Strawberry

Prologue: Swoooon!

I gazed down at the tiny shards of green glass that were scattered over the ground, and wondered why I had come to this party in the first place.

No, that was wrong. I knew exactly why I was here, just as much as I knew that I would never get what I wanted. I wasn't the type of person to drink and get charming at parties. Instead, I preferred to stand in the corner and make private jokes about the centers of attention. Hell, I knew that I shouldn't care about what they thought, I knew that in ten years this wouldn't matter, but it still hurt me all the same to see him up on the poor host's dining room table, kissing some lucky girl like she was a damn movie star.

She had the perfect, glossy skin of one, and the gorgeous green eyes. If I didn't know that she had suffered through two years of braces in middle school, I'd chalk her beauty up to a deal with the devil and be done with it. But she wasn't an apparition, nor was she a fake person. The girl, whose name was Ruth, was one of the most intelligent people I had ever met. She just got a little wild when she drank, and I couldn't hate her for that, as much as I wanted to.

The cheerleader of legend, who wasn't really a cheerleader at all. A singer in the choir, a straight-A student, and a girl who looked for all the world like she was an angel come down to earth to make the rest of us feel bad. This was the person I had to contend with if I wanted to get him to notice me. And he was, unlike her, a perfect cliche.

Why, then, was I here? It all returned to that very simple question. The simple answer was because he is here, but things are never that easy. I wasn't expecting anything to happen, since there was no chance of me leaving my dark little corner. The only way he'd see me was if he stopped dancing to puke and accidentally splashed me. And in that case, any chance I had would be utterly destroyed.

I was here because I was hoping to tear myself away. Oliver wasn't good for me, and pining was going to get me nothing. I wanted to see him do something stupid, just so that I could chalk him up as another so-called bad boy that would amount to nothing. I wanted to obliterate that picture I had of him in my head, as something more than what everybody else saw. I had fallen into a classic trap, that I knew.

Someone like me always wanted to fix the guy. I could find something good in him, something no one else saw. Just me. I was the only one that could truly know Oliver.

And that wasn't realistic at all. If anyone could know him, it would probably be the stunning Ruth, or one of his stoner friends. But before I could give up entirely, I had to prove to myself that there wasn't anything else there. Things would be better for me if I just let him go.

"Hey, you," someone slurred drunkenly. Their voice sounded awfully close, so I turned around and came face-to-face with a guy whose face I vaguely recognized. He was on the basketball team, and maybe the lacrosse team. I didn't really care about sports, but my best friend was in the pep band, the group of marching band kids that went to basketball games and played.

"Go away," I said, turning back to my scrutiny of the table. He followed my gaze and hiccuped knowingly.

"Another one for Ollie, huh? Can't say I blame you. Girls always go for the danger," he said, and turned around, looking like he was going to vomit. I knew that it was nothing but false drunken wisdom, but his words hit home. I was just another girl that had fallen for the danger. Hell, I didn't even like roller coasters that much! I had been scared of the dark until I was ten! I hated danger!

So, then, why...

The basketball player stumbled away, presumably to the bathroom, and I sat against the wall, absorbed in my own thoughts. Maybe it was time for me to leave. My mother was probably worried about me anyway, even though I'd told her exactly where I was going, and she could track my phone with her infernal app. I was at a friend's house. She was having a party. This particular friend happened to be a drunken fool, but my mother didn't know that. As parents were wont to do, she thought that Lauren was a wonderfully studious girl.