Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 1.

Note: from this point up until chapter 13, the story is primarily an introduction to the characters & their backgrounds as well as how they all become connected (however, this is significant to the story and must be read ♡). I promise you it gets a lot more complex after that. Stay tuned :)

there is only one original character - for those of you who prefer the original Losers - and the story alternates between first and third person POV, mainly staying in third.
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Elle
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My eyes rested upon the garlands of tri-colored flowers adorning the bushes below the window, observing how their gentle petals had curled up towards the edges as a result of the perpetual summer heat.

Firm, jade green vines held up their finest creations in the air, not yet hiding from the baking sun as the flora themselves had. It's as if they had created a mosaic of silk to luster against the rich soil and proudly wanted to ask the universe if it approved.

The enlivened blossoms showed no sign of the rain that had played a sweet pattern against them the night before. Rain that fell like natures own poetry, each syllable coming down against the ground in soft taps. A late-summer storm seemed harsh enough to ruin the fragility of these petals, but that wasn't the case. In fact, now exposed to the sunlight of the next day, they had never looked so alive.

Each one was a delicate bloom that was born to take in the hydration with their nectar. Kaleidoscopes of nature's finest colors had woven into the bouquets, braiding through every leaf with pigments that only dreams are made of.

Their glistening tinge didn't dull until I reminded myself that I was thinking about everything other than what I was actually supposed to be thinking about. The botanics were merely a distraction.

A blissful distraction to drown out the sounds of pencils gliding across notebook paper. Something that would lift my attention from the fact that mine was the only one not moving.

Lead etched into pieces of loose-leaf in an intricate pattern of cursive for every student occupying the classroom other than myself.

The walls seemed to expand and collapse around me in fixed intervals, shutting everything off including my most valuable traits. Writers block had taken its truest form: a stiffening mass acting as a defense against creativity.

I tapped the eraser persistently against the desk three times, eventually wiping away an entire sentence with it and brushing off the rubber remains. I put myself in deep thought, sinking into a whirlpool of ideas that served me with no real conclusion.

The fictions of my mind would drive at full speed for a few seconds but eventually halted and left me completely empty. At this, I would grip my pencil a little extra tighter, growing increasingly frustrated with the burn of the unknown.

The conclusive sentence that was needed for my essay was still nowhere to be found. My mind persisted around the topic of love -- the assigned theme for this body of work that had been placed into my hands.

The idea of falling in love at the age of 17 held a kind of rarity that equated to finding diamonds and amethyst fortunes. The fragile beginnings of love seemed to be something that very few could truly find, mystifying around lands of infatuation until they finally found something that was real. My head rocked side to side, wondering how to write about diamonds that are still in the rough.

I looked interrogatively around the room. Everybody else's pencils were moving freely, hands jotting down words like they didn't have to think twice about it.

Was I really lacking that hard in the love department that I couldn't even conclude the essay that I bullshitted my way through? People actually fall in love? That's a real thing? Jesus Christ.