

“Ooohh I bet it’s from Derek” Alyssa exclaimed widening her eyes slightly.  

Derek sat next to Shiloh in English class and was always asking her pointless questions that weren’t even about the topic at hand, and telling her about what he got up to in the weekend while she was trying to concentrate on what the teacher was saying. Shiloh had never really given Derek a second thought out of class and certainly hoped the flower wasn’t from him considering they weren’t even friends.

She decided she would have to watch Derek in English that afternoon to see if she noticed anything out of the ordinary.

They talked about the flower mystery a while longer until the more pressing topic of the History assignment due next week came up. As they finished lunch and went to leave the table, Shiloh turned her head slightly.

While she had been occupied with conversation, the boy had finished his lunch and left.

 Not that she minded, she had the assignment to worry about.

 

In English last period, Shiloh studied Derek more closely than usual.  He caught her looking at him twice and she blushed and quickly looked away both times. He obviously took this in a certain encouraging way, because he paid her more attention than usual and drew on her notebook a big speech bubble (much to her annoyance in an otherwise perfectly clean one!) “I’m going to the movies to see the new Transformers movie this weekend!”

This was attached to a ridiculous-looking grinning smiley-face complete with tongue hanging out. She started to think it was a definite possibility Derek had left her the flower, though goodness knows how he had gotten into her locker.

After the final bell rang, Shiloh, as usual, was the last one out the classroom door, taking her time to pack her books carefully into her bag.

She noticed Derek, who must have been waiting around for her but then given up as she took too long, just up ahead of her in the main hallway. He took something out of his pocket and dropped it into the bin before disappearing outside through the front doors.

As Shiloh passed she glanced into the bin and saw pink cellophane crumpled up inside.  She sighed. It was a fact. The flower had only been from Derek.

 

 

~A Name~

 

Shiloh had had a lovely evening with Alyssa and her parents on her birthday. They’d all eaten way too much home-made pizza and dessert, and then Alyssa and Shiloh had watched a horror film and scared themselves silly before going to bed.

Alyssa had stayed over, but they’d hardly slept a wink as each noisy creek became someone stalking the hallway, and each bump the knocking of an unknown something at the door.

Alyssa had been interested to hear that Shiloh had seen Derek get rid of the cellophane which had wrapped the flower.  Shiloh however, hadn’t been interested in discussing it being from Derek even after more screeching on Alyssa’s behalf, and this time not in response to any frightening noises.

 

The flower sat in a vase in Shiloh’s room for over a week after her birthday until it had turned brown and shrivelled petals littered a patch of her white carpet. For some reason Shiloh hadn’t been able to bring herself to throw it away sooner, regardless of whom it was from.

Alyssa would say later that the fact that Shiloh had kept it meant she must like that it was from Derek. Shiloh thought it was more than that. She had never received a flower before, let alone one so pretty.

Her room had continued pumping out a smell during this time which invaded her dreams and gave them a vivid and delicious quality like she’d never experienced before.

 

Alyssa had started to talk about boys more this year and the flower from Derek certainly hadn’t hindered her. She had asked Shiloh once who she thought was cute in their Phys Ed class. Shiloh wasn’t all that interested and really hadn’t paid much attention to the boys in class, so she had changed the subject. She didn’t see the need in worrying about boys, what they did, or what they looked like. There was plenty of time for thoughts of boys after school had ended.  Her main focus for the foreseeable future at least was schoolwork, and she was determined she wouldn’t let anything or anyone, including Derek Bateman and his distractions get in her way.

“Oh you wait,” Alyssa had said, “You’ll go crazy for someone one day and you won’t even realise it’s happened until you’re so deep in the craziness of it all, it’ll be too late to ever go back to how you were before.”

Shiloh, however, thought this all sounded a bit crazy to her.

 

It was one cool afternoon about mid way through the year when she saw him again.

That morning had been a crisp one, and it had seemed like each expelled breath held it’s individual droplets suspended in mid-air as if a spell had been cast on them. She was walking towards the school gate on Thursday afternoon soon after the bell had gone. Hurrying to make sure she could get in a decent couple of hours of homework before tea. The Geography project on her chosen country, Greece, was due next week.

Amongst the bustle and noise of excited students leaving school she overheard a name called from behind her and carried above the crowd.  Some dishevelled locks of hair sprang with movement ahead and to her right which caught her eye. He turned to wave goodbye to the friend that had called him. But he didn’t go to his friend.  Instead he jogged out the school gate, long legs carrying him effortlessly. He was obviously in a hurry to get away.

“That’s strange” she thought, “Doesn’t he play sports after school on Thursdays like a lot of the other boys do?” She thought he looked like a sporty type.

When not playing sports most guys were known to just muck about down near the bike-sheds.

“He must have something very important to get home to.”  She told herself.

The young girl?

He wasn’t far ahead of her at all when he had turned. He had smiled at his friend, but Shiloh hadn’t even turned to see who the friend was, not that she would have known him anyway. That flash of brilliant white struck her eyes again as it had done that day not so long after the year had started. A slightly lopsided smile with a hint of a dimple winking candidly at anyone nearby. 

She had turned away embarrassed thinking she shouldn’t be enjoying the warmth of a smile clearly not intended for her and hadn’t realised she’d stopped dead centre of the stream of students pushing their way around her. Then before she could muster herself to start walking again, he was gone.

His name was Rowan.

 

 

~A Look~

 

He was aware of all he was missing out on. He would watch the other boys toss a football with great envy and a tinge of sadness. He would stop himself each time though as sudden guilt overcame him. How could he worry about his own selfish wishes when there was someone at home who needed him more?

 

That night Shiloh dreamed and woke up feeling breathless and elated. She didn’t know why exactly or what it was she had dreamed about, but she had smelt that flower again consuming all her senses.  There was a presence, she thought - or something - floating somewhere in front of her, and a beautiful background of light so radiant and warm it wrapped her up and made her feel safe. There was also a soft humming noise of the most musical quality.

When she biked to school over the following days she seemed to hear something in the air whooshing past her. A whisper of a word trying to escape into tangible reality, but not quite reaching her ear so she could distinguish it. She would also catch something on the wind.

“That’s strange” she thought. It was almost as if the wind were sighing at her.

 

The next week or so she was waiting in the line for lunch and it was taking longer than usual to move forward.

“Oh” she caught herself saying.

It was that guy again �" Rowan. Ro-wan her mind articulated, drawing each syllable out in smooth succession. He was four people ahead of her and was turned to the side staring out the tall windows across the school field. She studied his profile while she was waiting.

It was the first time she’d seen, really seen him so close.  She followed the sloping embankment of his forehead down to long nose with a bump as slight as a knotted tree branch amiss a twig. There was something so familiar about the bump, as familiar as the bumps and curves of her bed headboard. It was strangely as if it set the face off in the most harmonious way.

Her mind continued tracing a line over the contours of upper and lower lip, and the perimeter of his chin, keeping all features perfectly aligned within it’s compound. The growth atop his head like an overgrown garden let loose a tendril. Into his eye curled the lock of hair. He reached a hand up to brush it back. It clung for a couple of seconds, riding on the back of another tress of hair before tumbling back down into his eyelashes. An edgeless blend of long dark lashes and warm brown locks. 

He turned his head then towards the back, and immediately Shiloh looked away flushed thinking he might catch her looking at him. Why had she been staring at him anyway? Did he look after that little girl she wondered?

When she had the courage to look back, she realised he wasn’t looking anywhere near her, almost right through her at something behind her. I’m just another face in the crowd to him she thought. She felt weird as she said this to herself. Like something inside her was echoing around into nothingness. She decided it was just her stomach telling her she was hungry.  She hadn’t eaten since 8am that morning.

Then as she was thinking about what she was going to eat for lunch, his eyes flicked back a second time. This time triggering her eyes to flick onto his. They locked eyes for a split second. It felt like the peak of a roller-coaster ride as you finally went over the top, and for one moment your stomach dipped with a mixture of excitement, nervousness and terror.

There was something behind his eyes she thought, a wistfulness perhaps? Although the moment was so fleeting, and Shiloh had never been good at reading people.

Then as though it had never happened, he had ordered his lunch and disappeared, leaving Shiloh speculating after him.