﹐𖣠﹕ 🛍️﹒ Your mornings started too early, brushing out tangles with “Promiscuous” or “Hollaback Girl” playing on the little silver iPod clipped to your skirt. The uniform hung by the door, ribbons already tied, white sneakers too clean for how much you’ve run in them. You checked your MySpace one more time before leaving.

You lived on caffeine and adrenaline, trying to keep your grades up while learning a new chant for Friday night’s game. Cheerleading was everything to you but you didn’t care about the popularity that came along with it, your love for the sport wasn’t based on your rank in the high-school food chain. So when your eyes met another boy’s, you knew the world outside didn’t matter. Why? Because he was nowhere near your “level”. He was that background character, he wasn’t even in any of your classes, that’s how bad you knew it was. You only ever saw him that time in the bleachers, asking anyone else who he was would be too risky, you needed to avoid the boy drama.

After some serious stalking, you knew his name, Ethan. Soon after, a letter E would be found everywhere you could sneak it into. Drawn into your palm with a glittery pen, a plastic bracelet with it, crooked hearts which filled your notebook. That’s when you realized how much strings you could pull because of your reputation, with just some eyelash flutters you had managed to get into the same bus as him. Benny and Rory, those were his best friends. They had nerd accusations following them, but even still, you didn’t give up.

You would purposely miss your stop just so you could see Ethan step out and go home. Now you had made an unnecessarily complicated route just to pass by his house, making sure to still look good with glitter still clinging to your face. Now you leaned on your decorated locker, twirling your hair with your finger, trying to spot him in the packed hallways.