Far beyond expectation

“Hey Dallas, would you come give me a hand in the kitchen?”
A voice echoed from the kitchen, bouncing off the walls and hitting my ears as me and my brother laid on our beds, our homework sat out in front of us. This was what most of my nights consisted of, pure homework ridden, depressing nights with mum always calling for me to help her. If I didn’t move, she would yell at me; and if I didn’t do what she wanted me to do properly without mistakes she would somehow find a way to yell even louder (how that was possible, I do not know). “Coming mum!” I rushed to my feet, my school clothes laid out on the bedroom floor before me, my feet slipping from underneath them as I went to her, falling onto my backside with a large thud. My brother was never expected to help out around the house, it was always me; I guess you could say he was the favoured one that never got put to labour. It was always hard living in a household with just my mother and brother, we never really seemed to get along and when we did it was only because we were watching a movie we all loved together. There was always some kind of abuse, verbal of physical happening in the house. My life was the epitome of a failure. The fact I never met my father didn’t help either, it was always just us and he left us at an early age for some unknown reasons. To say I hate his guts would be an understatement. As I reached the kitchen, mum was elbow deep in the sink washing plates while the stinky, rottenly filthy garbage was sitting beside her, letting out a foul stench which shrouded the entire room. I covered my nose, looking at mum with a look that was almost as if to say, ‘you don’t expect me to take this out do you?’ Her eyes widened and nodded her head, I shrugged and picked up the garbage, still covering my nose and heading to take it outside.
“My God, what the hell do we eat? This is horrible…” My voice carried far, almost echoing and flowing with the breeze itself.
“What do you eat? I can smell that from over here!” A voice echoed from behind me, a womanly voice similar in age to mine. My pulse quickened, I turned around grabbing the back of my head grinning and scratching my neck with my eyes closed. I opened my eyes to see who it was; it was her. The girl, the one I had constantly been thinking about. The girl next door, whatever you want to call her. She began to walk towards me, my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t know how to react, I was just shocked and I didn’t know what to say. It was like when you go to paintball, you’re ready for the pain but when you get hit it’s one of the most agonising things ever. I looked up, she was beautiful. Dark eyes, the little smirk she always had on her face. I didn’t know how to react.
“I… I, urgh… you probably don’t know m--
“You’re Dallas, right? Dallas Green?”
I nodded hesitantly, trying to hold back a smirk that was hiding behind my face. I was so excited she knew my name, you know, the girl I had a crush on since she came to my school in year 4. Yeah, that type of crush.
“H-how do you know that? You’re Amber Garfield; I’ve never talked to you... ”
She chuckled; Amber was very beautiful in this moon-light, how it was possible to become more beautiful I do not know. Amber didn’t normally associate with my type of character; I was the shy, weird kid that nobody really talked to.
“Hey… I’ll be seeing you around, yeah?” I nodded almost immediately.
The next day was horrid, almost every kid in the school was insulting me like they always do, and the few friends that I had left were hanging out with other people. However, she couldn’t get off my mind. Amber, she was constantly on it. I couldn’t do anything about it. I was so surprised she actually talked to me; I figured it had to be some kind of sick joke. Come lunch time, I thought my day would never end. My gut hurt just thinking about how she probably didn’t care, that she started talking to me because it was funny last night. It made me feel so sick knowing that she, most probably, didn’t feel like I do. A gush of wind flew by me; it felt cool as a shadow lurked over my shoulder. My heart started racing again, while the same voice from the night before echoed over my shoulder, almost as if I had been stunned. I looked around to see Amber standing there, full school uniform on with her tie undone a little bit, hanging off to the side. I smiled a bit before standing up to greet her. She looked welcoming, something people usually weren’t like to me. She grabbed my hand, and smiled once again, putting our hands in front of our bodies almost as if she was about to twirl me around in some form of ritual dance. Her dark green eyes looked straight into mine, they were so illuminating. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them while that stupid smile still shrouded my face.
“You’re never going to believe what happened to me today!” Her voice was so high pitched it almost burnt my ears.
I gave out a small chuckle and replied, “Well, what happened then?”
“This guy… he came up to me and he finally asked me on a date!”
“Oh… do you get that often?”
“Well… yeah, but this this is different.”
I felt my heart sink. It felt like someone had looked me straight in the eye and stabbed my straight through the chest, a pain immediately erupted from my heart and it felt like nothing I’ve felt before. I should have expected this, but I didn’t. I was gawky, she was amazing, I was boring, and she was enthusiastic and enthralling.
“What did you say?” my voice was hesitant and trembled, I couldn’t help it…
“Well, it’s not like I was going to decline the offer, now was I?” her voice sounded kind of soft, almost as if she was sorry. I knew it was too good to be true; there wasn’t anything I could do about it. She was beautiful, and I was gawky and awkward; it was a surprise she started talking to me at all. In a way, the way this was going was like the book you read while hoping for some special love to happen to you, this happened all throughout the books I read – this one reminded me highly of ‘Looking for Alaska’ by John Green in a way. This girl clearly showed interest in me, if it wasn’t just my imagination, but she had a boyfriend and I was kind of stuck there between moving on and driving myself into a deeper hole of self-pity. The weekend before hand sort of made me smile when she came up to me, but it was sort of scary – I didn’t know she lived that close to my parents, either. I didn’t spend all of my time with my parents, I only saw them occasionally on weekends while I was stuck in my boarding school.