By: Anika C. Penn
Foreword
This is a love story, but it's a little different. Two people have a crush on each other, but neither one knows how the other person feels. If you're the kind of person who likes someone more than a friend, go for who you want. You'll never know if the person loves you back. ~Anika
Chapter 1
Kaire Sean Morrison
“Kaire, wake up!!!” I squinted and turned over in my full-sized bed to find my older sister, Kacia, standing in my bedroom doorway. She was in her neon blue Joe Boxer robe, and her thick black hair was wet, so she probably just took a shower. I yawned, sat up, and suddenly remembered I had slept in nothing but my boxers., since it was super hot last night. I quickly grabbed my blanket to cover myself.
“Kacia, please stop waking me up like that. You do that all the time.” I looked at my clock on my nightstand, which read 11:37 A.M. I turned back to her and said, “It's too early to be waking up.”
Kacia gave me a crazy look and shook her head. “Are you serious? It's almost noon, and you say it's early. You're so lazy.” She walked towards my huge bedroom window and opened the shades, blinding me with bright Saturday morning sunlight. “But seriously, you gotta get up. The party at West End Point is today, remember?”
“Oh! I forgot!” I jumped up, grabbed my robe off of my bedpost and put it on. I've been waiting forever for this day. Today is the Ladies Lookin' Lovely, Fellas Lookin' Fly party. I turned around and asked her quickly, “Did you take a shower yet?”
“Yeah. I'm gonna go downstairs and do my hair in the bathroom so you can get ready. Don't take all day.” She walked out of my room and into the master bathroom to grab her hair dryer, her brush, and her Moroccan hair oil. As she went down the spiral stairs, she said, “You know where your invitation is, right? You need it so you can hand it to the guard to get in.”
I looked into my nightstand drawer, where I kept almost everything that fit in there. I had to pull out my chains, my phone, my watches, my cologne, and my school papers to get to the folded-up invitation at the bottom of the mess. “Found it!”, I yelled.
“Okay. Put it in your pants pocket so you won't forget it,” Kacia yelled back at me. She was right. I sometimes tend to forget things, so I went into my messy walk-in closet and put my invitation into the pants pocket of my Jos. A. Bank purple and black pinstripe suit. As I walked back out, I almost tripped over my black and red Adidas sweat pants. I picked them up, and a small piece of paper fell out. I remembered I got this note from a secret admirer yesterday in my locker when everyone was let out of school for the weekend. The note was written in nice handwriting, and it said, “ Your smile makes me smile.” Now, I had many friends in and outside of school who were girls, but I've seen their handwriting, and none of them match up. Whoever wrote the note did make me smile though. I've gotten about ten notes now, all from the same person. I picked the note up and folded it up, then put it in the secret compartment on the top shelf in my closet, along with the rest of the notes. I wanted to find out, because it was starting to bother me a little that I didn't know.
“Kai! Get in the shower!” Kacia shouted. “I mean it, if you're not ready to go when it's time to go, I'm leaving you here. I have to meet Deanna at the party to talk about that major project I told you about.” Ms. Deanna Cortez was Kacia's best friend and work partner. They both worked as secretaries at the City County Building in Downtown Pittsburgh. They were looking for a way to speed up production in the workplace or something like that. Also, I know Deanna through her daughter, Adriana. We're both in 11th grade at CAPA High School. We don't talk much inside of school because of our classes, but she's a nice person. Outside of school, we're very close friends. She usually comes over to my house with her mom or I go over to Ms. Deanna's house when she and Kacia work together on projects. She was more on the shy side, and liked to wear hoodies and jeans. She was very pretty, with long, brown and gold hair. She wore glasses, but they went well with her big, hazel eyes and mocha colored skin. She also has a cute dimple when she smiles with her pearly white teeth and her full heart shaped lips. Adriana had a small body, but she had a lovely hourglass shape. To be honest, I actually have very deep feelings for her. I want to tell her, but there was never a perfect time. If I had her, just one moment alone, I would kiss her like there would never be another tomorrow. I wondered if she was the one putting the notes in my locker. The only problem is, her handwriting doesn't match up with the writing on the notes.
“Kaire Sean, get in there now! I'm done with my hair already!” Kacia snapped me out of my daydream.
“Fine. I'm going in there now. Sheesh,” I replied. I grabbed a clean pair of boxers to put on after I got out of the shower. When I got in, I adjusted the shower head setting to high pressure so I could relax my mind – I didn't know what to do about this secret admirer thing. The first note, which I got five days after school started, revealed that my admirer has liked me for two years and counting. I keep trying to think which one of my friends has gone to Freedom Middle School in 8th grade and transferred to CAPA during freshman year. Once again, that's why I thought Adriana was the one putting my notes in my locker. The year I met her was when Kacia got transferred from South Side to her new job in Pittsburgh, which was in 2007. If she is the one, then I wouldn't know what to say. Trying to get my mind off of it, I turned on the shower radio and put it to WAMO 100.7. “Halfcrazy” by Musiq Soulchild was playing, and I chuckled, knowing I exactly felt that way. I started to sing along quietly because I didn't want Kacia to hear me, just in case she came back up the stairs. I really didn't get moony over girls. Most of the girls I talk to aren't my type anyway. Some are too obnoxious, some act too fake, and some act really ghetto. They're okay as friends, but a girlfriend? No thanks.
Realizing that it was already quarter to 12, I washed my body down with Dove for Men (Yes, I admit, I love it,) jumped out of the shower and put my boxers on. I grabbed a fresh razor out of the cabinet, since I needed a quick shape up on my fast growing mustache. As I closed the mirror, I stopped to look at myself with my chocolate brown eyes. Kacia told me once I look more like Mom, and she looks more like Dad. She says I have Mom's eyes, hair color, skin color, and smile, and she has Dad's hair color, height, and build. I don't really have anything to remember them by, because they died in a car accident when I was 3. Kacia was 20 at the time since Mom was a young mother. When they died, she already was going to Sanford Brown's online college program to for her Associate's Degree in Business and had a good job, so she decided to raise me until I'm able to hold my own. She told me about Mom and Dad when I was about 12, after I asked her where my father is, since I thought she was my mother. Now, here I am, with my sister. She's my everything.
“You know, you look like Mom more than Dad.” She startled me as she came and stood in the doorway with that sad look only she could possess. She only got that look when she talked about them. “Another thing you have from her is you height. You're short for your age.” She was right. I stood at 5'7”, which made me shorter than all of my boys. “C'mon, let's go, Short Stuff.”
“Don't call me that. You know I hate it.” I took a towel hanging on the door, wound it up tight, and snapped it onto her stomach. She snatched the wet towel off from her neck and managed to snap me in my back as I tried to dodge her and get to my room. This ensued a 5 minute towel fight which ended up in her running to her bedroom, giggling and yelling, “Okay, I quit! I surrender!”
“That's right. I always win,” I said, laughing. Kacia and I have a brother-sister relationship that no one can break. I closed my door, took my robe off and dried myself o
ff before laying on my bed naked . I went into my nightstand drawer again and checked my phone, which said I had 3 text messages. The first one was from my friend, Darnell. I've known him ever since the beginning of 4th grade in Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School, when we both got into a fight with someone.. It said “ay u comin to the party or what, im here already.” I invited him last week after I found out there were extra tickets, and his mom said she was going to come, so I was pretty happy about it. I texted him back, “gettin dressed now, be there in bout half an hour.”
The second was from my step cousin, Tina. My mom's sister, Natasha, remarried after she got a divorce 16 years ago