Everyone has a red string attached to their pinky. It's just a part of life. Apparently a gift from the gods, whichever they might be, meant to guide humans to their true happiness. Some may only have one string, but it's said a child who has multiple will be blessed with great happiness. Whatever that's supposed to mean. I guess, in a way, having multiple soulmates would bring more happiness but not in my case.
For as long as I can remember, I've had these two stupid strings on my pinky, and for as long as I can remember, they've never gone anywhere. Well, they do, I guess, but no matter which bus route I take to the edge of town they always just keep going.
Apparently it's bad luck to look for your soulmate on purpose. Meeting them by chance is the only "pure" and "right" way. That's what my dad harps on about, at least. He likes to talk about how he met my mother by pure coincidence when he visited America for business or something back in the, like, 1800s or whatever. I don't know, I don't really care.
None of that really matters besides the fact that I still haven't met either of my soulmates and it's already a month before freshman year. I'm gonna look like a total loser because I don't have a boyfriend, and no one really likes pretending to be soulmates or dating before their soulmate because it's like basically premarital sex, but worse. You're like, scorning God, or whatever they said in sex ed. I wasn't really paying attention. Point is, even Laney Couric has found her soulmate, and she's the ugliest girl in class. If I go into freshman year without one everyone is gonna fuck with me. They're gonna be like "Oh, look, Cyril scared off his soulmate by being a tranny" and I didn't! I just haven't met them yet, but no one's gonna believe that.
Isaac, he's my closest friend, said I'm worrying too much, and maybe he's right, but I doubt it. I mean, every time I'm worried it turns out I was completely right so I'd say even now I'm right. Sure, sometimes my stressing is the reason things turn out bad but, listen, I was still right in the end.
It turns out, I had a completely different reason to worry.
It was Thursday, I was too busy listening to Skinny Puppy to notice my dad had gotten home when suddenly he's banging on the door. I'm hesitant to open it, he's not the nicest guy when he gets off work, but I do because I'm not stupid, either.
"We're moving next week," he tells me, all matter-of-fact like. As if I'm supposed to take the news well at all. See, it's basically child cruelty to move like right before a major school year like that. Actually, I think I would rather never move ever. Sure, this town sucks and everything, but it's where Isaac lives and me and him were gonna try to make our schedules match up to have, like, every class together, and now I'm spending the rest of summer moving to some dumb town down south because my dumb dad got some stupid job offer down there. Regardless, I didn't have a choice.
The drive to the new town was grueling. The world's worst trip somewhere in my life. We spent basically all week packing the house then I still had to help load everything into the stupid U-Haul before we could finally leave. I was stuck in a car for, like, 2 days straight basically. My dad was at least nice enough to book a hotel for us to stay at when we were almost there but it was probably more for him than anything.
We didn't even move to some cool, big city! We literally moved to a middle of nowhere, useless small town. There isn't even anything to say that's good about the place. It looked exactly like the kind of place you'd be begging to leave by the time you became an adult and I knew I'd be no better.
The new place was fine, I guess. I had a bigger bedroom so I could fit of my posters on the walls but it wasn't, like, awesome. Honestly it felt empty and soul crushing. My dad kept insisting it was better we moved before I got into high school, though. So I had time to make friends or whatever. Like I was planning on making friends out here. I barely had friends back home, now it'd be basically impossible. So, the rest of my summer was spent alone, constantly checking AIM to see if Isaac reached out, at the park on the swings by myself, or just sitting in my room. Alone.
Finally going back to class almost felt like a gift. Almost. Sure, I wasn't stuck being bored all day anymore, but having to deal with school wasn't much better either. I think I would've chosen to get my face ripped off by a lion if I had the option. At least then the suffering would be manageable with, like, painkillers.
I tried my best to look nice for my first day, at least. Something about making first impressions, I guess. So, I wore my favorite Nine Inch Nails tee and a pair of ripped jeans. Okay, fine, maybe it wasn't nice but it looked cool and that's what mattered.
Eating breakfast was out of the question that day. I was way too nervous to even if I wanted to but honestly I didn't wanna get, like, bloated or something. That would've been completely horrifying. So, I ended up going to class basically starving and completely exhausted. As if I'd managed to sleep that night.
It was in the middle of the hallway. I was half distracted by searching for my locker so I wouldn't have to lug my backpack around everywhere. The times between classes were pretty forgiving so, you know, might as well take advantage of them. It was a really gentle tug on my pinky, but it was the first time in my life the string had been anything except completely slack. I had just found my locker and was shoving my bag in it before I finally looked up to see what was going on. Suddenly, I'm meeting the gaze of some guy who's immediately making my heart skip beats.
He's pretty tall, which I always considered a must for my soulmate. I mean, dating a guy shorter than me by like more than 3 inches would be embarrassing. His hair's buzzed, which just makes his pointy ears all the more visible, which, honestly, kind of a hardcore body mod for a high schooler. He looks pretty damn muscular under his jacket, which I never really considered something all that hot until that very moment. He's standing around with two other guys, neither of them all that interesting, but he's completely stopped talking to them, just staring back at me.
And so, obviously, I played it cool realizing that hunk was my soulmate... Not. Like a total idiot I immediately hid my face in my locker and prayed he'd leave before either of us spoke to the other. He was hanging out with friends, clearly, I didn't have the balls to approach him. Of course, he was my soulmate, though, so what I lacked in confidence, he had in fucking spades.