The Girl Next Door

A Short Little Preface

This is yet another random story that I would really like to turn into a novel. I've worked out a plot and everything already, and hopefully it won't turn out so stereotypical as it seems right now.

And hopefully, this little chapter will have more to it.

Either way, feel free to comment and tell me whatever you like. But don't expect a lot more of this any time soon, unless my summer isn't as busy as I'm thinking it's going to be.

Also, this is one of my first "big" first-person attempts, so hopefully I'll pull it off okay.

Thanks!

         I watched him walk across the cafeteria, wearing his hockey jersey and his million-dollar smile, waving to some of his friends and still managing to balance his lunch tray on one hand. I’ve heard that hockey players are good with things like that—after all, their whole sport is practically a balancing act.

         He was wearing a pair of jeans that seemed to cling perfectly to his waist, falling to the ground and molding over his Adidas so well that it should’ve been in some magazine advertisement.

         His name was Noah Parker, and he was every high school girl’s dream.

         I’d known him basically forever—or it least it felt that way. The first time I’d seen him I was six years old, and he was moving into the brand-new house my family and I watched being built from the ground up. My dad had been its architect, just like he had been for my house and all of the others around it.

         Even though I was only six years old, I’d noticed Noah’s smile as he’d stood on the front porch that day. It was missing a tooth or two back then, but it was still beautiful to me. He was beautiful—every part of him, right down to the Spider-man band-aid on his knee.

         He looked the same way eleven years later: his head was still covered in that gorgeous blonde hair; his eyes were just as startlingly blue as ever; his face was still made up of strong, angular features. Of course he’d aged over the years, and his body was taller and more muscular, but he was unmistakable from his six-year-old self.

         And I’d grown up with him. Noah and I became best friends just a few days after he’d moved in, and it’s been that way ever since. We used to play Power Rangers in his back yard every day and ran through my dad’s lawn sprinkler in the summer.

         No one at school knew that, though. None of them even knew that we spoke every day, let alone lived next door to each other. We belonged in two completely different social worlds: Noah with all of the popular kids, and me with…well, with my group.

         My group isn’t as easily defined as Noah’s. We’re an eclectic kind of group, with all sorts of different, goofy people. There’s Clover, the resident Drama Queen; Linus, sensitive artist; Olivia, who wishes every day that she could be one of the popular kids; Sam, computer geek and genius; and me, Sophie…the writer. The dreamer. Whatever they wanted to call me.

         Okay, fine. So we can be defined easily.

         We’re the geeks.

         There, I said it. Olivia would kill me if she’d heard.

         But anyway, either Noah doesn’t pay too much attention to me in school, or he’s too nice to mention the fact that we’re so distant from each other.

         Oh, it’s not that he ignores me completely. It’s just that he’s usually too busy doing his thing, and I’m too busy with my stuff, and our paths just never really meet.

          “Sometimes I think that’s just your excuse,” Olivia said to me one day at lunch as I was watching Noah walk to his table. “You’re not friends with him. You just say that ‘cause it makes you look cooler than the rest of us.”

          “I think you’re full of shit,” Clover told Olivia. “Sophie doesn’t lie. She never would. Right, Soph?”

          “What?” I asked, turning my gaze from Noah.

          “You wouldn’t lie,” Clover repeated. “Right?”

          “Lie about what?”

         Clover sighed. “Never mind.”

          “Oh, give her a break,” Sam said. “She’s just dreaming about her and Loverboy, as usual. Let her drown in her fantasy, or whatever.”

          “I am not fantasizing,” I argued.

          “Sure you are. You’re a writer. That’s what writers do, isn’t it?” Clover asked.

         I rolled my eyes at them and looked across the cafeteria again. Noah was sitting with his other hockey-player friends, all of them wearing their jerseys to symbolize the fact that they had a game that night. A couple girls hung around their table, too—you know the type. Those seventeen-year-olds that look about twenty: the slinky-skirt wearing, Daddy-buy-me-this, credit-card wielding brats that always seem to rule over high schools. You see it on MTV all the time.

         The important thing, though, was that the girl wasn’t any where around.

         The girl was one of the prettiest of the popular girls in school. She, like Noah, had gorgeous blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. She was the captain of the varsity cheerleaders, Homecoming Queen, all of that stereotypical Lifetime movie stuff.

         Most of all, she was Noah’s girlfriend. Which made her the girl.

         And also the object of my hatred, but whatever.

         I can’t help it. I’ve had this gigantic crush on Noah since, oh, about the second day I’ve known him. Even when I was six years old, I could see myself marrying him.

         The thing about Noah, though, is that he never seemed to return these affections. I don’t even know if he’s recognized the fact that I’m a girl.

         I guess it’s because I’m not the girl—or I’m not the-girl type. I may be tall and thin, but I’m no blonde bombshell. I have just plain-old brown hair that falls a few inches past my shoulders in these tight, sort of frizzy curls. My eyes are brown—nothing spectacular, nothing like the girl’s. And my wardrobe is definitely not up to par with hers.

         I’m not a Plain Jane, but you could say that I’m…well, that I’m just the girl next door.