The Next Door Neighbour

Chapter 2//The Mission and the Plan

Shailene's POV

SHAILENE ROSE AVERY was the kind of person who liked everyone. The girl with the big vintage glasses and knee-high socks? Shailene admired her style. The boy with the bright blue Mohawk and lip piercing? She wished she could pull that look off. She was far from judgemental, and she genuinely cared about everyone. She saw potential in everyone. She saw goodness in everyone.

     Or at least, she tried.

But Brayden, oh Brayden. No matter what she did, she could not figure that boy out. She couldn't understand why he'd established a wall between them. All she knew was that it'd been there forever. She wanted so badly for them to be friends, or at least acquaintances; it would make the endless neighbourly get-togethers much more fun — or at least tolerable. Then, there was the fact that he didn't like her, and she wanted him to like her. Not in an obsessive crush sort of way — as if! There wasn't a single atom in her whole entire being that had any sort of romantic feeling towards Brayden. No, it all went back to her inexorable need for people to like her (call it compulsive, call it weird. Shailene thought of it as human nature — call that denial).

It was probably a bad idea, a road to nowhere, or maybe even a recipe for disaster, but Shailene decided that Friday night in her musty old attic, that she would get Brayden to like her. Platonically, of course.

It was her new mission. Granted, she hadn't had many missions before — unless you considered helping Mason Reed score a date to the eighth grade dance, a "mission" — but she was willing to try. Besides, gaining a new friend surely wouldn't hurt. Right?

• • •

Wrong. Apparently, gaining a new friend also included gaining a nasty bruise square in the stomach from a rogue lacrosse ball. Shailene had been studying for an AP social quiz outside on her front lawn. It'd been a peaceful and quiet Sunday morning, before Brayden and his friends showed up and kicked her concentration to the curb. They just had to be practicing lacrosse in the street at 10:33 AM, right? Totally. And how could three boys make that much noise anyway? It sounded like a goddamn frat party. Every time one of them scored, there was a cacophony of shouts, whoops, and boos. Shailene was seriously considering telling them to shut up, because she was sure Brayden was doing this just to spite her, or maybe prove that he wasn't a quiet kid by being obnoxiously loud.

By 10:41 she'd had enough. As she was standing up to reprimand the trio, the hard white hall came soaring towards her. It arched through the air seemingly in slow motion, but sadly, so did Shailene's reflexes. She let out an "oomf!" when it hit her, and if she was annoyed before, she was livid now. She picked up the ball and marched over to the three boys standing in the middle of the road. Each had a different expression on his face, and she knew exactly who'd thrown the ball. Brayden. He looked apologetic, but also sort of smug, like he hadn't meant to hit her, but he was pleased, or at least indifferent to the fact that it did. The other two boys looked shocked, but while one was clearly trying not to laugh (and failing miserably), the other appeared worried. When they locked eyes, he rushed over and asked if she was okay. She realized that it was Christian Harvard, a tall, freckled boy from her French class last year. They'd bonded over their mutual dislike for their teacher, Ms Beckham, a woman Shailene simply couldn't see the good in.

"I'm alright," she assured him.

     Christian turned his eyes on Brayden and turned to him indignantly.

"Apologise!" he cried, and his voice cracked on "polo". Shailene burst out laughing, at Christian's expense. The other boy finally released his peals of laughter and Brayden looked torn between joining in and scowling. He seemed to settle on the latter, and Shailene wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that she was there. She decided to have as much fun as possible, to spite Brayden for interrupting her studies. And suddenly she knew how to become Brayden's friend.