Catching Feelings

Chapter One: You Can Call Me Skylar

Seriously craving Skittles right now, and this chapter took soooooo long to edit, jeez.

Picture of Derek to the side... Can we take a moment of silence to appreciate the hotness that is Francisco Lachowski?

Happy reading :p

Chapter One: You Can Call Me Skylar

Derek's words have been running through my head for almost a month now. It's been that long that I've been almost successfully ignoring him. It's kind of hard to do because he's in almost all my classes and I still hear about him in the ones that he's not. It's like everywhere I go, he seems to follow. But I've gone out of my way to show him to cut it off.

He tries to make conversation with me but I pretend I don't hear him by increasing the volume on my music a little higher, shoving my hood up so it better guards my face, and walking past him like I don't know him, which if you really think about it, I don't. All I really knew that his name was Derek Winters; that he said it as if I were supposed to acknowledge it's importance, that he was one of the cockiest people I've ever met, and he had the most extraordinary pair of emerald green eyes.

But knowing that doesn't stop me from noticing how he acts around the other students in the school; how he honors the fact that they give him so much attention and whether I like it or not, he's a part of our town now. He's the big talk of the year which not only means I'm forced to be nice to him by default, but I also hear his name every corner I turn.

At first I thought maybe he would take my advice into consideration but I doubted it afterwards. The way he walked around the school like he's been here his whole life makes you stop and wonder if he really has. When he walks; it's like he knows exactly where he's going, like he's been living here his whole life, which is absurd because no one's ever seen him before.

He purposely avoids the popular crowd and their very welcoming invitations to their group-much to my dismay, because it no longer gave me a significant reason to hate him. I don't know if he's doing it to prove something to me or to him, and to be honest I don't really want to know either.

The sound of forks clattering draws me back to reality as I push my food around my plate and let my thoughts travel to faraway places, "What's wrong Skylar? Are you not hungry?" my grandmother asks from across the table. She's the probably the only person I know that calls me by my real name, other than my mother- who used to do it all the time.

They've been very lenient with me; letting me come and go as I please, so I never really had the heart to ask her to just call me Skye. Something about seemed so wrong, because I figured the only reason she did it was because she believed it brought her closer to my mom. My grandparents never expected to lose their only child so soon or they they would have to parent her kid like their own, so I don't really blame them for doing whatever they can to keep her memory alive. And I figure things will just be so much simpler when they don't have to see their sorrow and guilt every time they look at me from across the table.

"No," I said, realizing I didn't answer her earlier question, "not really."

"Well, are you alright?" she asks, trying to hide her concern.

I look up at her and smile, not wanting her to worry.

"Bad day at school?" she asks.

I snort. "Bad lifetime," I correct , trying to sound nonchalant about it.

She slightly nods her head and gets up from her to chair to sit beside me. She grabs my hand in hers, "Skylar, I want you to understand that your grandfather and I love you very much," she takes a breath, "and we don't want you to feel like your obliged to pack up your bags and leave as soon as your birthday comes around. Your mothers..." she stops and takes another breath, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, "...death was very sudden and painful but we would never want to go back to that day when we decided to take you in and change our decision. You're much older now, which means you recognize your mother's accident as what it truly was; an accident. It may make you feel as if she was running away from you. but she wasn't. Things got overly complicated for her here and she needed to clear her head, somewhere far away from Belmount. She did have intentions of coming home, that's just not how it happened. Lilia was an amazing person, she was an amazing mother, and her intentions never were to hurt you in any way but-"