Everything Has Changed

Love Story

Prologue

Her

When I was seven, my parents transferred from Seton Northwest Hospital in Austin to teach surgery and other medical nonsense at the University of Vermont. While my brother had every complaint in the book not to leave Austin, I had no complaints. Sure, I had friends, but how much can you care about people at that age? Well, a lot apparently.

I was an uncaring child. If I was playing and somebody pushed me, I picked my pissed-off self up and walked away, if my parents forced me to eat my vegetables, I ate them despite hating the taste. I was unbothered about a lot of things. But him, he bothered me.

He was 528 days older than me - or, exactly a year and a half. I was seven when I met him. He lived across the street from me when we moved to Vermont. When our car arrived in the driveway, he was already waiting there, like he was expecting me. He had been wearing a pair of basketball shorts with a t-shirt, most of his dark hair covered in the baseball hat he wore backwards.

"Hey, I'm Darius Hale." He had said to me. "My parents were studying history in Persia and liked the name."

That was Darius - almost nine years old and introducing himself like that.

"I'm Summer Wilson." I had replied, and for some reason explained the name choice just as he had. "My parents named me Summer because they met on the first of June, and hated the name June."

"Cool." He had said, and walked back across the road and inside the house.

As I said, I was an uncaring child, which was I was so bothered by Darius because I was interested in him. Well, as interested as a seven year old could get.

Anyway, so I was seven when I met him on the day I moved in. Despite having introduced himself to me, he began hanging out with my brother, Jenson, who was a year older than him. And then eventually, he got to know me.

Sometimes I wished I would have grown up thinking boys had cooties, or that they were disgusting, immature brats. But Darius was striking. There was something about his confidence that oozed charm, and he seemed uncaring, too.

Some days, Darius would come to my house and sit with me for five minutes, without saying a word, and then walked back to his house. It was such strange behaviour, exhibited in the most nonchalant manner. I wished he never decided to leave my brother alone and spend time with me though, because he made me shift from uncaring, to awe in a matter of days.

When I turned nine, Darius helped clean up the mess at my house after my party. When the rubbish was cleared, he plopped beside me on the couch.

"Do you like Ryan Thomas?" He had asked.

Ryan Thomas was a kid we went to school with, and lived in the next street. I guess he was friendly, but we were nine, of course he was friendly.

"Sure." I replied. "Don't you?"

"I mean do you have romantic feelings for him?"

That's how Darius spoke - like he was a twenty-five year old trapped in a ten year olds body. I guess it had something to do with his mother being an author.

"No," I shook my head. "I'm too young to have romantic feelings for anybody."

I was lying, of course, because I had contracted romantic feelings for Darius when I was seven.

"Oh." Darius said, flipping off his baseball cap before twisting it and putting it back on his head. "I guess you have to be ten years old to have feelings for someone then."