I remember the first day I saw him. It was the first day of 5th grade, and I was trying to shake off the remnants of sleep. My bus stop being the 2nd to last one, it was a surprise when, after the driver picked me up, we moved forward and immediately stopped again. As I looked out the window to find the interruption, I caught his eyes, and everything stopped moving. Have you ever focused on something, and noticed the background was all blurry, and then look at the background to take a closer look, then noticed the thing you were focused on earlier was now blurry? That's how I felt. His eyes were a light, warm amber, like honey or syrup, and his hair was cut short, and it stuck up in all different directions, almost as if he had tried to make it messy. However, he was alert and obviously jumpy as he boarded the bus. Inquisitively, he looked at me, and I realized my mouth was half hanging open. I started and looked out the window, blushing furiously.
My bully (as I mentioned earlier) immediately picked up that I liked him, and tried making conversation with him. As a sensitive 10-year old, hearing her laugh at whatever he was saying made me want to cry. Stupid, I cursed myself. What was I doing? I hardly even knew this guy, and he was having this effect on me? Still, as our bus slowly drove us to the school, I couldn't help but glance at him a couple of times.
At school, I was disappointed he wasn't in my class, so when I got home, I didn't really wanna do anything. However, my mom surprised me by saying, "Joanna, come, let's meet the new neighbors!" She told me enthusiastically. I told her I didn't want to, but she made me come along and we brought flowers. I know in books, people normally bring fresh-baked cookies, but as a family, we value our house more when it's more than a pile of ashes, so we never really tried. Anyways, I didn't know which new neighbor she was talking about until she brought me to a very familiar door. The boy's house.
As she rang the doorbell, I started sweating, and when a nice woman opened the door with the same warm amber eyes as him, I almost fainted. I hid behind my mom's skirt as she made the introductions, "Joanna, meet Angie... Yes, of course, you're our new neighbor, we had to... Come on Joanna, come in, don't you wanna meet her son? He's your age..." At this point, I was sure I was a zombie. We went to the sitting room, and she offered us some lemonade, as it was about 80 degrees outside. I accepted, staring off into space, but when she called, "Camden, come down and meet our new neighbors!", followed by the thundering of footsteps, I went into hyper-drive. I heard everything acutely, and the colors around sharpened into focus. Camden... Camden... His name was Camden...
It was almost painful waiting for him to arrive, but as he turned the corner and I got a glimpse of his warm honey eyes, everything was zoned out again. His mom, my mom, the flowers, they didn't matter. All that mattered was the was he held his elbows in front of his stomach, the way his hair flopped down in front of his eyes, the way he smiled shyly, waved, and said in voice that matched his eyes,
"Hey".
Yeah, I knew that I had it really bad...
