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A Piece of the Puzzle

Short Story

By Jasmine LassPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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This would be my third school this year, and it was only November.

“Don’t get attached to anything Danelle. We’ll only be here for a couple of weeks,” my mother told me, as we sat among our boxes in the living room.

We’d been in town two days already, but the boxes of our things still remained untouched. Why bother? We would just be packing them all up soon anyway. Some of the boxes hadn’t been opened up for years. Deep inside those were the ghosts of memories we weren’t ready to face.

I keep my head down pushing my way to my next class. I heard the laughter around me, but I tune it all out. Every person I see has a life, something they’ve worked on and built. They’ve got a family, friends, a house, and long-term dreams.

But I have nothing, I’m just a piece of the fabric around me, changing and ripping apart each time I go somewhere else. I don’t have friends. I’m a piece of a puzzle that never fit. There is only one constant in my life, which is my mother.

Nothing has ever managed to catch my gaze before. Everything is just faded into the colors I see around me; never materializing into something I can call mine. But when I see him, it’s like one of those photos you take where everything is blurred but that one object it focuses on.

It’s like all around him, the light seems to bend. His smile is brighter than the July sun in Florida, and I know because I’ve been there. His hair is the color of a wheat field, and his eyes are the color of a stormy sky. I can tell he’s popular, because all the students in the classroom seem to be magnetized to him. All the students except me.

A little over a week passes, and I watch this beautiful, perfect boy. I think about him more than I’ve thought about any other. I imagine what his life must be like, his parents, his pets, and his house. In my head he has a little sister named Ann. I imagine that I’ve known him for years, and we’ve been next door neighbors. We’ve been dating since freshman year, and he loves me. In my daydreams, I claim his gorgeous smile for my own. In my head I imagined this perfect boy I’d know forever and always, and I hadn’t even spoken to him.

Something that I plotted to amend. As each day passed, I could just sense that the new move was coming up. Every moment in this school, every moment near him was precious and not to be wasted. Because what if I woke up the next morning to the fact I would be leaving?

It was now or never. He sat in front of me in English first hour, and I left my brand new pencils in my locker on purpose. My palms were sweating, my pulse was racing, and it only increased when he sat down in front of me. I bit my lip, and tapped his shoulder.

“Yeah?” he said. His voice was dreamy, but I forced myself to remain upright.

“Can I borrow a pencil?” my voice faltered a little at the end, but he didn’t catch it.

“Sure,” He smiled his dazzling smile, and handed me his.

It was a plain #2 pencil, but the whole class period I treated it as a talisman. When class was over I completely forgot to return it to him.

But that didn’t matter all that much. Because the next day, I left. A plain #2 pencil packed carefully in a box of memories never to be opened.

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About the Creator

Jasmine Lass

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