Some of you may have read my poem with the same title. This is basically the story version of that poem but extended (because its a novel)
She stared, long and hard, past rows and rows of aged library books, at the back of his head.
Maybe, just maybe, if she stared enough he would turn around. His sad, grey eyes would meet her blue ones. Maybe everything would be better again.
"Catherine?" A voice startled her and she whipped around, a little harsher than she intended, "can you shelve these books for me." The little librarian seemed uncomfortable with her unintentional glare.
Catherine nodded, shaking his vision out of her head and pushed the cart of books over to the shelf wishing she'd never sacrificed third period to volunteer at the school library.
She shelved meticulously, an easy task, allowing her mind to wander.
She thought back to him, there was rarely a moment when she wasn't thinking about Lucas Jones.
He was, according to her friends, the ugliest guy in school, well, that was an exaggeration but her friends didn't seem to think so. Even Catherine could be persuaded to admit that he wasn't the hottest but why, then, was he the absolute object of her affection. Even she didn't know the answer to this. She used to tell everyone it was his personality, a cheesy excuse but if any personality triumphed looks than it was his.
She moved down the shelf, sliding each book into place. As she moved into the next row she realized how close she was getting to his seat.
As she worked, she watched him.
He was reading, slouched down in the seat so that his long hair - too long for any guy, her friends insisted - was spread behind the back of the chair. He'd once asked her if she thought long hair on guys was a turn off. She told him it wasnt, too infatuated to care. His heavy legs sprawled in front of him, he stared intently at the page, pausing to take a quick, illegible note.
She shelved another book and moved down the row, her heart thumped wildly as if it felt his proximity. She didn't doubt that it did.
Every cell in her body started to react, her knees and hands trembled. She stopped shelving. The book in her hand shook with her. She was staring.
Suddenly he looked up, as if he, too, had felt her there. His reaction was different, though. He snapped his book shut and placed it in his bag. As if she weren't there, as if she weren't hurting, he turned his back and left the library without even a second glance.
~~~
"You're kidding me, he just left, just like that?" Sophie asked incredulously over her overly sauced pizza.
"What a jerk!" Anna commented after taking a bite of her ham and cheese.
Catherine nodded mournfully, letting her straight auburn hair fall in front of her face so none of them would see how upset she really was.
Again, she wished she hadn't recounted the whole story to her friends yet again she had opened her big mouth. She knew what it was to them, more to the endless conflicts of Luke and Cat. You could practically give it a title.
It's not that her friends didn't care, or that they weren't helpful it was just that they didn't understand.
Luke was Cat's crush, they said, which to her was a juvenile term. A crush is thinking the guy next to you in history is cute, it's when your heart flutters when he asks to borrow your pencil.
Catherine’s heart never fluttered, her heart thudded, big, heavy beats as if it were trying to escape through her rib cage. Even it knew it was in a hopeless situation.
"What do you even see in him?" The question came from down the table from Julie, a tall, skinny girl who hadn't even been in this conversation. Catherine thought about telling her that, shutting her up fast, but she was too depressed to be mean. Instead she sighed and muttered, "I don't know."
"Nobody knows," Anna added.
Catherine wished she could melt into her seat.
It just seems...a little cliche. The typical, regular girl falls for a boy who no one else likes, who's a little weird, for no particular reason. I'd like to see more motivation behind her actions.