Mine: A Love Story (3 page)

Thursday afternoon. I’m sitting in my room, playing my guitar. One of the first songs I learned: Shania Twain’s “Forever and For Always.” I guess I’ve been a hopeless romantic for a long time.

Marissa is at class, so I’ve grabbed the chance to play. She still doesn’t know I even own a guitar. I keep it in the back of my closet tucked behind my clothes and only take it out when she’s not here. She and I are getting along great, though, so I’ll probably let her hear me play before long. Part of my “opening up of Heather” project. I’m not great on the guitar, but I’m not bad. It’s just a big step for me, playing for someone. Marissa will be the first. She’ll love that, I think. At least I know she likes country music, which is what I mostly play, although I’ll play almost any kind of love song. I’m such a sap!

Marissa likes lots of different music. We have something playing most of the time we’re here, sometimes my stuff, sometimes hers. Some of her stuff I like, some of it I don’t get at all. Maybe I’ll surprise her and learn to play Pink’s “Perfect.” It’s a long way from country, but it’s a catchy tune, and I like the lyrics. I’m not sure how it will sound on an acoustic guitar, though. If nothing else, we’ll probably get a laugh out of it.

It’s only been four days since we met, but Marissa has been great for me. She’s so outgoing and so fun—some of that will just have to rub off on me. I hope. She’s already talking about taking me shopping to get a few cool outfits. I told her I don’t have much money for clothes, but she says she knows a place where they have good used stuff cheap. She showed me some outfits she got there, and they look really good. I can’t wait to see what she picks out for me. I’m a little nervous, though—she definitely dresses for more attention than I’m comfortable with.

School has been pretty good so far, too. My psych professor is really fun—I think he’s probably a frustrated comedian. English and history are okay, and math is math. Two semesters of required math, and I’ll probably never have to do the stuff again. Won’t that be nice!

I glance at the clock. Quarter to four. I’ve got to head to my final class, the one I didn’t tell Mom and Dad about. I ease my guitar back into the case and place it carefully into the back of my closet. Then I’m off to class.

I’ve been looking forward to this one. Vampire Lit. Sounds stupid to offer a class on such a mindless subject, I know, but with the popularity of vampire books and movies in the last few years, more and more schools are doing it. Maybe they think it helps enrollment. This one meets just once a week and is only good for one credit. But hey, a credit is a credit, and this class should be fun. I came late to the Twilight books—like I do to most things, it seems—but I really liked them. Did I mention I’m a hopeless romantic? How could I not get into Bella and Edward’s story? I’m hoping I’ll learn about some more romantic tales like that.

The small, amphitheater style classroom is almost full of chattering students. Fifty or sixty kids, I guess. I’m not surprised at the crowd. The chance to earn a credit for reading about vampires is too good to pass up for many kids. I’m also not surprised to see the class is at least eighty percent female. Not good odds, but I’m not here to meet a guy—I’ve got other classes for that. I find a seat in the second row from the top, next to a black-haired girl who is busily pecking away at her laptop. The seat on my other side is empty. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll stay that way, giving me some extra room.

The professor walks across the small stage in front of the room to a wooden lectern. His thin frame is stooped with age, but he moves confidently, belying his frail appearance. Long white hair hangs limply from his head, the ends falling onto an old-fashioned black cape. As he turns toward us I can see the inner lining of the cape is a dark red color. Talk about unusual wear for a professor—I guess he’s playing up the vampire thing, for this first class, at least.

He’s certainly not what I expected. I thought a class like this would be taught by someone young and hip. This guy looks like he could have been around when the original Dracula was written, whenever that was. Hey, maybe he really is a vampire!

He stands behind the lectern, waiting. The room slowly quiets.

“Welcome to English 131,” he says, his deep voice carrying easily through the room. “Vampire Literature. I trust you are all in the right place.”

From my seat near the top, I can see almost all of the students. Nobody moves, so I guess everyone is where they’re supposed to be.

“As I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now,” the professor says, “I’m Dr. Simpson.” He moves out from behind the lectern. “Our main focus this semester,” he continues, “will be to be to trace the changes in vampire literature from the beginning to the present. To do this, we’ll focus on five books. We’ll begin with
Dracula
, the book that started the whole thing. Then we’ll move on to
Interview with the Vampire
, by Anne Rice, which created the first boom in modern vampire popularity, way back in the seventies. Then we’ll go to
Twilight
, which is pretty much responsible for the current vampire craze. We’ll finish up with a couple of new books you may not have heard of yet.”

Suddenly, a body plops down into the empty seat beside me. It’s a guy, wearing a brown, long-sleeved waffle-knit shirt. I check him out through the corner of my eye. He seems tall—sitting, at least, his head is level with mine—and his light brown hair is stylishly messy, held that way with gel, I think. His profile is sharp and even. All in all, he’s pretty darn cute.

He might just be a late arrival, but I think I saw him earlier, on the other side of the room. This new seat is no closer to the professor, so he’s either moved to get away from someone, or to get closer to someone. Could it be me? Or is it the girl on the other side of him? She’s pretty cute. His eyes are fixed forward, giving no clue. I can’t see what color they are without being obvious, and there’s no way cautious girl is going to be obvious. I hope they’re blue, though. I love blue eyes.

I turn my attention back to Professor Simpson, but I can’t help sneaking a glance to my right every now and then. One time, I think I see the guy’s eyes flicking away from me, but I can’t be sure. I spend the rest of class with my attention divided between listening to the professor and trying to think of something to say to the guy beside me. Maybe not during class, but as soon as it’s over. So far, everything I’ve thought of sounds lame. Marissa, where are you when I need you? I’m sooo not good at this stuff.

Finally, Dr. Simpson brings the class to a close. All it all, it was pretty interesting. I’m definitely going to enjoy this course. I still haven’t thought of a way to start a conversation with the guy next to me, so I guess I’ll let him make the first move, if there’s going to be one. I think Mom would approve of that, but I’m pretty sure Marissa will get on my case about it.

Anyhow, the choice is taken out of my hands when the girl on the other side of him says something to him. I couldn’t hear what, but he replies and now they’re talking. Oh, well. You snooze, you lose, I guess. He probably moved to his new seat to be next to her, anyway.

I turn and make my way in the other direction out to the aisle.

“What do you mean you couldn’t think of anything to say?” Marissa asks when I finish telling her about the guy in vampire class. “Say anything. Say red, blue, green, black—it doesn’t matter. Guys love it when a pretty girl starts the conversation. It takes the pressure off them. They don’t care what you say. Heck, most of the time they’re too busy checking you out to pay any attention to what you said.”

She’s sitting at her desk. I’m perched on the edge of my bed.

“I’m pretty sure the other girl didn’t say red, blue, green, black,” I say defensively.

Marissa chuckles. “No, probably not. But the point is, it doesn’t matter what she said. She said something, and then they were talking. That’s how easy it is. Now you’ll never know if he moved to be next to you or next to her.”

I sigh. “I’ve never been any good with this kind of stuff.”

“Well, you’ve got me coaching you now,” Marissa says, grinning. “And I’m
very
good at it.”

She gets up and sits beside me on the bed. “The first thing we gotta do is get you a new outfit or two. Hunting outfits, I call them. You got any yoga pants? They’d look great on you.”

Hunting outfits
? That is so not me. I wonder if I’m going to regret this. I usually only wear my yoga pants to the gym.

“Yeah. I’ve got black ones and gray ones.” I don’t tell her that I seldom wear them out in public like other girls do, unless I’m on my way to the gym or something.

“Cool. With your long legs, yoga pants will be hot.” Marissa gets up and begins pawing through my closet. “Let’s see what you’ve got that we can pair ‘em with.”

She takes a couple things out and holds them up for a better look, but always puts them back. I guess nothing’s quite right, in her mind, at least.

“Hey, what’s this?” She tips my guitar case forward. “I didn’t know you played.”

Damn! I’d completely forgotten about my guitar.

“Yeah, I play a little,” I say, trying hard to sound nonchalant.

“Cool. Will you play something for me? I love guitar.”

I feel my heart begin to race. I’d been planning on letting Marissa hear me play eventually, but hadn’t thought it would be this soon.

“On one condition,” I say. “I don’t usually play for other people.” I don’t want to say I’ve
never
played for anyone. That would sound way too serious and way too lame. “So you can’t tell any of the other girls I play, okay?”

“Deal.”

She pulls the case out of the closet and hands it to me. I put it on the bed and take my guitar out, then sit down and begin strumming the strings. Marissa sits across from me, on her bed.

I’m pretty nervous, so I begin playing a song I’ve played for years, Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar.” Part way through, I begin to sing.

“Wow, you’re really good,” Marissa says when I finish. “But in my experience, that wishing star stuff in the song seldom works.” She grins. “Now hunting outfits, on the other hand….”

“Okay. Okay. I get your point. I’ll let you put something together for me. I don’t promise I’ll wear it outside the room, though.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll love it. You got any classes tomorrow afternoon?”

“Nope,” I say. Like most kids, I avoided taking any classes that meet on Friday afternoons.

“Great. Then you and I are going shopping tomorrow. We’ll go to that resale place I told you about.”

Marissa and I are in The Buff, a resale clothing store on the edge of campus. The place isn’t very big, but it’s packed—and I mean packed—with all kinds of stuff. There’s barely room to squeeze down the aisles between the racks of clothing. A lot of the clothes are pretty wild—not my kind of thing at all—but I can see why Marissa shops here. Two of the walls are lined floor to ceiling with wooden shelves. The shelves on one wall are filled with jeans, the other with sweatshirts and sweaters. The place smells faintly of burned incense. An Eminem song is thumping in the background. I’m not much of a Rap fan, but I can see why a store like this would play that kind of hip music.

A half-dozen other kids are rummaging through the store in search of fashion treasure. I’m mostly a bystander, watching Marissa paw through the racks looking for tops for me to wear over my black yoga pants, which I’m wearing under my jeans. She’s already found a long sleeve gray silk shirt with pointed tails that she likes. It’s in great condition—I can’t believe it’s only nine bucks. I’ve got it draped over my arm while she continues her search for more goodies.

“Take this one, too,” Marissa says, handing me burgundy cotton shirt with the same long, pointed tails as the gray one.

I’m sensing a theme here. But so far, nothing she’s chosen is out of my comfort zone, for which I’m very grateful, especially considering some of the other stuff I’ve seen in here. Of course, my yoga pants are still
under
my jeans.

“Hey, this is cool,” she says, showing me a short-sleeve gray shirt with white skulls and purple hearts leading diagonally down the front to a frayed edge.

What is she thinking? That shirt is definitely not my style. No way am I getting that.

“It looks kind of small,” I say.

“Not for you, silly. I know it’s not your kinda thing. It’s for me.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“C’mon,” she says as she spins and heads toward the wall of sweatshirts and sweaters. “Let’s get you one more top, and then we’ll look for some cool boots.”

Boots
? Who said anything about boots? I’m a sneakers girl, and flats. I follow Marissa dutifully across the store. It doesn’t take her long to find what she’s looking for.

“This’ll be great when the weather turns cooler,” she says, handing me a light, ivory-colored knit sweater with cable stitching.

So far, so good. I like all three of the things she’s picked out for me.

“Now, if we can just find the right boots,” Marissa says. She looks down at my feet and grins. “Luckily, your feet don’t look
too
big. What size are you?”

“Eight and a half,” I say. As tall as I am, I guess I should be grateful my feet aren’t any bigger.

Marissa leads me to the back of the store, where there are rows and rows of shoes and boots resting on metal shelves, arranged by sizes. She grabs a pair of dark gray, calf-high suede boots.

“Perfect!” she exclaims. “Exactly what I was hoping for. They’re in pretty good shape, too.”

She holds them out to me. I see a few scuffs in the suede, but they really are in pretty good shape. But what I like best is they have no heels.

“Okay,” Marissa says. “Time to see how everything looks on you.”

We thread our way to a row of dressing booths fronted by long purple curtains. Marissa hands me the boots.

“In you go, Roomie. Try the gray shirt first.”

Taylor Swift is singing “Blank Space” as I duck behind the curtain. I love the humorous take on relationships in that song. I hang the shirts and sweater on plastic hooks and drop the boots onto a narrow wooden bench. I’m both nervous and excited as I pull off my jeans and sit down to put the boots on. My feet slip easily into them. They’re really comfortable, and even better, I don’t feel any taller than normal in them.

I put on the gray shirt and check myself out in the mirror. Not a whole lot of light filters in from the top of the dressing booth, so I can’t get the full effect of the outfit. The points of the shirt’s tails reach to mid-thigh, covering my butt, but barely. The inverted V’s on the side show an awful lot of my hips—more than I’m comfortable with, really—but I know I need to get at least a little out of my comfort zone. I suck in a deep breath and step outside the curtain, into the light.

“Wow! You look hot!” Marissa tells me. “That outfit looks even better than I expected. The boots are perfect.”

I do a slow pirouette in front of the outside mirror, twisting my neck to examine myself from all angles. The boots and tight yoga pants draw attention to my legs, which I’ve always thought are my best feature. The shirt threatens to reveal more of my butt than I want, but it’s not like I’m naked underneath. Heck, I’ve seen lots of girls wearing yoga pants with shirts that don’t even cover their butts, so my outfit is tame by comparison. Still, the overall effect of the combination is a bit provocative, which is exactly what Marissa wants. It’s certainly not an outfit I’d wear to class, but it should be great for a party or something. I take a last look at myself and smile. For the first time in my life, I actually feel sexy!

“I like it,” I say.

“You should,” Marissa says. “You look great. Go try on the other shirt.”

We both agree the burgundy shirt doesn’t look quite as good as the gray one, probably because the cotton doesn’t hang as well as the silk. But the sweater works great. It reaches just below my butt, like a very short skirt. I buy the gray shirt, the sweater and the boots, all for under thirty-five dollars. Marissa gets the shirt with the skulls and hearts. She wants me to wear the boots, yoga pants and shirt home from the store, but I tell her no way. This is not a daytime walk around campus outfit—not in my mind, anyhow. I leave the store dressed the same way I entered it, except that my yoga pants are now in the shopping bag instead of under my jeans.

We head down the block. Near the corner, I stop and grab Marissa by the arm.

“Oh my god!” I say.

“What?” Marissa asks, looking around and not seeing anything that should cause such an outburst. “What?”

“Over there,” I say. “On the corner. Waiting for the light to change. It’s the guy I told you about. From my vampire class.”

Marissa looks at me a little funny. Okay, maybe I’ve overreacted just a bit. She checks him out. He’s wearing tight black jeans, black and white checked sneakers and a vertical striped purple, gray and white button shirt untucked over the jeans.

“He’s cute,” she says. “Go say hi.”

“I can’t,” I protest. Cautious girl does not walk up to guys and say hi, even if they are cute. Especially if they’re cute. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, you’d better think of something,” she says, and shoves me toward him.

I stumble to a stop just a few feet from him. He turns and looks at me. His eyes
are
blue, like I’d hoped. Bright blue and flecked with green, like a lake on a sunny summer day. I realize I have to look up to look into his eyes. He’s at least two inches taller than me, which is great.

Say something, please
I scream at him in my head, but he just looks at me, waiting. I struggle to come up with something clever to say, but my mind is blank. I have to say something, or he’ll think I’m an idiot.

“Red, blue, green, black,” I blurt, hating myself the instant the words leave my mouth. Now he
knows
I’m an idiot. I wish a hole would open in the sidewalk and swallow me.

He looks at me like I’m speaking Greek. Marissa, I’m going to kill you!

The light turns green. I’m sure I’ve blown any chance I had with him, but he makes no move to cross the street. I think I spot the barest glimmer of a smile on his lips.

“Orange, yellow, purple, white,” he says.

We look at each other for another moment, and then all of a sudden we’re both laughing.

“I’m Chris,” he says finally. “What was that red, blue, green, black stuff all about?”

I blush. “Sorry about that. I’m Heather. My friend told me to say anything,” I explain. “She said guys don’t care what girls say, as long as we say something to start the conversation. She used ‘red, blue, green, black’ as an example, and when she shoved me toward you, that’s the only thing I could think of to say.”

“Your friend shoved you?” he asks skeptically.

“Yeah, she did.” I turn to point to Marissa, but she’s disappeared, leaving me on my own, damn her.

Chris grins. “Is this friend an imaginary friend?” he asks teasingly.

Now I’m really embarrassed. I must be making quite an impression. First the color thing, and now I’m talking about someone who isn’t there. He’s going to think I escaped from the local asylum. I wish I was wearing my new outfit. Maybe then he wouldn’t notice what a dope I am.

“She was just here,” I say lamely. “She knows I’m a little shy, so she pushed me toward you to get me to say hi. She must have ducked into one of the stores.”

“Sure she did,” he says, still smiling. He seems to be enjoying my discomfort. He lets me suffer for another moment before continuing. “Actually, a girl went into that store over there a moment ago. Short, with dark hair, blond at the tips?”

“Yeah, that’s her.” I’m sooo relieved. At least he knows I wasn’t making the whole thing up. Now if I could just take back red, blue, green, black….

“You’re in my vampire lit class,” he says. “I sat next to you yesterday.”

My heart jumps. He remembers! I tell myself to calm down. Of course he remembers. It was only yesterday.

“I sat there on purpose,” he says. “I thought you were one of the cutest girls in class.” He grins again. “The cutest with an empty seat next to her, anyway.”

I laugh. I like his sense of humor.