Azurite, Chapter One

When I think of the first day I met him, I remember blue. Everything about that day was blue; the turquoise laces of my Pumas trailing through the puddle-covered sidewalks, the brilliant sky that was the kind of clear only ever achieved right after a storm, and especially, the deep, bright aqua of his eyes that has always been able to see through all of me, far past my soul.

It was a sweltering Saturday afternoon, just a few days after ninth grade had let out for the summer. Like most people my age, summer was my favorite part of the year. I loved the feeling of restless sleepiness, the late nights and late mornings, the seemingly permanent scent of chlorine and salt water that drifted from my blonde hair.

I had slept in late that morning; by the time I stumbled out of the shower, the bright summer sun was high in the sky. As I squeezed the water out of my hair and wiped away condensation on the mirror, I thought about the two lazy months stretched out before me, and what exactly I planned to do with them. In the past, summers had been dedicated to day camps and family trips to Florida and Canada. This summer, however, was going to be different; I had enrolled in no summer camps, and when grandma invited me to spend a month with her in Arizona, I politely refused, promising a weekend instead. I had two goals: find a boyfriend worthy of my affections and get a job. I was fully convinced that together, these tasks would take up most of time.

Sighing, I pulled a brush through my wet, shoulder length hair, figuring there would be no point in blow-drying it, since in just a few hours I’d be swimming. On second thought, if I wanted goal number one to happen, making my hair look pretty couldn’t hurt anything.

As I waited for the straightening iron to heat, I detachedly glanced at my reflection. I could be very pretty if I tried- my skin tanned easily, my hair straightened nicely, and I was blessed with my mom’s large brown eyes and small features. I was of an average height, and since I played soccer, I was always a great weight. I knew that when I put on a little mascara and a pair of Abercrombie jeans, I looked just like the all-American girl I was, the kind that turns heads (at least boys’).

No, I realized, the problem wasn’t getting boys to like me; the problem was finding the one in a hundred who would like me even if I had a huge nose, frizzy hair, and a hundred pimples. Finding a 15-year-old boy like that was going to be a challenge, I knew. On that thought, I unplugged the iron, wrapped myself in a towel, and headed into my bedroom.

Just another benefit to summer was that I got the house to myself from 8-6, since my dad was at work during those hours, and my 12-year-old brother Chris was attending a day soccer-camp all day as well. Sometimes it was hard sharing a house with two males, especially since I was in the minority; my mother died when I was three, just months after giving birth to Chris, in a car accident.

Fifteen minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table, the New York Times leaning up against the Special K box, iPod laying next to my half-full cereal bowl. I changed the song, and as the sounds of Red Hot Chili Peppers filled my ears, I carefully scanned the job listings. Just last week I had sent in the application for a job as a lifeguard at the local country club, and hopefully I would find out today if I gotten it. However, the White Willows Country Club was a very competitive and highly selective club- most of their employees were the sons, daughters, nieces, and other various teenage relatives of the club’s very wealthy owners and managers. The chance that me, a middle-class, barely-certified 16-year-old would secure a job there was very slim; I definitely needed backups in case that choice fell through. Unfortunately, nothing looked very promising.


The country club was typically crowded for a hot, summer afternoon. Large families of splashing kids in inflated tubes, elderly couples in matching sunhats, and the occasional solitary sunbather like myself surrounded the pool. There was no one there who I recognized, so I found a chair close to the edge of the pool, and settled in it after removing my tank and frayed, denim shorts. I was wearing my favorite swimsuit- the red polka-dot bikini from American Eagle. I closed my eyes and leaned back on my lawn chair, allowing the surrounding noise to blur into a distant, annoying hum, and eventually, I drifted into a sun-induced sleep. Slowly, the sun made it’s way across the bright blue sky, and fevered images of colors and people floated across my consciousness.

I must have been asleep for about 15 minutes, when his voice interrupted my peace. When I opened my eyes, I had the distinct feeling of being visited by an angel. Perhaps it was the way he stood directly in front of the sun, so light seemed to radiate from his body. Or perhaps it was the sheer beauty of him; the laughing expression, the toned, bronzed muscles that suggested he had fallen straight out of a Greek myth, the dark curling hair… But in my opinion, most of his beauty came from his eyes. They were the kind of eyes that I had imagined the wizened wizard Dumbledore might have had; bright, intensely blue, tiny pools into a soul that was purely good. I was so overcome by his beauty that I didn’t register the first words he spoke to me- I just stared at him, my mouth slightly open. By the time I realized he had said something, he was looking at me, those eyes slightly quizzical, as though he wondered if something was wrong with me. I blushed and stuttered, my lips refusing to form a single, intelligent word.
“Wh-what?” I finally managed.

*To be continued...*