First chapter of a (hopefully) long story.
*
The sun was low in the sky, bleeding palely over the Liverpool skyline. It highlighted the hodgepodge mix of buildings; old cathedrals standing ground next to new office buildings and shops. The streets had few pedestrians at seven in the morning, but cars, filled with early-morning commuters, scuttled through the streets like bugs on a garden path.
Seven o’clock was the time when Anna joined the world. Every morning, without fail, someone – either her mother, Kaitlyn, bleary-eyed and bedheaded, or one of her younger sisters, indecently awake for that sort of time – would stroll into her room, talking loudly in her general direction, until she woke up. It was a routine that she hated, but it was a routine nonetheless. She had experimented with an alarm clock, but alarm clocks don’t shake you when you seem to be drifting back off into another, more peaceful version of reality.
Today, it was Kaitlyn who stumbled into Anna’s room. Wrapped in a matted brown dressing robe, scuffed pink slippers coating her narrow feet, she pulled the curtains open, so that a harsh beam of sunlight tugged its way through Anna’s eyelids.
She groaned, and Kaitlyn exhaled.
“Come on, Anna,” she said, in a fake sing-song voice. “Seven o’clock. Time to wake up.”
“Not really,” protested Anna pathetically, rolling over so that her purple duvet cocooned her. “Not if I had a choice.”
“Oh, wake up.” Kaitlyn, losing patience, walked back out, leaving the sunlight to do its work on rousing Anna.
“Wake up,” someone said, but it wasn’t Kaitlyn. Anna glared at the speaker; her best friend, Beth Clark, was staring at her with outlined green eyes. “What’s up with you?”
“I’m just…” Anna yawned widely. “Tired.”
“Yeah, well, you nearly stepped out in front of a bus at the last crossing. Maybe we should buy you some Red Bull so you actually survive the school day.”
Anna deliberately stuck a foot out so that Beth tripped forward on the smooth pavement. A caffeine boost wasn’t such a bad idea; she felt like she was still half asleep. Thank goodness that Beth seemed to have saved up a week’s worth of gossip to dump on her this particular Monday, letting her drop behind a little, just following the general direction of her voice.
They were two streets away from Leighton High School, the roads switching from thick snakes to skinny, less well-maintained worms. The large, stand-alone houses became terraced rows. Several kids they knew from school passed, some smiling a greeting. A gang of boys wolf-whistled from across the street; Beth gave them the finger and, jaw clenched with embarrassment, tugged at her skirt.
“I knew it was too short, but really, knee length? Who in their right mind would wear something so hideous? At least I’ve been using that tanning moisturiser…that one that makes my palms orange. It’s not good to give boys snow-blindness; at least, I think not. Is pale in at the moment, do you know?”
Anna was not listening, though it wasn’t from tiredness. She had stopped a couple of paces behind, looking directly at one of the terraced houses’ windows.
“Earth calling Anna. Helloo. Hellooo. What’re you looking at?”
She couldn’t manage to drag her eyes away from the window long enough to see Beth’s expression, but she knew instinctively it would be a mix of exasperation and fondness.
The reason for this was the person staring back at her from the window. Translucent, with the light bouncing off, like a reflection – but obviously not, since Anna was not a boy. A boy that was probably her own age, with clear, pale skin, longish dark-brown hair that stopped two inches or so above his shoulders, and these eyes, these huge light-grey eyes without even a hint of blue that stared at her coolly and calmly.
She smiled, but he remained expressionless. She could just about make out the outline of a black t-shirt, but the sunlight bouncing off the window made it difficult to see.
“Jesus, Anna,” said Beth, breaking the silence. She grabbed hold of her crook of Anna’s elbow and tugged gently. “You look absolutely gorgeous – there’s no need to stare at your own reflection in some person’s window for hours on end.”
“There’s a boy-” began Anna, but looking quickly back, she could see that was a lie. There was no boy. He must’ve got creeped out by her gawping like a stalker into his front room. Damn. He hadn’t been ugly, either – more the opposite.
“And if I listen really hard, oh, there’s the bell. Do you want to get eaten alive by The Cow?” ‘The Cow’ was Mrs Kendall, Anna and Beth’s form tutor, a woman so unpleasant that ‘The Cow’ was one of her milder nicknames.
“N-no. Sorry, I just can’t wake up. Pathetic,” smiled Anna. “Oh, did I tell you that I saw Mr Johnson in Primark yesterday?”
She let her gossipy, superficial side take over, but she couldn’t get the image of that boy out of her head. It wasn’t like when she fancied someone, and couldn’t stop mentally fawning over them; it was completely different, and she wasn’t sure if it was entirely pleasant.
Walking through the school gates, she felt like she could still feel those metallic grey eyes boring into hers.
I've hit a dead end with this story and probably won't be going back to it for a while, but if I do I'll definitely change the things you mentioned.