This Girl

Prologue

"Dele!" I tap my best friend's shoulder.

"Ya?" Adele asks, pulling out her earphone.

"Let's do one last lap," I say. She nods, and I stick my earphone back into my ear.

"I got my ticket for the long way round," Adele sings, still running.

"Two bottles of whisky for the way," I join in, even though I think that my lungs are gonna explode.

"And I sure would like some sweet company but I'm leaving tomorrow, what d'you say?"

We keep running along the path, the Eiffel tower getting bigger and bigger in front of us. We jog around the whole structure before tapping one of the base poles and sprinting back down the path. We collapse onto the green pastures in front once we've run down the path, dodging through tourists. Have you ever noticed the similarity of the words tourists and terrorists? When I was eleven I used to the tourists were the one causing sieges. Woah, I was one dumb cookie.

I pull on the bottom of my sports tank top and tug my Nike leggings up onto my hips. We lie down on the grass and look up at the fluffy white clouds. Adele points to one.

"That one looks like a rooster pooping," she says and I laugh before pointing to another.

"That one looks like Oprah with Botox," I say. Its her turn to laugh.

"That's a snowglobe with a star in it."

"That's a pineapple with sunglasses."

"That's a dragon farting."

"That's a hut where Grug lives."

"Grug?" she questions, turning her head to me so that her maroon brown hair falls into her eyes from her ponytail.

"You know Grug, right? Grug? He used to be a tree and then he turned into a... um... creature!" I say.

"Nope," she says.

"Really? I'll show you a picture of him," I take out my phone and google Grug.

"I've never seen him," she says after looking at my phone. "Must be an American thing."

I sigh and roll my eyes. This is her answer for basically anything. I lived in America before moving to Paris when I was nine. It was for my Mum's job as a fashion designer. Adele and I live in the same apartment building and have for eight years. We're best friends. To be honest, I like Paris more then America, I don't know why, though. Adele isn't a European, her parents migrated from Australia when she was six and they've lives here ever since.

I pull my sweaty, long hair off the back of my neck and sit up. Adele does the same. A couple of boys sitting near us turn around and wink at her, she rolls her eyes and stands up, pulling her crop top and bike pants down.

While she prefers more skimpy outfits like crop tops and short-shorts for our runs, I'm always wearing a tank top and three-quarter sports leggings.

She pulls me up and we walk back to the apartments. We plug in our headphones again and click play on our apple watches. I follow her playlist and we've somehow made it play start to finish, so that we can listen together.

Adele and I both love music. We bonded over it actually, over 'let's get ridiculous' by Redfoo when we were attending a function in the lobby.

We run up and down the stairs a couple of times before calling it a day and walking inside. We start dancing in the lift. I feel like the dude from that vine dabbing in a descending lift. At least I'm not dabbing. Speaking of dabbing, Usain Bolt CANNOT play soccer. Sorry Usain.