Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Hopeless Romantic ❯ Chapter 1

Prologue

I was never the romantic type. I mean, sure, I read all of my mom's mushy-gushy Harlequin romance books, but that didn't do much. Lucy, my guidance counselor, said it was because I was never in love. Well, that must mean that my 7-year-old sister Chichi has been in love tons of times, `cause she's all about the love letters and sloppy kisses and relationships.

My best friend Leonard concluded that I must have some romantic side in me just waiting to pop out. He said that if I wasn't romantic, I wouldn't be thinking about being romantic so much. That was my cue to stop thinking about it, because if Leonard tells me I'm thinking a lot about something that means I'm thinking way too much about it. But I just couldn't; it's kind of hard not to think about love when it's February and people are drawing hearts and getting into relationships and all that mushy-gushy stuff. So I decided I'd just think about it until the Valentine season was over.

But that was about two seconds before Lenny (Leonard) got a girlfriend.

 

Chapter 1

“Leonard Hale.” Mr. Harrison was taking attendance, and Lenny mumbled “here” with an upset expression. He had told him about a thousand times that it was pronounced `Lenard' and not `Lee-o-nard', but I guess it's already become a habit.

Leonard is not Lenny's real name. His full name is Nicholas Alexander Leonard Hale. Yeah, I know: why call yourself Leonard when you can be a Nicholas or even an Alexander? But the thing is, Nicholas is his father's first name as well, and he left Lenny, Lenny's mom, and Lenny's three other sibs when Lenny was nine years old. Nicholas Sr. had left because he had found another woman, and Lenny still hates him for it - come to think of it, `hate' is not even strong enough; Lenny despises his father with the most profound layers of his heart. Well, that's what it seems like, at least. In fact, the school year after Lenny's dad left (5th grade) he got caught for trying to hack into the school's permanent records to erase his first two names. A whole parent-teacher conference was held for that, and Lenny compromised to be an exemplary student at the school if they just changed his name. The school, of course, agreed.

Oh, and if you're wondering why he doesn't use the name Alexander either, well that's just `cause he had a pet dog that he named Alexander, but a car squashed him to death when Lenny accidentally forgot to tie him outside and he went wandering in the streets. Every time someone said the name Alexander, Lenny would either: A) bawl his eyes out because he missed him so much, B) immediately feel guilty and wouldn't speak for a whole day, or C) have nightmares for a week just thinking about all the blood on that street. Sometimes they happened simultaneously, and I was on best-friend patrol fulltime.

Now I'm not so sure if he'll still react that way. We're both in 10th grade at Graford High; he turned sixteen on the 5th of January and I'm still waiting for May 5th to come. And that pretty much shows the difference between us; I'm just like the springtime (minus the romance thing), and he's dead in the middle of winter. I'm not saying he's cold or cruel, or anything like that - I love Lenny like my own brother. It's just that he may seem cold or cruel to others, especially if they're strangers. It looks like he's the gelled-hair, ironed-shirt, cleaned-spectacle, no-nonsense type of guy, but it's not at all like that; he wears contacts, not spectacles.

Just kidding. Lenny's a cool guy, but only a couple of people like me have VIP passes to his goofy, lazy, joke-around side.

I, on the other hand, am totally easy-going and extra-friendly. (Lenny even tends to get impatient whenever I bring a new friend to our lunch table.) I wouldn't be caught dead ironing a shirt, and my auburn hair is always a ponytailed mess. I need optic aide as well (we both burned our eyes out after watching TV and playing video games on a screen that was two inches from our faces every afternoon for a whole summer [which was totally awesome! The TV and video games, I mean.]), but I'm usually wearing my fogged up red-rimmed glasses any time of the day (I might have lost my contacts, but there's no way I'm telling mom that). The side of me that only people who are close to me have seen is my going-crazy stressed-out self, which tends to come out whenever I have social or educational pressures that just pile up, like an exam or project, or another catastrophic brunch with Grandma Gretchen (Long story).

So, Lenny and I are pretty different - I mean, you should see the difference between my room and his. His is like some museum that is scrubbed clean after every visitor [whether they touched anything or not], and mine looks like a hurricane just passed through it. We learned not to mess with each other's rooms after we decided to do room-makeovers for each other (yeah, we were really bored). Neither of us could stand our new rooms, let alone sleep in them, so we ditched the whole project and slept on my roof (which was awesome too!).

“I'm sure he'll get it right tomorrow.” I told him comfortingly like I do every morning during homeroom, and he automatically replied skeptically,

“Right. And we're the stupidest kids in this class.” That caught me off guard; the `right' didn't usually come with the additional phrase. Which was totally bogus, that last phrase; Lenny and I were the geniuses of the class. Oh, did I forget to tell you one of our similar traits?

Yep, Lenny and I are the smartest of the class. It's really difficult to tell who's smarter of the two of us, though. I major in art and biology, and this kid's a natural at algebra and chemistry. All of our classes are AP or College Prep, and we both take foreign language. Except that I'm in AP French and he's in AP German. Oh, well. The only classes we have together are gym (which there unfortunately is no AP course for), AP English Literature, and College Prep History.

Some quarters I have the highest average, and others, he's boasting about his higher average, but it never lasts long. We thought the PSAT we took in ninth grade would determine who was boss, but it turns out that we both scored in the 86th percentile with a score of 177. I scored the most points in Writing Skills, he almost aced the Math section, and Critical Reading was just, whatever. It's tough love. Not to mention we were totally bummed out that we scored so low. Yes, I am a school-freak as well as an art-lover. My grades really matter to me (and to Lenny - well, his grades anyway); I want to get somewhere. I'm not sure where that is, but it's definitely somewhere.

“What's killing you today?” I asked. It wasn't rare to find him in a bad mood, but this was new.

“Ugh, nothing important.” He replied in a low voice, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache.

“I've heard that somewhere before.” I told him skeptically. He always says that when I ask him what's wrong. Every. Single. Time. “Am I going to have to ask you a thousand times today, or are you just going to tell me?”

“It's fine, Callie.” He groaned dismissively.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. My name is Callie Demeter McGregerson, and I love it - well, my first two names really (unlike Lenny; another crucial difference). I have a dream that one day a boy will ask me for my number, and I'll take an old napkin or something and write `Callie' with a space after the `i'. Then, with another color, I'll write an `m' stuck to the `i' so that it'll look like I wrote `Callie' and `Call me' at the same time. It's totally perfect! Well, I thought it was perfect until I told Lenny about it and he said I was being totally lame. Now it's just… optional. I got my middle name, Demeter, from the Greek goddess of harvest and fertility. But honestly, I prefer Persephone. (Who wouldn't want to be abducted to the underworld?)

Anyway, I was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (Yes, it's a real place), but I have an American passport and live right here in Dulles, Virginia. My father comes from the poorest country in the world (and I'm not exaggerating), and my mother comes from England, one of the richest countries in the world. However, they met under reversed circumstances; my dad was traveling as the owner and CEO of a very successful business, and mom was, well, cleaning rooms and being a waitress at the City Inn Hotel in London. I would tell the story of how they ended up living here with me and my two other siblings, but it's way too long and not completely PG-rated.

I have a younger sister, Chichi. Her real name is Rachel, but I call her Chichi for no specific reason; it just rolls off my tongue: Chichi. (Well, it's more like it's caught between my teeth if you think about it, but you get the point.) She's 7 and, like I said before, a romanticist. I also have an older brother, Landon. There's not much to say about him; he's a senior at my school, and, in my opinion, a sex addict (not that I'll ever tell mom that). I mean, he'll stare for hours at anything that has legs and a pair of breasts. That should explain the posters in his room. I've lost count of the number of girls he's had come over to our house to `study' - as in, Landon tells mom and dad, they're introduced, and he and whichever girl he chose that time go in his room, close the door, and don't get out until hours later. I usually head over to Lenny's as soon as she walks through the door.

We kids all have mom's fiery red hair, but dad's chocolate brown eyes are apparent in use too. We also have a mixed skin tone, but on the lighter side, so it looks like we have a really dark, year-round tan. That's as far as similarities go, though. Chichi's looks like dad, Landon looks like mom, and I'm in the middle, with plump lips and a long nose. It almost looks like someone cut up two magazine photos and glued them together; I'm not the prettiest thing around, but I like my features very much, actually (Which is kind of what makes me different from other girls I know.)

“It's fine, Callie.” I mimicked, wobbling my head. Lenny narrowed his eyes at me, and I flashed him a fake smile. This is pretty much how conversation goes every time he refuses to talk about stuff.

“I'll tell you later.” He surrendered, and I basked in my triumphant glory for a couple of seconds. Then Lenny visibly tensed up, and I looked up to see Perry Guiles from chem pass in front of him in a miniskirt, waving coyly at him. I stared at her in slight confusion, but when I saw that Lenny actually smiled a small smile and waved back, I was flabbergasted.

“Is that your problem?” I asked seriously, my recent happiness totally crushed.

“No, Callie,” he replied slowly without even looking at me. “I think that's the solution.”

“Since when did you get so corny?” I asked him, now a little more upset. Why hadn't he told me about this?

But he didn't even answer. Instead, he stared at Perry, who was staring back, and they shared some totally corny smile. I wanted to hurl. Right then, I knew my thoughts of romance had gone in the opposite direction.

I don't really know why it bothered me so much; Perry wasn't that bad, if you forgot about the fact that she tends to dress like a whore, smokes, and pretty much has a sign on her forehead that say, `DRAMA!'. There's always some new scandal going on about her, and though I'm not much of a gossiper, I can tell that she's bad news. Other than that, she's fine; she speaks proper English, gets good enough grades, and is a good artist. I'm being a bit biased about the artist thing, so she definitely receives extra points from me for that.

Besides, Lenny definitely has his head on his shoulders. He has a strict no-smoke, no-drink, no-drugs policy, and he's turned to abstinence until he goes to college (even though he keeps a couple of condoms in his wallet, `just in case'). I know he wouldn't change that just for one girl. I mean, it is the first girl I've actually seen him with (and we've known each other since fourth grade), but I'm 100% sure one girl couldn't change him like that. Right?