I LOVE YOU TOO

Chapter One

My mother said when I was born I was in such a hurry to go out that I slid right from her womb, through the nurse's hands and onto the floor. Just like that, I, Anne-Marie Davis made my way into the world but not after scaring my mother that I wasn't going to live through that dramatic entry. I wasn't sure that's the actual sequence of events that happened when I was born, but just like the birth stories of my two brothers Cole and Luca there were all, almost unrealistic but not to be questioned ,so we let mom tell them how she wanted.

I lived in a town called Hemming, population too small to even be a town and well you can guess it, the probability of boredom was on a high. We moved there when I was 15 and that was three years ago but we are still the only black family so you get me, being monotonous was kind of the norm. It's not like it bothered me, I didn't mind much, I was mostly on my own with a book or helping my mom in the garden or just hanging out with my brothers on the rare times that they let me or they were home . According to them, I was the uncool blimp of the family. I didn't have the strength to disagree or argue, they were younger but I never won any argument against the two of them.

A week into the summer holidays before my senior year, my little bubble of perfect sameness was popped and it all started with a basic need for humans - companionship. It was a Saturday but not just any Saturday, the first one after schools closed which meant spring cleaning or me carefully trying to just pile everything inside my wardrobe and then declare my cleaning done. Sadly I always got caught by mom and then I had to restart the whole process so I usually was the last to rest. That's why that afternoon, I was the first to see the new family drive in, as I was sitting on the porch after the whole dance with mother.I was trying to savour the little lunch my brothers pretended they had left for me when I heard the van belching to a stop across from our house. It also was the cause of my nosy neighbors' curious faces pressed against their windows.

I was quickly disinterested by that and was about to go back to the book I had neglected on my lap, when I saw her. She jumped out of the front seat of the moving van wearing the brightest colors I have ever seen at once and on one person. It's either she was really happy to be here or she was high on something because could light up the whole town if she wanted with that smile.
Her hair was covering most of her face and she kept putting it behind her ear so she could see clearly. She was beautiful, not the kind that you just see and awe over but look away because well that can never be you, but she was that kind of beautiful that pulled you in, to keep looking and staring. I drank her in, like if I looked away I was going to lose some part of her. Her dark hair ,seemed to go all the way to her face, which made me think of the feel of it in my hands, her lips were full and purple with a small dot of a nose and this made up her hauntingly beautiful face.

"You are doing it again, Annie", my mom perched on the screen door broke my train of thought.
"You are doing that staring thing again."
"psssht ....whaaaat. I am definitely not. I mean i am just like every other curious person on the road, see",pointing to the people out on their yards.
"Mmmm well at least you could do glances and not full on staring mode and I don't think the tattooed driver is your type." She chuckled as she went back in the house.

"How long was I out for."
"You set a new record. Full on 3 minutes.
You are gone little sister", Cole said patting my head following mom.

It was summer 2018.
It was going to be long.