Small Town Life
A series of stories featuring Elle and John
Story One: Introductions
As small towns go, this one was small. Not so small that it would just fade away into the middle Americas waves of grain. It was just small enough where everyone knew everyone else and everyone had a secret worth knowing. There was one elementary school, one high school, one mom and pop grocery store, and so on. If this story was just about a normal middle American town, this story wouldn't be posted here, now would it? No, it wouldn't. This story follows two teenagers just starting their Senior year at the small town high school. We're going to call these two teens Elle, a rather pretty, but chubby girl about 18, and John,17, an all American football star that is currently hiding in the closet.
Elle walked a little behind John on their way to school, looking through her backpack for something she had lost. She finally found the silky scarf at the bottom, slightly crushed, but still in good shape. She whipped it out and slung her backpack back across her shoulders. She stopped walking and tied the scarf through her hair like a headband. She had been late and John had insisted they be early for school to find which classes they had together. John stopped, realizing Elle was no longer behind him, and turned.
"We're gonna be LATE!" He said, a hand tightening on one strap of his backpack.
She rushed up to him and walked past him, "Then stop walking so slow." He easily caught up with her. They were a mismatched pair, Elle was rock-a-billy, for the lack of a better term. Her clothes leaned towards vintage and comfort, she didn't care to show off her body because she never was happy with it. When she was little, her mother had drilled into her head how ugly and fat she was. Now that her mother was dead, Elle didn't have to listen to it from anyone, but the damage had been done. John, being the all American boy, blonde, pale, and blue eyed to Elle's black hair and dark olive skin and dark eyes. John liked to call her eyes smoky bedroom eyes, she liked to call them muddy and flat.
They came onto the campus for the high school, already the campus teeming with life. There would be exactly 150 seniors in this years class and each one loved John and disliked Elle. John was Elle's only friend. And Elle was John's only friend, even though the whole school considered John their friend. John's secret was planted firmly in Elle's heart, to stay there until he was ready to give it up or she were to die.
The day went well, they had most of their classes together, save for Elle's music class, she played viola in the orchestra; and John's journalism class. He had taken the class for the teacher. A Mr. Little. John had such a crush on Mr. Little and loved to watch him under the guise of listening to music through his headphones. Because John was the star of the football team he could get away with just about anything in the school. Mr. Little's class was lax, with a couch and no seating arrangements. As long as students turned in some kind of written word at the end of class, Mr. Little was happy. John, never without his headphones and iPod, sat a little away from a group of 'friends', his headphones on and his head down. He didn't listen to music, but to the people talking around him. When he removed his headphones, people would hear music, like they did as John removed them as the class got up to leave. He saw Elle through the door in the hall as he stuffed his notebooks into his bag. He was the last to leave and Mr. Little smiled at him. John almost swooned as he left, bumping into Elle.
Later that day, as they sat in Elle's room listening to her record collection, he gushed on about Mr. Little, "...so tall. I love a tall man, he can't be any shorter then 6'4. I Swear. And his hair...oh... have you noticed the way it catches the light? It auburn with glints of ginger..."
Elle rolled her eyes from the floor where she did her homework, "In love again, huh."
She got a pillow in the head for her comment. John looked at the clock and sighed, "I have practice, will you come?"
"I don't like coming to your practices. The boys jeer at me." She said, not looking up from her text book.
"Jeer? Since when do you use words like jeer?" He stood, brushing cat hair off his sweater and grabbing his bag.
"Since I looked at a dictionary." She closed her text book, plainly grumpy about something.
