Paper Hearts-Ch.1

"The love is a sound we can not hear, yet, within our hearts, it's as loud as thunder. It's a word we can not speak, although, it is branded upon our very souls."

I never believed in true love. I thought it was only for the pretty people in our society and I just knew that it would never find me. My mother is beautiful, with her brown hair and green eyes flecked with gold. My father is epitome of black hair and blue eyes. Together, they make the most perfect couple you could ever imagine.

Then there's me, with my black hair and my eye disorder. I have heterochromia iridum, which means my eyes are two completely different colors. My right eye is green and my left eye is blue. My father's mother, my grandmother, also had this disorder and she's the person I had inherited it from.

I always thought of my heterochromia as ugly and strange. I labeled myself as a freak despite the comments people made about my eyes.

In english class one day, our teacher, Miss Bradford, made us think about one of our flaws and to think of it as beautiful.

"Sierra," she called on me. I looked up at her from my doodle in my notebook and looked at her, my bangs covering my blue eye. "What do you think is your flaw?" she asked. Immediately, I told her I thought it was my disorder. "Why do you think that?" she asked, her curiosity glinting in her brown eyes.

"It isn't normal," I said.

"Nothing's normal in this world anymore," a masculine voice said from the back. I turned and saw a guy I didn't know too well, but I knew his name. His name's Jeremy Croft. I never actually had him in any of my classes, but I saw him in the hallway sometimes, being obnoxious and usually arrogant.

"What's 'normal' in your defnition?" I asked.

He gave me a half smile. "Conforming to the standards," he said, as if he were asked that a million times in a day. "If people were what you call normal, we'd all be brown haired and brown eyed. Blue eyes and blonde hair are mutations." He himself had dirty blonde hair and medium blue eyes.

"So what am I?" I inquired.

He smiled again. "Special."

Just then, the bell rang and I was sitting there in my seat, still looking back, dumbfounded. I didn't know how to respond to Jeremy calling me 'special'. Was he implying something that I was too stupid and ill-prepared to know how to act? To be honest, I wasn't entirely fond of the thought of Jeremy Croft flirting with me. I wasn't used to the idea of anyone complimenting me besides my parents.

When almost everyone was out of the room, including him, I turned back to my desk and found a perfect paper flower sitting on top of my doodle.

Later, I found Jeremy in the cafeteria with a couple of his friends and stalked over to the table he was sitting at. He saw me heading towards him in his peripheral vision and looked at me, that same smile plastered on his face. The paper flower was clutched in my hand. When I was standing in front of him, I threw it into his lap and crossed my arms.

He looked down at it, his smile gone. "You don't like origami?" he asked, looking back up at me.

"I don't want your lame gifts," I stated, my arms still crossed. "Why would you do that in the first place? You don't even know me."

"I know more about you than you give me credit for," he said defensively.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Like what?"

"Well, for starters, you despise your appearance. Secondly, I know that you like to draw. I've seen your work in the art shows. And you like journalism," he said matter-of-factly.

"One, all girls despise their appearance. Two, everyone knows I like to draw, and three, I don't like journalism."

"Then, why would you join the school newspaper?" he asked, impertinent.

"I don't need to answer your stupid questions," I claimed, "I just came over here to give back your dumb flower."

"So you admit I'm right," he said smugly.

"Ugh, you're so irritating!" I said angrily and walked away.

"See you in gym, Sierra!" he called after me.

Crap, I thought. I had forgotten that I had gym with him after lunch. Just ignore him, I told myself. But the thing was, as much as Jeremy Croft made me angry, I liked arguing with him. He put up a fight and he stood by his opinions. And the little voice in my head was telling me that I was being stupid for thinking that I could ignore him so easily.