The blades of grass shook and sifted through my hair, the earth was shaking, but it was the gentle buzzing noise that woke me. My phone. It must be her, not calling me again.

“Hello?” I half-groaned, my voice hadn’t woken yet.

“Do you know what time it is?” My dad. His stubborn voice full of forced almost girlish earnestness made my head begin to pound.

“Not really,”

“You don’t know what time it is!?”
“No,”
I knew the only thing to do was to blatantly lie, hang up, gather my thoughts, call back, and cover my ass with an excuse that required a little more context than I could grasp at the moment.



“Where are you?” I didn’t know the answer myself.

“You know what, dad, you’re breaking up. I must be losing signal. I-“ I hung up. I didn’t care what time it was or where I was, but he made me nervous, so I had to be curious. I flipped my phone open again. 5:53. I didn’t see what the problem was, I wasn’t due home until 6:30. I didn’t have any missed calls. Great. She’s obviously not thinking about me, not that I would expect her to. Two new text messages. The first was from Matt “Sure thing, babe.” It bothered me that I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about before. I wondered if he thought anything of calling me “babe.” He did have to type it out and all, so it must have been intentional. The last thing I need is another boy falling in love with me.







Grass was rustling with girlish laughter. Hopefully I would just be ignored, if seen at all, and I could lay peacefully free of the echoing leers.
“Hey, you!” Goddamn.
“Seriously, what do you think you’re doing laying around like that, fat a**?”
I opened my eyes to their four faces staring into me. Oh, them. By them I mean my friends, the good ones too. Well, them and the other one. I hated when there were that many. It was too many to say anything important, especially in front of the other one. I hated the other one. Someone else was coming, now, audibly bounding towards us. I could feel the ground shake as it began to beeline for my head. It’s trying to kill me. It better kill the other one too. I think I’d be more attractive with my head caved in, than she would be. It was shouting something. They all turned to look.

“Is that her!?” it yelled with little breath. It was her. Se was here, finally. I knew she would show up. It was fate. The dusk seemed to brighten, and the light that reflected off of the trees’ leaves was cool on my freckled and burnt skin. I closed my eyes. My heart felt good. I imagined it glowing and melting, like molten steal spreading throughout me.