The first day of highschool for Grady Hawthorne.
How wonderful, wouldn't you think?
But no. For Grady Hawthorne absolutely nothing was ever wonderful.
How peculiar, you would also think. But again, no.
Grady had had a tremendously terrible life from the very start, from his very first breath.
You see, Grady had always been small, short I mean, but you could also call him quite small, his father was disappointed
at the first glimpse of his son. His first words to Grady, well not directly, but to the doctor were, "What's wrong with my boy?".
The answer was not what his father had been looking for, he was actually hoping that something had been wrong with his fragile new infant.
It was too much to bear for his father to believe that he had helped create something that tiny and pitiful, so he took no credit and blamed his
wife completely. Though Grady did bear a strong resemblance to his father.
You would think his father would have been grateful that this child had actually survived after the five before him lived only a few hours, but he wasn't. He was almost never grateful for anything.
Like the presents he received from Grady created in pre-school, it was never good enough and Grady should have tried harder to impress his father.
So, like in most stories, you think Grady is close to his mother because his father disowns him. Well reader, let me tell you, this story is not like other stories you may have read because Grady was actually never close to his mother. While watching her life fall to peices, with a small and hopeless son and a husband who hated her, Grady's mother had turned to alcohol and just recently before he started highschool had reached her goal,which was the uncontrollable death.
Back to the present, Grady sat at an empty lunch table where no one was likely to notice him observing their behaviors. Oh reader, I forgot to mention that Grady was very quiet and that gave him time to watch as his peers grew older and as he liked to put it, stupider.
Grady isn't a nerd, by the way, if that's what you were thinking. He is far from being a nerd. He is handsome and fit, intelligent, and in-touch with nature. The only thing he is lacking is how to socialize with the lesser human beings. He has yet to find someone like himself and sees it hard to speak to someone who won't understand a single word he says without saying "What?" in the process of his conversation building.
Today, Grady would learn, would be different. He would not sit alone and ponder the causes of idiocy in the human race because today, he would have someone to ponder it with.
It started when he saw her, a girl with wavy brown hair and a smile so bright that it could power all of New York City's Broadway. Her eyes were of clover, and deep with thought, intelligent thought. Almost as immediately as she had walked in the fake blondes with their fake pretty faces, fake teeth and fake blue eyes punched their boyfriends in the thigh as if to bring them back down to the reality of all they were capable of getting. The girl carried her own lunch and stopped in the middle of the cafeteria to straighten her red plaid flannel shirt. In a way Grady knew, she was only looking for seat. He slumped in his seat to avoid attention, which was only a horrible mistake because this girl had a keen eye for finding uncomfortable people and making them fall in love with her.
What she was good at though, was avoiding falling in love herself.
Noticing Grady she beamed her brilliant smile and walked runway style towards where Grady was now awkwardly sitting.
When she reached the table she sat down, layed out her lunch and outstretched a beautifully sculpted hand to Grady, "Hello, I'm Parker. I might be stating the obvious here, but I'm new."
Grady sat up and shook her hand, finding it hard to believe that she was new since she had walked in so flawlessly and gracefully that everyone in the cafeteria had felt a bit of jealously towards her, "Grady," he said blankly, "Grady Hawthorne".
