Odette and Conrad

chapter one // sunday girl

The day I met Odette Gibbons was a sunday. It was the third week of July and mind-numbingly hot. 

Every sunday since before I can remember, I've allowed my mother to force into a button-up and tie, the only supposedly "suitable" attire for church. In all of my seventeen years, I've only missed church once; when I was struck with chicken pox in the fourth grade. I try not to complain too much, though. Because if what everyone who goes to my church says is true, that there's one almighty god who created everything I know, then I figure the least I could do is sit through a service in his name once a week.

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I'm slouching in my pew, inhuman amounts of sweat dripping down my back, praying to a god I only half-believe in when I see her for the first time. 

She's seated three pews ahead of me and seven people to the left. From my position I can only see the back of her head and a sliver of her cheek. Her hair hangs in glossy black ringlets to the bottom of her neck, and her skin is sickly pale, porcelain bordering on milky blue. 

I sit through the rest of the service, paying even less attention then I was before. The heat is still intolerable and the splattering of light freckles across the almost translucent skin of her neck are proving to be a worthy distraction. 

I tear my eyes away to bow my head for our closing prayer. My mind’s elsewhere, far away from the church and all the cookie-cutter suburban families that vacate it regularly. 

There’s another reason I’ve never refused to go to church; fear. 

I want to think we're all something more then just bodies, that there's something more awaiting the end of our lives, but the thought of anything regarding death terrifies me. 

It's why I come to church. I need a heaven, because I cannot accept the fact that there might come a time when I die and no afterlife awaits me. A time when every thought that's ever crossed my mind and anything I've ever done won't matter, because I will never think or do again. I'll be permanently sleeping, only without any dreams. 

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At the end of every service, the entire congregation spends what feels like an eternity (forty five minute at most) lingering in the parking lot, conversing about the weather and their children's love of Sunday school. 

Normally, it's bearable. Middle aged housewives gossiping, distant cousins stopping by to tell my mother that I'm "just the spitting image of her," (which is incorrect, by the way. I look nothing like her and everything like my father, but no one dares mention him, god forbid.) and to ask me which college I'm going to and how excited I am. 

She was alone, leaning against the only tree planted on church property; a huge weeping willow that must've been older then the church itself. 

And I don’t know what compelled me to do it, but I, the literature-obsessed recluse, decided to approach the beautiful girl I’d never even attempt talking to on a normal day. 

She glances up as I make my way to her tree, regarding me with a curious, unmoving stare. It’s emotionless and terrifying, and I start to regret my decision regarding her. 

“I’m Conrad.” I breathe when I finally reach her, and she blinks slowly. Her eyes are an electric shade of navy blue I’ve never seen before.

“Last name?” Her voice is raspy and much too gravelly for her face.

“Sampson.” My answer is instantaneous. On closer inspection, her hair isn’t completely black. She’s much shorter then me (most everyone is), and I can see hints of blonde at her roots. Her hair’s just as infinitely curly as it was from three pews back. A plethora of ringlets.

“Odette Gibbons.” She replies after a long minute, breathing deeply and sliding down the tree, gesturing to the patch of grass next to her with one slender finger.

I sit down awkwardly, resting my back against the rough bark of the willow. 

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” 

She laughs at this, her laugh every bit as throaty as her voice. 

“What gave it away?” She’s smiling now. A blue vein on her forehead bulges when she moves her lips. 

I pause for a bit, and try to look at the rest of her without seeming creepy or like any other teenaged boy. She’s wearing a plain white sundress, exposing her slightly bruised white legs. She’s pretty, to say the least. Really pretty. 

“I don’t know, really.” I speak finally, and she seems disappointed by my answer. I add more. 

“I mean, I just haven’t even seen you before. Small town, you know?” She nods at this, folding her hands in her laps and surveying the church parking lot with those boundlessly blue eyes of hers. 

“Well, all y’all will be very disappointed to find that the most recent traffic to pass through your town is an introvert of a teenage girl and her family.” Her smile widens, turning into a full-blown grin. 

We sit quietly for a few minutes, until our silence is interrupted by a woman, her mother I assume, yelling at her to hurry up from the road in front of the church, where she is seated in a bright red pickup truck. 

Before I can even react, she’s pulled a red pen from a messenger bag slung around her waist (which I had not yet noticed), and has messily scrawled her phone number on the top of my hand.

She runs onto the road, shouts something I can’t quite understand back at me.

 With a final glance over her shoulder at me she is gone, leaving a wave of spicy perfume behind her.